IdeaMerge serves as a booking agency representing several reputable vehicle rental companies, generally called (in relation to IdeaMerge) "rental partners," "vendors" or "suppliers". In the parlance of the travel industry, IdeaMerge is therefore referred to as a "broker", a "consolidator", or a "tour operator" (even though we don't operate tours). In case of a dispute between an IdeaMerge client and an IdeaMerge vendor, IdeaMerge may act as a mediator — thus giving leverage to our clients. Occasionally IdeaMerge will even act unilaterally in such case to satisfy a client.

The vendor alone is responsible for the condition and operability of their rental vehicles/units. IdeaMerge is responsible, in contrast, for representing reputable vendors and for doing so accurately and with reasonable precision, thoroughness and diligence. To optimally benefit our clients, IdeaMerge renders such representation in a straightforward, complementary fashion carefully involving certain emphases and redundancies, this, especially, rather than just repeating verbatim the vendor's terms and conditions. IdeaMerge clients wishing to research an IdeaMerge vendor's verbatim terms and conditions should begin that research by visiting the vendor's website. IdeaMerge publishes the company names or brands of our vendors upfront, largely to facilitate such research. However, IdeaMerge typically does not publish on our website the website addresses of our vendors.

When you pick up your rental vehicle, you will be asked by the vendor to sign the vendor’s rental contract and agree to their terms and conditions. As such, your rental contract per se is with the vendor, not with IdeaMerge, and is subject to the vendor’s terms and conditions. That rental contract and those terms and conditions and any other information or documentation presented to you on the pick-up occasion by the vendor govern your rental and supersede any information or documentation presented by IdeaMerge. In accordance with vehicle-rental industry standard, the vendor’s terms and conditions are subject to change without notice, as are their depot addresses. However, such changes are rare and the vendor is obligated to inform IdeaMerge in advance about such changes. Moreover, IdeaMerge in turn and in timely fashion endeavours to inform our affected clients about such changes.

Again, as noted above with respect to the security deposit, the vendor requires that a valid credit card — with available credit sufficient to cover the value of the security deposit — be presented upon the pick-up occasion by a member of the rental party, which member must indeed be present there on that occasion and must sign said rental contract. (That credit card can indeed be different than the card that was used to pay IdeaMerge for the rental.) Otherwise the vendor will refuse to allow the rental and, moreover, will consider the rental booking to be thereby cancelled (i.e. by the customer), making the customer responsible for the applicable cancellation fee — whether such cancellation occurs upon the pick-up occasion or at an earlier time (e.g. if after booking a rental a customer alerts IdeaMerge or the vendor that such credit card cannot or will not be presented by the customer to the vendor upon the pick-up occasion). Debit cards, cash or travelers checks are not accepted in this respect. See the above explanation of the security deposit to learn whether charge cards such as American Express are accepted for this purpose; or ask IdeaMerge. Regardless, more than one card cannot be used for this purpose.

Why do IdeaMerge vendors require such a valid credit card upon the pick-up occasion? It's essentially an industry standard. Automobile rental companies must take extra precaution when renting to a person who cannot present to them a valid credit card, because a person without a credit card is generally considered a greater credit risk than is a person with a credit card. Remember, the automobile rental company is entrusting to the customer a piece of property worth tens of thousands of dollars (US or otherwise). One car rental executive used the following analogy recently to describe the situation: "Let's say you're going to your cousin's wedding, and you need to rent a tuxedo. You can go out and rent one tomorrow, no questions asked. You can go to the wedding and destroy the rental, and you're going to be responsible for a couple hundred dollars. When you rent a car, the net worth is around $30,000. It's really just a numbers game and we need to have some way of being sure that the risk is not higher than it needs to be when we rent you a car." Increasingly, some car rental locations (in contrast to car rental companies in general) do accept debit cards for this security purpose, but in those cases they typically must therefore perform a check of the customer's credit history. Motorhomes are on average far more expensive than cars, so it remains almost generally true that motorhome rental companies and their various rental locations (i.e. depots) do not accept debit cards, cash or travelers check or the like for the purpose of a security deposit.

Somewhat in contrast to the vendor's terms and conditions, the rental rates and various mandatory and optional prices are, like the cancellation policy, officially agreed to by you and IdeaMerge when you ask IdeaMerge to make a booking for you; in this sense they are not subject to change. If applicable, however, certain fees and taxes imposed by governments and charged by the vendor upon the pick-up or return occasion (rather than upfront by IdeaMerge) are of course subject to change. Moreover, as noted above, depot locations are subject to change (within reason, e.g. within the same metropolitan area). Neither the vendor nor IdeaMerge is responsible for any consequently new or higher ancillary costs to the customer.

In an effort to best represent our vendors, so as to optimally benefit to our clients, IdeaMerge presents insurance information on its website. However, no insurance is provided by IdeaMerge. Rather, all the insurance and any associated loss damage waivers or reducers (or the like) connected with a rental booked via IdeaMerge are provided by the vendor's insurance company or directly by the vendor. Therefore all issues related to insurance are decided by the vendor's insurance company or by the vendor. Accordingly, all IdeaMerge clients agree to hold IdeaMerge harmless for any damages or losses suffered by the client, or anyone in their rental party, that relate to insurance in any way. This includes property damage and personal injury damage, among other sorts of damage or loss.

In accordance with vehicle-rental industry standard, IdeaMerge vendors reserve the right on any occasion (especially including the pick-up occasion) to refuse to deliver a vehicle or other product or service, whether these are already booked or not, to any customer whom they professionally consider unfit to operate the vendor's vehicle/unit or other product or whom they otherwise professionally consider as presenting too great a risk (in terms of safety, security, credit, or any other sort of risk) to the company, the company personnel, representatives of the company, or the general public, regardless of whether the customer presents such risk directly or by way of a travel partner. Such denial of vehicle, product or service terminates any existing contract the customer has in connection with that vehicle, product or service; henceforth the companies directly involved with the customer will have no liability in relation to that contract or contracts, and therefore no refund will be due to the customer.

On the other hand, a client who refuses to accept a vendor's rental vehicle upon the pick-up occasion may be classified by the vendor a pick-up day cancellation and thus would be ineligible for any refund. Of course before effecting such a cancellation the vendor would likely instead attempt to satisfy such client by modifying the state of the vehicle/unit or by switching the client to another vehicle. Such difficult situations truly are rare, yet it is prudent to hereby consider them here as being a general possibility.

In signing a rental contract with an IdeaMerge vendor, the IdeaMerge client agrees to accept the rental vehicle directly provided to him or her on that occasion by the vendor. Therefore all IdeaMerge clients agree to hold IdeaMerge harmless for any damages or losses suffered by the client, or anyone in their rental party, that relate in any way to the condition or operability of the rental vehicle/unit provided by the IdeaMerge vendor.

Regarding any force majeure — e.g. an "act of God" (including but not limited to fire, flood, volcano, earthquake, storm, hurricane or other natural disaster), a labor strike (for instance, an airline workers strike) or other general labor interruption, and civil strife (including but not limited to terrorist activities, hostilities, war, embargo, blockade, travel restrictions or warnings imposed or issued by governments), or interruption or other failure of electricity or fuel supply or other civil infrastructure, or an industrial accident — which force majeure affects the client's or the vendor's ability to actuate the rental or merely affects their interest in doing so, both the vendor and IdeaMerge will reasonably and earnestly attempt to accommodate the client’s consequent schedule changes; yet no refunds for cancellations or merely for unused booked rental days (or nights) will be given and no waiver of any fees will be allowed; all applicable fees will be assessed. Especially, it is not reasonable for a client to expect the vendor or IdeaMerge to assume that a client whose actual pick-up is delayed (i.e. relative and in contrast to the booked pick-up date) by a force majeure (or other cause) can afford to shift futureward the return date, nor is it reasonable for the client to expect that such shift can be accommodated by the vendor. Rather, the default assumption made by the vendor and IdeaMerge in such cases is that the return date remains the booked return date until the client asks IdeaMerge or the vendor to change the booked return date and until that change is indeed confirmed to the client as being booked. Regardless, in such case the client will be charged for every vehicle rental day (or night) that the vendor has committed to the client (in terms of the most recently confirmed booking). A force majeure has no bearing on that commitment.

IdeaMerge is not responsible for any financial loss (or gain) the client experiences due to IdeaMerge's non-erroneous use of a relevant foreign currency exchange daily average rate published by a respected financial institution (e.g. www.oanda.com), provided such rate is the "credit card" rate (standardly considered the best retail rate for an individual customer, and being precisely 1.02 times the interbank rate, the interbank rate being the wholesale rate). Nor in connection with IdeaMerge's non-erroneous use of such foreign currency exchange rate is IdeaMerge responsible for any financial loss (or gain) a client experiences due to variations in a foreign currency exchange rate. Nor in connection with IdeaMerge's non-erroneous use of such foreign currency exchange rate is IdeaMerge responsible for any foreign currency loss a client experiences in terms of a foreign currency transaction fee or fees charged to the client by the client's credit card or charge card company or bank.

Unless otherwise specified by IdeaMerge or by the relevant IdeaMerge vendor, the costs associated with the following damages to the rental vehicle — including towing, recovery, and salvage costs, as well as demurrage costs (i.e. for the duration the vehicle is unavailable due to repairs after the rental) — or the costs associated with the following losses or with the following injuries to persons (whether occupants of the vehicle or not) are excepted or excluded from coverage by the insurance which is associated with the rental. In this following list the word "client" means not only every person who signs the vendor's rental contract but also, by association, that person's or those persons' travel partner(s) and guest(s) in the rental vehicle. Yet only persons whom the vendor lists on said rental contract and who sign and date it are authorized by the vendor to drive the rental vehicle.