Rental vehicles: advertising and quotes: charges.

(1) Existing law governs the contracts between a rental car company and its customer and defines terms for its purposes. Existing law governs how a rental car company is authorized to advertise its rates and provide quotes. Existing law limits how a rental car company is authorized to charge a customer based on those advertisements and quotes and further limits how a rental car company may separately charge specific types of rates. This bill would revise and recast these provisions to provide how a rental car company is authorized to provide a quote and charge a customer based on that quote, including, among other provisions, requirements for imposing additional mandatory charges. The bill would further revise and recast these provisions to provide how a rental car company is authorized to advertise its rates, including, among other provisions, a requirement that an advertisement include a specific disclaimer that additional mandatory charges may be imposed. The bill would define new terms for these purposes, including, among others terms, vehicle license fee, vehicle registration fee, vehicle license recovery fee, and additional mandatory charges. The bill would make conforming changes to related provisions. (2) Existing law, until January 1, 2020, requires a rental car company or its registered agent to accept service of a summons and complaint and any other required documents against a renter who resides out of this country for an accident or collision resulting from the operation of the rental vehicle in this state, if the rental car company provides liability insurance coverage as part of, or associated with, the rental agreement. Existing law requires any plaintiff who elects to serve the foreign renter by delivering the summons and complaint and any other required documents to the rental car company pursuant to these provisions to agree to limit his or her recovery against the foreign renter and rental car company to the limits of the protection of the liability insurance. This bill would remove the repeal of these requirements on January 1, 2020, thus making these requirements apply indefinitely. (3) This bill would also make other technical, nonsubstantive changes by reorganizing several provisions and repealing obsolete provisions.