Christmas is cancelled this year

At the weekend I moved house, along with driving to and from Reading for my brother's 29th birthday party. It was an exhausting weekend.

In order to save money, myself and my partner hired a van from a local hire company. We paid around £40 to hire the van Friday night to Saturday morning and got friends to help us carry the items in and out of the van.

When we returned the van, we were told there was a dent in the door and we had to pay £500 excess, plus our £250 deposit. I'm devestated. That's more than I paid for my car! It means that Christmas is effectively cancelled this year, and is about the price we were expecting to pay for a wood burner in our home (installed). I don't believe this to be a fair price for buffing out a scratch but it seems we don't have much choice but to pay the amount and hope that they return the money left over to us.

It's so upsetting how quickly money that you have spent a long time earning and saving can be taken away, and so disappointing when we are doing everything we can to save. I am tutoring for two hours a week after work in order to get £40 a week, and I'm tiling the bathroom myself to save £630 expense. It's ultimately dieheartening to put myself through this when such a large chunk of money can be taken away.

I don't remember how the van got scratched, and I didn't personally see it (my boyfriend returned the van) but I don't imagine it can cost the amount we paid to fix it. I really wish I knew how the dent had happened as I honestly don't remember when this could have happened. All I can hope is the company will be reasonable and fix the van in a reasonably priced way and return the money left over. What do you think the chances of that are?