Rental agreement signing script

01. Permission to record

Nothing else happens until you have an audible yes.

Before we start, I need to tell you that I am recording this conversation. I am recording it so that there is a clear record of everything I explain to you today, and so you can ask us to play it back if you are ever unsure about something we agreed.

The recording is kept with your file. It is not shared with anyone outside MadRent unless the law requires it.

02. Who you are

Check the physical ID and licence against the cover page. Confirm the licence expiry date has not passed.

Read the details back rather than asking "is this right?" — people say yes to that without listening.

Let me read back what we have on file, and please stop me if anything is wrong. Your full name is [FULL NAME MISSING], your ID number is [ID NUMBER MISSING], your mobile number is [MOBILE MISSING], and your email address is [EMAIL MISSING].

The address where we will send you anything formal is [RESIDENTIAL ADDRESS MISSING].

You are confirming that everything you have told us is true and correct. If you move house, or you change jobs, you must tell us in writing within ten days. If we cannot reach you at the address on this agreement, that is treated as us having reached you.

Your driver’s licence expires on [LICENCE EXPIRY MISSING]. You must hold a valid licence for the whole rental.

03. What this agreement actually is

The single most misunderstood part of the agreement. Slow down here.

If the client says "me", or "I do after I finish paying", stop. Explain it again and ask again. Do not move on until they say it correctly on the recording. This one answer is what protects you if they later claim they thought they were buying the car.

I want to be very clear about what you are signing, because people often think this is something it is not.

This is a rental. It is not a sale, and it is not a finance or credit agreement.

You are renting this vehicle from MadRent for [TERM MISSING] months. The vehicle belongs to Westland Motors for the whole time, and it still belongs to us at the end.

Even if the vehicle is registered with your name on the licence papers as the registered owner, that does not make it yours. Registration and ownership are two different things in South Africa. You are getting the right to use and drive the vehicle. You are not buying it, and you are not building up towards owning it.

At the end of [TERM MISSING] months, the vehicle comes back to us. There is no payment at the end that makes it yours, and nothing you have paid gets converted into ownership.

04. What you pay

Read every figure off the cover page of this specific deal. Every amount below includes VAT.

Your rental is [MONTHLY RENTAL MISSING] per month, including VAT, for [TERM MISSING] months, starting [START DATE MISSING].

That amount goes up by [ESCALATION MISSING] once a year, every year, on the anniversary of the agreement. So it will not stay at [MONTHLY RENTAL MISSING] for the whole period — it steps up each year.

Before you drive away there is a start-up fee of [STARTUP FEE MISSING], an initiation fee of [INITIATION FEE MISSING], a credit bureau report fee of [BUREAU FEE MISSING], and the tracking unit and installation at [TRACKER FEE MISSING]. The tracking unit then costs [TRACKER MONTHLY MISSING] a month.

If you end this agreement early, for any reason, you do not get the start-up fee back.

Petrol is not included. Everything you spend on fuel is yours.

If we ever have to pay something on your behalf — a traffic fine, an e-toll, a legal cost — you pay us back, and we add an admin fee of one hundred and fifty rand each time. If you want to add another driver later, that is forty nine rand a month for each extra driver.

05. The debit order

Read the bank, the account and the debit day off the mandate, not from memory.

Your rental is collected by debit order from [BANK MISSING], account [ACCOUNT NUMBER MISSING], on the [DEBIT DAY MISSING] of each month. The first one goes off on [FIRST DEBIT DATE MISSING]. It will show on your statement as [DEBIT REFERENCE MISSING].

There are two things about the debit order I have to be very clear about.

First — if a debit order comes back unpaid, we charge five hundred rand for each one. That is on top of the rental you still owe.

Second, and this one is serious — if you go to your bank and stop the debit order by telling them we have no authority to debit your account, this agreement terminates immediately and everything you owe for the rest of the term becomes due straight away. Not the next month. That same day.

If you ever have a problem and you cannot pay, phone us before the debit order date. Do not stop it at the bank. We can work with you if you talk to us; we cannot help you after you have reversed it.

You can cancel the debit order mandate by giving us twenty working days notice in writing. But cancelling the debit order does not cancel this agreement — you would still owe the money, you would just have no way of paying it automatically.

06. Kilometres

READ THE ALLOWANCE OFF THIS DEAL’S COVER PAGE, NOT FROM MEMORY AND NOT FROM THE PRINTED TERMS. Clause 11.17 sets a default of 2 200 km a month with a R0.70 band up to 3 000 km, but the cover page of most deals stipulates a different figure, and THE COVER PAGE WINS. Confirm the allowance and the excess rate on the schedule before you read this section.

Do not read the 2 200 km default aloud. Read what is on the schedule.

The live-contract feed’s excess-kilometre and current-month-kilometre columns are known unreliable. Never quote them to a client.

You have [KM ALLOWANCE MISSING] kilometres a month included in your rental.

If you drive more than that, you pay for the extra kilometres at [EXCESS RATE MISSING] per kilometre, and we bill it afterwards, not upfront.

We let that excess build up to two thousand rand. Once it reaches two thousand rand, we collect it by debit order automatically — that will be a separate amount off your account, on top of your normal rental. So if you are doing a lot of extra kilometres, expect a second debit.

The good news is that unused kilometres roll over. If you only drive half your allowance one month, the rest carries forward and you can use it later in the contract. So it is your total over the whole period that matters, not any single month.

Do not touch the odometer. Tampering with it is treated as fraud.

07. Insurance and what an accident costs you

Say the rand figures slowly. This is the section clients remember wrongly.

Comprehensive insurance is included in your monthly rental — you do not arrange it separately and you do not pay it separately.

But insurance always has an excess, and that part is yours. On a first claim the excess is five thousand rand, or five percent of the claim, whichever is higher. So on a bigger accident it is not five thousand rand, it is five percent — and five percent of a three hundred thousand rand claim is fifteen thousand rand.

If it is a front-end accident, the first claim excess goes above five percent and is capped at twenty thousand rand.

On a second claim, and every claim after that, the excess is eight percent or thirty thousand rand, whichever is higher.

If the driver is under twenty five, or has had a licence for less than five years, the excess is higher again.

Two more things. We will not give you another vehicle until the excess is paid in full — so if you have an accident and you cannot pay the excess, you are without a car. And if you have more than one claim in the contract period, we are entitled to end the agreement.

08. If you have an accident

Point at the accidents email address on the page as you say it. Most clients miss the 24 and 48 hour deadlines because nobody told them out loud.

If you are ever in an accident, there are four things you must do, and there are time limits on them.

One — call the police, open a case and get a case number. Two — tell us within twenty four hours. Three — within forty eight hours, send us the completed claim form and a copy of your driver’s licence. Four — send photographs of all the damage to accidents at madrent dot co dot za.

At the scene, do not admit that the accident was your fault, and do not agree to settle anything with the other driver. Even if you think it was your fault. That is for the insurer to decide, and admitting it can cost you the claim.

If the car needs to be towed, it must be towed by our towing company. If you let anyone else tow it, you pay for that towing yourself.

And do not have the car repaired anywhere without our written permission first.

09. Servicing

Read the next service figure off the schedule.

You must have the vehicle serviced at the manufacturer’s intervals, or once a year, whichever comes first. Your next service is due at [NEXT SERVICE KM MISSING] kilometres.

We pay for the normal service. We also pay for repairs and replacement of mechanical and electrical parts, including the battery and the tyres, from normal use.

We do not pay when damage comes from an accident, or from careless or improper use, or from breaking the rules in this agreement. And we do not pay for topping up oil between services — check your oil.

The service has to happen at a centre we nominate, not wherever you choose. Phone us and we will tell you where to take it.

If you do not service it on time, that is a breach of this agreement on its own.

10. The tracker and the immobiliser

Do not soften this section. It is the one clients dispute later.

This vehicle has a tracking unit and an immobiliser fitted.

The tracker records where the vehicle is. That information belongs to us and we can use it as evidence in court if we ever need to.

If you tamper with the tracker or take it out, that is treated as theft of the vehicle and we will lay criminal charges.

The same applies if you take the vehicle across the border into another country without our written permission first. Not a phone call — written permission.

The immobiliser is linked to your payments. While you are paying, we keep it deactivated and the car starts normally. If you stop paying, we are not obliged to keep it deactivated, and the vehicle may not start.

By signing this you are agreeing that you will not have a claim against us if that happens.

11. Rules about using the vehicle

If the answer to the e-hailing question is anything other than a clear no, stop the signing and escalate.

Only the drivers named on this agreement may drive this vehicle. Nobody else. Not a family member, not a friend, not for five minutes.

You may not use this vehicle to carry people or goods for money. That means no e-hailing — no Uber, no Bolt, no InDrive — and no deliveries for reward. This vehicle is rented for private use.

You may not use it in a race or a speed test, and you may not drive it on roads that are not properly built.

You may not lend it out, sublet it, or hand it over to anyone else.

The vehicle must be locked and the alarm on whenever it is not in use, and you must keep the keys safe. And nobody drives it under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

The vehicle can be called in for a physical inspection whenever we ask.

12. The vehicle and giving it back

Walk around the vehicle with the client NOW, before they sign. Photograph every panel. Every scratch not recorded today becomes theirs.

From the moment you take this vehicle, it is at your risk until the day we record it back in. That includes theft and fire, whatever the cause.

We are going to inspect it together right now. Anything we do not write down today is treated as the vehicle having been perfect when you got it — which means any mark we find later is on your account. So please look properly and point out anything you see.

When the agreement ends, you bring the vehicle back to us, at your cost, to the office we tell you. Park it in our bay, lock it, hand the keys to one of our people, and get a receipt. Without a receipt it is not returned.

If you do not bring it back when the agreement ends, you are holding it illegally. That is a criminal matter, and we are entitled to take the vehicle back wherever we find it and from whoever has it.

If you break any part of this agreement, we can end it and ask for the vehicle immediately, and everything you owe becomes payable at once.

One last thing on damage — undercarriage damage is not covered by the insurance policy. If you damage the underneath of the car, that is your account.

13. Your information

Do not skip this. It is the consent that makes the credit checks lawful.

Pages twelve to seventeen of this agreement are our privacy notice. It explains what personal information we collect, what we do with it, how long we keep it and what rights you have.

Three things in it I want to say out loud.

We run credit and information checks on you, now and during the agreement. You are consenting to that.

If the vehicle goes through an e-toll, we give SANRAL your details so they can recover it.

And the vehicle carries a tracker, so we hold location information about where the vehicle goes.

You can ask us at any time what we hold about you, and you can ask us to correct it. Our information officer is Mark Cohen, and his email is mark at madrent dot co dot za.

14. Questions and confirming

Wait. Let the silence sit — do not fill it. Answer whatever they ask on the recording. If you do not know the answer, say you will find out and come back to them; never guess on a recorded call.

After the signatures, still recording: say the date and time out loud, say "the client has now signed the agreement and the debit order mandate", name the witness, then stop the recording.

In Verbatim, name the recording "<deal> — Surname — signing" and push it to the deal in Mad1 so it files alongside the contract.

That is everything material in the agreement. Before you sign, what questions do you have for me?

Two last things. Anything anyone has promised you that is not written in this agreement does not count — only what is in this document is binding on us. And any change to this agreement later only counts if we agree to it in writing.