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Broken rented equipment - loss of income?


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Have two general question regarding broken rented equipment.

 

1. If I rent a camera from a rental house and I have an accident and break it, is it normal for the rental house have me pay not only for the repair/replacement but also for the loss of income during the time it takes until he can repair/replace it?

 

2. If I rent a camera from the rental house and it has a technical failure not caused by me and not possible to fix/replace during the day of the shoot, could I claim loss of income from the rental house then for production expenses, not being paid by client, etc?

 

Let me know what you think in these two cases and what your experiences are.

Edited by Oscar Petersson
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If a repair puts gear out of action for a while the rental house could validly claim loss of income, although it's usually an insurance company that has to foot the bill, not individuals. Always check the liability clauses when renting gear, it should automatically require insurance, either your own or provided by the rental house.

 

Regarding your own claim to loss of income, if you could prove some sort of negligence on the part of the rental house you might be able to claim something but I suspect the legal hurdles and costs wouldn't make it worthwhile. Normally when gear breaks down (as it sometimes does) the rental house would do what they can to replace or repair it but they're not liable for lost production time. Checking that gear is functioning is really part of the responsibility of the crew during pick-up/gear check. If a rental house doesn't have a service department maintaining the gear then that should be factored into lower rental rates and the production company should be prepared for an increased chance of possible issues with gear reliability.

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  • 4 weeks later...

When I rent out gear I require that the items being rented are listed with serial numbers and replacement values on the cert. My company has had 2 claims, the first we didn't do this and the claims process was a total time drain for everyone. On the second one we did have the list and it was a simple process. We also include terms for loss of income but really this is so that the insurance company doesn't sit on their hands while we're out a lens.

As for problems with the gear on the day of the shoot you are ultimately responsible for testing out the gear. However, this is part of the importance of building a relationship with a rental house. If one of my customers had a problem like that I would bend over backwards to correct it.

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I've filed a few claims recently and I've paid for the fixes in advance and received reimbursement checks nearly immediately. I've had nothing but good experiences with the whole process and my cameras are fit as a fiddle.

 

I think you can squeeze in a few other additions to the insurance claim, but it takes longer to process. An actual invoice from a service company with an exact number, that's easy to process.

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