By Elena Vardon
The car-rental business of French bank Societe Generale has been fined 5 million euros ($5.8 million) by the Italian Competition Authority for what the regulator describes as unfair commercial practice.
The AGCM, as the Italian authority is known, on Thursday published a Sept. 23 decision saying that ALD Automotive Italia handled customer charges for damages to the vehicle during the rental period in an unfair way as it gave incomplete and unclear information about an optional paid service designed to limit liability for damages.
ALD didn't make it clear to customers that they had to report incidents through a portal nor did it adequately inform them of the criteria used to assess damages outside normal wear and tear, preventing them from benefiting fully from the service they paid for, the AGCM added. The regulator's investigation also found that ALD charged customers for damages that weren't visible to the naked eye if they failed to report them.
The authority estimates that these practices have been in place since at least October 2019. In the last 18 months of the investigation alone, charges for unreported damages amounted to between 1 million and 1.5 million euros and impacted between 5,000 and 10,000 customers, it estimates.
Societe Generale combined ALD Automotive and LeasePlan, another vehicle-leasing business it bought in 2023, under the Ayvens brand which it rolled out last year.
Societe Generale didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Write to Elena Vardon at elena.vardon@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 09, 2025 03:31 ET (07:31 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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