What happens when a guest damages your car on Turo: the claim process, step by step

Every car that goes on Turo will eventually come back with something: a curb-rashed wheel, a door ding, a cracked bumper, occasionally worse. What decides whether you get paid for it is not the damage. It is the photos you took before the trip, how quickly you reported it, and whether someone followed the claim through. Here is the process as it works for us, across dozens of claims a year.

Before any trip: the evidence

Turo's host protection plans pay out for damage that happened during a trip. To prove it happened during the trip, you need to show what the car looked like before and after. That means:

• Check-in photos, taken in the Turo app at hand-off: all four sides, each corner, each wheel, windshield, interior, odometer and fuel gauge. In daylight or good lighting. Twenty-plus photos is normal.
• Check-out photos, same set, when the car comes back.
• Timestamps that line up with the trip. The app does this for you if you use its check-in flow. Photos from your camera roll two days later are much weaker.

The most common reason we see claims denied is simple: no clear pre-trip photo of the panel in question. A damaged bumper with no "before" picture is, as far as Turo can tell, a bumper that might have been damaged last month. We photograph every trip, every time, and store the sets. If you host yourself, do the same, even on the twentieth trip for a regular guest.

Step 1: find it and report it fast

Damage is usually found at check-out. Sometimes a guest reports it mid-trip, which is actually the best case.

Turo requires hosts to report damage within 24 hours of the end of the trip, through the resolutions page in your account. Miss the window and the claim is much harder. Reporting means uploading the check-out photos that show the damage, the matching check-in photos that show the panel undamaged, and a short description.

If the guest is still there, get their acknowledgement in the Turo message thread. A guest who says "yeah, I clipped a post" in writing makes the whole process faster.

Step 2: get an estimate

Turo will ask for a repair estimate from a shop. In Halifax we use a body shop that knows the process and turns estimates around quickly; in Toronto we have the same arrangement. The estimate needs to be itemized, on the shop's letterhead, and match the photos. An estimate that includes unrelated work, or that is obviously high, gets the whole claim questioned.

Step 3: the inspection

For anything beyond a small scuff, Turo sends an independent inspector to look at the car and write a report. In our experience they are thorough and fair. The inspector compares the damage against the check-in photos and the estimate. You need the car available for this, which is one reason to keep a damaged car off the road until the inspection is done.

Step 4: Turo's decision

Turo reviews the report, the photos and the estimate and decides what is covered. Typical outcomes:

• Approved. Turo pays the repair cost, minus the deductible on your protection plan, up to the plan's limit.
• Partially approved. Some items are covered, others are judged to be pre-existing, wear and tear, or not proven. Common examples: tire wear, small stone chips, a scratch that appears faintly in a check-in photo.
• Denied. Usually because the before photos don't prove the car was undamaged, the report was late, or the damage is mechanical rather than collision-related.

Where Turo offers a supplement process, you can submit additional damage found during repair within a set period after the initial claim. We do this when a shop finds hidden damage behind a bumper.

Step 5: getting paid

Turo pays approved claims to the host through its payout provider. The link to collect the payment is time-limited, so it has to be actioned when it arrives. If the host is a management company, as with Drifty, the payout flows into your monthly statement with the repair cost against it, so you see both sides.

The deductible on the host's protection plan is subtracted from the payout. In Canada, Turo's plans range from a $0 deductible to a $2,000 one, with the host's share of the trip price moving the other way; the plan is a business choice about how much risk to carry. See Turo and your personal insurance for how the plans fit with your own policy.

While the car is being fixed

A visibly damaged car can't take trips, and Turo may pause a listing until it's repaired and photographed. The money you lose while it's off the road is not covered by the claim. This is why speed matters at every step: report the same day, estimate within days, repair booked as soon as the inspection is done.

If a guest's negligence caused damage, the claim covers the car. If one of our own drivers damages your car through negligence, Drifty pays for the repair. That's in our agreement, not in Turo's plan.

The short version

1. Photograph every trip, in the app, both ends. This is the whole game.
2. Report within 24 hours, with the before-and-after pair.
3. Get an itemized estimate from a shop that knows Turo claims.
4. Make the car available for the inspector.
5. Follow up until the payout link is actioned.
6. Expect wear-and-tear items to be excluded and don't argue them.

It is not complicated, but it is relentless, and it has to be done for every trip whether or not anything goes wrong. That is most of the reason owners hand the car to a manager. If you'd rather not do it yourself, talk to us.