UAE Car Rentals and Traffic Tickets

[daviesn]

Rented a car in Dubai for a few days through Thrifty - and six weeks later discovered my credit card was charged for 8 speeding tickets!!! Now I may have had one, possibly 2 - but 8 made me investigate. It turned out that the 8 tickets were all issued within 30 minutes of each other, some just seconds apart which is impossible for one car!!

A. 12:58:54
B. 13:02:14
C. 13:02:34
D. 13:02:53
E. 13:07:53
F. 13:11:34
G. 13:15:46
H. 13:31:00

Turns out that traffic tickets are a big problem for UAE car rental companies as many renters don't pay. I am guessing that my credit card had sufficient limit / capacity to pay so I was nominated by the Rental company for 8!! They came through in two charges, so after hitting it lucky on my card with 4, they pushed another 4 through.

Complaining to Thrifty Dubai was no good. Complaining to the UAE police was no good as they had a nomination form from Thrifty. In the end, complaining through MasterCard had one of the charges reversed, but still had to wear the cost of 4 tickets.

Scam.....

 

[trooper]

Seems that the UAE's speed cameras are very sophisticated.....and can monitor average speed from one camera to the next as well...get there too quickly and apparently you'll get done.....(so the old slow-down-just-for-the -camera won't work) I,m not saying you haven't been ripped off.... but if you already thought you had "1, possibly 2.." maybe it really was more.....

 

[justinbrett]

I lived in the UAE last year for work (in Abu Dhabi but drove to Dubai frequently).

I don't think it's a scam. The speed cameras are everywhere - they aren't obvious (well, they are if you know what you're looking for - but they look nothing like ours. They are like bollards in the median strip). The 20 second gap seems a little dubious but a couple of minutes is no problem - perhaps the timer was out in one of the cameras.

Our work fleet of about 30 vehicles would run up about 100 fines (trips, not individual fines) per month.

As UAE residents we couldn't dare complain to the police - they arrest you for that kind of stuff.