Car rental rip offs

Wow, that's a tough one, I'll have to cogitate....

Seriously though, you can probably get most of your money back for the price of a phone call or two, if you're polite and persistent. They are seeing what they can get away with. Tell 'em that 25 Euros would be fair, given the time and effort they have to put into topping it off.

Another "scam" with petrol and rentals is that they supply the car with a full tank of petrol that they charge for and then give no refund for any unused petrol.

A bit tuff if you are only going to drive the vehicle for a few miles

Derek

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Hiring any car from Inverness airport (which I do quite a lot). They charge about double UK rates 'cos your not going anywhere fast without one of their cars.

I had a car from Inverness airport only 3 weeks ago - Europcar-UK. They expect a full tank on return and charge £1.13/litre if they have to fill it up. Most worrying is the £500 excess payable if any damage is collected - and that includes the smallest slightest scratch. The car had loads of scratches identified on the paperwork which any ordinary person wouldn't notice - so they must have paid for the car collecting payments for this alone! I was very worried that there was a scratch somewhere that I hadn't spotted, but when I took the car back, the guy told me that it was now 6 months old and I was the last user before it went off to auction - so he didn't even bother checking it! Phew!
Fair play to them - the final amount I paid was exactly what I had been quoted - and that included an addtional driver for free and a child seat.

I was given a brand new car but hardly what I'd asked for. One of the child seats was not fixed at all when it should have been. One of the plastic bits that pretends a steel wheel is an alloy fell off after 15mins on the motorway. They are now trying to force me to pay for it (or rather, about twenty of them). I think the excess was a staggering 850 Euros or 1100 if someone nicked it - nicked a Daewoo Lacetti!! I could cancel the excess for in excess of 10 pounds a day but didn't. No doubt they'll now find a few tiny scratches somewhere.

I'm not thrilled by car hire!

PS Rasher - did you want an additional driver sitting there, I'd have been put off, free or not.

Alex - I suspect that part of your problem was due to the nationalities involved.

My experience with car hire has so far been positive

My rental car was broken into last May and after waiting for the local policeman to arrive, take a statement, issue a crime number, we then drove to the local airport and turned the car in with only about a quarter a tank of petrol. The check in guy was most sympathetic, marked our ticket as if we had more than half a tank of petrol (so we would pay the same if we had bought the fuel before arriving) Within 20 minutes we had another car - same model spec and with a 1000 miles less on the mileometer. No fee no aggro

But that was in the nation that is most denigrated by a significant number of people on this forum

Derek

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A hire company starting with an N charges £1.29/ litre for top up fuel.

I don't mind the £1.29 that much but they're claiming 60 litres - I didn't think it would hold that if I drained all the fuel just before giving it back.

Derek, I agree that car hire is great and cheap in the USA (unless you mean you were in Israel). I did turn up speaking French but by then the damage was doubtless done.

Tom, why not start a friendly little car hire firm in Inverness in between ramblings?

Apparently they are not allowed to fit car child seats. It has to be your own responsibility.

Give me USA car hire any day. Much easier - but hidden costs.

Right! And you need a degree in Ikeaspeak to fit the damn things.

quote:

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they are either: buying supremely expensive petrol, paying someone premier division wages to fill the tank, or completely ripping off their customers. Does anyone know which it is?

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It's C, a rip-off, but probably described as ' profit margin'.

The company I work for presently has accounts with a both a local hire company and a national Enterprise. We probably average 15-20 hires a week. Despite, or perhaps as a result, we have an internal (informal) code as to how to deal with both the delivery and return (at the office) which essentially involves being bloody stroppy about the condition of the car and the level of the fuel gauge. Despite the high level of repeat business, we get charged something like 15p a litre excess on fuel.

There was a period last year working on a remote job where I had hire cars three days a week for about five months. The range of faults I saw in that time was truly unforgiveable, including (but not limited too) missing spare tyres, insufficient oil or coolant, faulty lights, and on two occasions, defective brakes - I'm talking front-pads-worn-to-the-metal. On the first instance occasion recovery was required, new discs fitted and a second car brought to me. The only recompense after that last effort was that I had a brand new V6 Alfa to play with, free, the following week.

Shocking, really. When required, I now drive my own car....

I can assure you the guys delivering "our" cars are getting minimum wage. My boss informs me the company will be giving us a pay rise to £4.85 in October (minimum wage goes up to £4.85 in October)
All our cars do a maximum of 13k miles, so even our customers have trouble wearing any major components out. Mind you the shit state some of them are returned in make you wonder how some people have been brought up. Quite often the posher the car the worse it is, probably been out hunting and shooting shouldn't wonder.
Did have a chance to drive an Audi RS6 once so its not all bad news.

Alex

Sounds like you were a victim of the famously disasterous "Rocade" - a ring-road so slow it makes the M25 seem like a race-track.

Small comfort I imagine, but it is actually near impossible to buy petrol on the way into Bordeaux airport unless you have allowed hours to spare. Which no-one ever has.

I imagine being a car hire company in Bordeaux is almost as lucrative as the place in Alice Springs I once found. (There are only a few reasons to visit Alice Springs, and they're all five hour's drive away. The car renters are perfectly aware of this.)

Good luck arguing with the French, I hope you win.

Thanks Rod,

It took 1hr 45mins to get from the wrong side of the Pont D'Aquitaine to Merignac. This in pouring rain with 3 small girls. As things were we made the plane by about 2 mins. A slightly fraught end to a very nice holiday. I'm not a good complainer so I won't waste much if any energy.

Alex

Alex

If your rental was with an international company - you may achieve rapid success by talking to the UK office of the company. In the past Hertz UK has resolved the odd issue that I had had in the US

If you cannot get resolution then a letter to the travel whinge line in the Telegraph or other such paper explaining your problem and asking for help may help get it sorted for you.

Nothing like few tales of outrageous chauvinistic frog behavour to entertain the great british public

Derek

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