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booked a car well in advance for lucca italy, mid to end of august. booked it well in advance, maybe a month or more, and went with the tripadvisor advice to go with one of the big boys rather than small local. we needed two cars for two families, booked them both through rentalcars.com
choice there was europcar, avis or hertz i think. we chose europcar.
once at our villa, we spent 40 euros on a taxi to get to europcar to pick them up. bloke behind the counter says we have a problem, no cars. waved the contract at him, shrug of the shoulders, what can i do we have no cars. if you wait 2 hours you can have one, but there is no second car. if you want one get a taxi to pisa airport and pick one up. er......shouldnt you fetch it for us? no, we only have one driver and hes busy.
had a quick chat with bro, we walked around lucca for a couple of hours, tried avis and hertz, they didnt have any available either, so we decided to make sure we enjoy the holiday first, take the hit with our visits and do just the one car with a combination of one car plus taxis and sort it out when we got home.
well, we spent close to a grand on the taxis in the end. contacted rentalcars when we got back, claimed for one missing car plus the insurance, and also compensation for the taxi fares. they said they needed receipts, so i contacted tautouring, the taxi firm (who were excellent by the way) and they sent me a breakdown of our journeys and costs.
sent that off to rentalcars via their online form (the only way of contacting them), they said that was no good, they need receipts. ok, contacted tautouring again, they were very helpful and said they can supply either receipts or a letter. asked rentalcars which they would prefer....... nothing. keep asking, no replies. been going on for at least a couple of weeks now with no reply to any of my requests for contact.
i rang their CS number, it says go to your online form and then it cut off. i tried pretending i had a current car with them, got through, they said we cant access your details, you need the claims dept, use the form. they wont answer it i said. ill give you their email address instead but they cant be contacted by phone, only email. thank you. wrote a lengthy email only to get an auto response saying this email address isnt monitored, use the online form. which they arent answering.....
how can i escalate this if they dont acknowledge my contact? any ideas?
thanks
Small claims court?
Nothing to add other than why did you book through a reseller rather than direct?
I very much doubt you will get anything much as what you are asking for is consequential losses - something very hard to get.
Always use one of the big boys, always book direct never use resellers is the lesson I guess
Is it worth trying your travel insurance to see if that covers it?
it might also be worth trying the legal cover on your household insurance for advice on how to proceed, what to claim and how likely it will be successful?
So you waited a couple of hours as requested but didn't go back to pick up a car. Nor did you take a taxi to the airport to get them as suggested by Europcar worker drone, which would have cost you money that would have been covered by rentalcars.com.
Instead you used taxis for your entire holiday and expect the car hire company to cover it? I personally think you're asking a bit much, but at this point I think you've got little option other than small claims court and hope for a sympathetic judge.
Give them some grief on Twitter, or try the Sunday Times money troubleshooter, she's pretty good at things like this.
Would a small claims court work for something that did not happen in the UK?
What did rentalcars say when you rang them initially at the hire place?
Thats brilliant that they agreed to you using taxis for the rest of the holiday!
But I’m guessing they didn’t and you just decided that yourselves ?
I would be telling you to jog on.
Yes you are due expenses until they got a 2nd hire car to you but it doesn’t sound like you contacted them ?
Sadx, you have awarded yourself damages. They will just keep fobbing you off till you get bored and give up.
As said above, they offered to help and you did your own thing. Lesson learnt...
So you waited a couple of hours as requested but didn’t go back to pick up a car. Nor did you take a taxi to the airport to get them as suggested by Europcar worker drone, which would have cost you money that would have been covered by rentalcars.com.
incorrect my good man. we went back 2 hrs later to pick up one of the two cars booked. and yes, as has been mentioned, we should maybe have called rentalcars instead of trying to sort it ourselves with no joy. but book a taxi to the airport ourselves? i spose we were just a bit incredulous at the cheek and thought they should be supplying the car themselves. trying to pick up a hire car from an airport can be a soul destroying experience, with reports of waiting hours on end, it just wasnt something we were prepared to do. its about an hour i think to the airport, plus the faff, we'd have lost a day.
yes, we're not really expecting any compensation, and we are expecting them to tell us to jog on, but theyre not actually telling us anything at all! at the very least we want the monies paid in hire and insurance, but we're really p1ssed off that a big company can act like this so we're thinking at least give it a bash. and also annoyed at rentalcars lack of response, which is why i was wondering how to get an answer from them rather than escalate this, which is what it seems it will come to.
thanks
Why didn’t you just use the rental car you now had to drive to Pisa airport and collect the other? In the long run, surely 2 hours was lost on booking taxis.
I think mattoutandabout posted about problems with rentalcars.com - he might advise, based on his experience with them?
Why didn’t you just use the rental car you now had to drive to Pisa airport and collect the other? In the long run, surely 2 hours was lost on booking taxis.
we didnt want to lose a day which would potentially have been the case. the taxi firm were excellent, we booked ahead and they were always on time, never had to wait for them.
thanks greybeard.
I had an issue when I booked through rentalcars.com using globalrentacar.com as actual hire co.
The issue was the globalrentacar dealer in Krakow deliberately charging for damage that was pre existing, making charge for a cross border trip that I had informed them of and trying to put multiple charges through my credit card. Ended up with credit card blocked by my bank as fraud.
Short summary = our bank accepted our bank evidence, made chargeback and now by have globalrentacar in Krakow down as automatic flag for fraud on credit cards... But it took a while.
Rentalcars.com showed no interest, have never replied to calls or emails and basically said 'we are an agent, any problems are between you and hire company, and no our contracts are not available for you to inspect and no we can't prove which contract you signed with us'.
I will never use a price comparison hire site again and never use a smaller hire provider. I will also take 50 photos of car at start and end, with staff there and in pic, I will also record on phone video answers to things such as charges, cross border and similar. A colleague did this in Germany last week and the Europecar rep lady commented more and more people are doing this.
thanks for sharing your experiences. yeah i spose i could do a chargeback on my card, obviously only for the money paid out, hadnt thought of that.
i wish more countries had small local companies like greece, never had any problems at all hiring from mainland or the islands. when i mention any scratches they just say 'dont worry' and smile, and thats always the case, they dont even inspect the car when it comes back.
thanks
thanks for sharing your experiences. yeah i spose i could do a chargeback on my card, obviously only for the money paid out, hadnt thought of that.
No hope at all for that, you paid money willingly and got services in exchange.
Travel insurance is your best bet at this stage unless you fancy your chances direct with europcar.
No hope at all for that, you paid money willingly and got services in exchange.
really? they didnt provide me with a car that i paid for, so what services did i get? i didnt actually get anything from them....
I would guess their argument was that at time X (which is probably within the allowable delay in the contract) a vehicle was available but you did not collect it.
if you did not contact the cs at rentalcars.com at the time of the issue how can they be expected to correct it?
Compensation for the taxi to get the car at the airport would be what I would expect you to get.
ok mate, i thought the least id get would be the price of the car that they said theyd provide, but i may be wrong.
ill let you know of any developments, positive or negative......
thanks
well i said id let you know of any developments, and i must say im quite shocked by the latest news.....
had an email from rentalcars today saying that europcar are refusing to pay back any money at all as a car was available and we didnt turn up at the office to collect it!
wow. struggling to believe theyd say that, its a blatant lie. so...... ive replied asking firstly if theres any cctv in their office and record of who was behind the desk that day. secondly would there be any history on their pc's showing that my booking was accessed at that time in the office. and thirdly asking whether they can tell us which car was available, so maybe it can be checked out.
not sure of my next move now, ill probs wait for a reply to those questions. would i be getting myself into questionable waters if i was to call them out on the tripadvisor forum? is there any legal action i can take to prove theyre lying?
must admit, i wasnt expecting this......
Have you tried the ECRCS( European Car Rental Conciliation Service)?
Might be worth a shout
well you learn something new every day! never heard of them but all seemed quite promising until.....
To use the ECRCS Conciliation Service You must be a customer of the company subscribing to the ECRCS. We cannot look at complaints regarding the service or charges made by another company with who you may have booked the rental with e.g. rental brokers.
another reason to regret going through rentalcars.com rather than direct. cant remember at the time why that was, itd have to have been cost as id usually prefer to deal direct than involve third parties.
thanks for the recommendation tho, its one to remember for the future even if its just to recommend to others who may be having problems.
I'm forced to use hire cars quite a bit, and no good advise to the situation you're in. Have you tried your holiday insurance? or contacting you credit card company as they took the money with out providing the service?
Over the last few years I've been ripped off by pretty much every hire car company out there! Bunch of robbing *****
So here's what i do now
- only book through one of the big names and not though an agent (unless it's in Japan and then I book local)
- make sure the excess is covered by my holiday insurance NOT the hire car company
- book through the local countries web site to make sure the insurance provided is valid in the country your hiring the car
- check the car for damage when you pick it up and take photos
- check the car when you drop it off and take photos
- never by any of the options, even booking snow tires has been a big fat waste of time. Apart form the fact that on my booking it says i have them!
But this is by no mean fool proof.
just updating this with some surprising news......
firstly europcar finally admitted theyd made a mistake. no apologies or anything just yes we made a mistake. rentalcars then repaid the car hire cost and the insurance taken out.
rentalcars, although quite tardy with their replies have kept in touch, every now and then i get an email saying we're still waiting for europcar to answer us but they never do. i thank them for their time, its all perfectly friendly, then i just suggested that maybe as in normal consumer law (i think), my contract was with rentalcars rather than europcar, so could they pay us and then claim back from europcar.
i expected the usual apologies and this is not possible at this time etc etc, but....... they then emailed to say as europcar are not answering any correspondence heres a refund of the taxi charges, we dont normally do this, but in this case due to you being messed about we have decided to refund all the money, have a happy christmas etc etc!! oh and heres a code for a discount if you use us again!
wow. its nice to be one of the happy endings, there maybe arent too many of them. now to start looking at next years hols and car hire 😀
Glad to see a happy resolution...and a great time of year to get it in! Shows how persistence pays off so well done for not giving up
Some very ill informed comments on this thread as it turns out. I was going to say that I’ve used rentalcars.com for over ten years with no problems. In fact they have solved a few issues over that time that I would have struggled to sort if dealing directly.