Spend five minutes photographing the car and removing anything valuable. That single routine settles almost every dispute that could arise while you are away.
None of this is because operators are untrustworthy. It is because memory is unreliable, photographs are not, and a claim is far easier with evidence taken at the start.
What photographs should I take?
All four sides of the car, in reasonable light
The odometer and the fuel or charge level
Any existing damage, clearly, so it cannot later be attributed to your trip
The roof and alloys, which are where scuffs go unnoticed
The parking bay number or row, which saves fifteen minutes on your return
That last one sounds trivial until you land at midnight in a car park with four thousand spaces.
What should I take out of the car?
Anything valuable, and anything that reveals where you live. The second matters more than people realise.
A vehicle registration document, a parking permit or a piece of post in the glovebox tells anyone who finds it that your house is empty and where it is. Take documents with you or leave them at home.
The risk is rarely the car itself. It is what the contents tell somebody about an empty house for the next fortnight.
Does it matter if I hand over my keys?
Yes — it changes who is responsible. If you park it yourself and keep the keys, the operator is selling you a space and their liability is limited to their own negligence.
If you hand the keys over, they have taken the vehicle into their care, and damage occurring in their possession is normally their responsibility. Photograph the odometer in that case, since some mileage is unavoidable but dozens of miles is not.
Where possible, hand over only the car key rather than a full keyring with house keys attached.
What about fuel and battery?
Leave enough to get home, and do not rely on charging while you are away. An electric car left for a fortnight loses a little through standby drain, but the figure is usually modest.
The question that matters is whether you will have the range for the journey home when you land, not whether the car charged in your absence.
Anything else practical?
Leave a scraper in the car rather than the garage, if travelling in winter
Check the handbrake is fully on, particularly on a sloped surface
Close the windows and sunroof completely
Note the operator phone number in your phone, not just the email
Screenshot the booking, in case signal is poor at the barrier
What if something is wrong when I get back?
Do not drive away first. Once the car leaves the site, establishing where damage happened becomes considerably harder.
Report it to staff on site, get it logged, take a reference, and photograph the damage where the car is standing. Then put it in writing within whatever window the terms specify — usually short, so do it the same day.
The photographs you took before you left become the useful thing you did.
