Easyjet car hire booking - warning

sueizzie

If you are booking a flight through the Easyjet website and want to add on car hire through the website as well, be careful about car pick up and return times.

When I was booking a flight from London to Belfast recently, I tried to add on Europcar car hire. However be aware that the pick up and return times are generated automatically from the flight times and can't be amended.

My return flight time generated a car hire return time half an hour later than the pick up time on the outward date. This meant that I was charged unnecessarily for an extra day's hire (9 days instead of 8).

When I called Europcar, they said they couldn't do anything as the booking was done through the Easyjet website. Easyjet said they couldn't change the return time.

I got a separate quote from Europcar and booked direct through them - it was cheaper than the price quoted on the Easyjet website for 9 days but still more than the Easyjet price would have been for 8 days.

I have registered a complaint with Easyjet about this system which I feel is unfair, and asked them to allow customers to amend drop off times.

Be aware of this if your return flight is slightly later than your outward flight, and consider an earlier return flight or a separate car hire quote before making your booking.

richardw

Other flight+car hire websites do this aswell, worth keeping yours peeled for it before the final booking.

Treesa

EasyJet give you a link to the cheapest car hire - in our case, on our last flight, Goldcar - and no doubt most people on the flight used the link, because Goldcar had the biggest queues.

On a recent flight to Mallorca, we found ourselves in a long queue for Goldcar. At midnight, two of the three Goldcar employees stalked off home, with petulant looks on their faces, slamming the door behind them - leaving travellers in their queues to join the queue for the remaining employee. We waited nearly three hours for our car. The only funny aspect of the situation was the reaction of some Germans behind us in the queue, who told the departing employees that they lacked the German work ethic and no wonder their country was in such a mess. However, there were families with young children queuing - the female employee who shut up shop at midnight was about to see a young man who had two babies to look after. Realising that he had lost his place in the queue, he decided to forget about the money he had paid to Goldcar and get a car from another company. Shameful.
Next time, we won't follow the link and will pay a bit more to save a frustrating start to the holiday.