Europcar\Interrent Spain - How is charge for full tank of fuel calculated?

skat

Does anyone know how the cost of a full tank of fuel is calculated by Interrent\Europcar?

My credit card has been debited 143.31 Euros or £118.83 which I think is for the fuel as the car was returned without damage and on time. I have sent an email to Europcar customer service querying the amount but have yet to receive a response.

I was aware that the fuel policy was full to empty and i would need to pay for a full tank of fuel but everything else was prepaid and i did not agree to extra insurance. The car was collected from Menorca Airport (Mahon) and pre-booked through 121carhire\car trawler.


I naively assumed that the charge for fuel would be for the right amount for the size of car that we hired and at a reasonable rate. Since it was a small car (Fiat Panda with 37 litre tank), and we were going to be using fuel anyway, I was not too bothered by the fact that i had to pay for a full tank and expected the cost to be 50-60 Euros. I wasn’t happy but accepted that there would be no refund for the fuel left in the tank. I assumed that Europcar made their extra money from the fuel left in the car rather than charging too much for it.


In hindsight I should have asked what the charge for a full tank was going to be when they took my Credit Card at the airport for the 150 deposit. After all, I was expecting it. If its unreasonable then there might still have been the opportunity to revert to a full to full arrangement.

I would also be grateful if anyone has any contact details for customer service at Europcar\Interrent that i could try to find out what the charge was for. Is it worth contacting the car trawler \ 121 car hire as well?


Thanks

Obviously_the_best

Car hire companies always charge extortionate amounts for petrol, but that sounds a lot even by car hire company standards. To me that sounds more like a scratch repair or something. Best to ask them.

Dom3408

I have exactly the same problem. I used Travelsupermarket to find the best deal from Argus, which led me to Interrent/Europcar for a two week rental in Gran Canaria. I was charged 90.12 Euro for a full tank for a Kia Picanto with a 35 litre tank. Of course I didn't know this until 3 weeks after returning home to my credit card statement. Fuel is relatively cheap in the Canary Islands so the cost should only have been around 40 Euro. Nothing in the small print said this was a fixed price option.

I have complained and complained to both Europcar and Argus but they refuse to give me a refund. I hope they at least show some transparency in their charges from now on, as this would not have been the cheapest deal once the hidden cost had been added in. I have now also complained to Travelsupermarket.

I haven't posted on this forum before but I'm so angry about what is nothing less than a scam that I wanted to at least make sure other people are aware of this and avoid Argus/Interrent and Europcar. This has never happened to me with any other rental company in more than 10 years of hiring cars abroad. So it does not appear to be a widespread practice.

skat

I obtained an invoice from EuropCar and the breakdown is as follows:-

Basic Rental: 43.44
Full tank option: 75.00
Value Added Tax 21.00% 24.87
Total Charges: 143.31

This means including VAT the fuel charge was 90.75 Euro, the same as DOM3408.

Europcar charged for the rental as well as the full tank of fuel. Europcar responded quite quickly but were unable to issue a refund because the voucher did not show the "relevant contact identifications". Something that wasn't flagged when I picked up the car. They advised that I needed to sort this out via CarTrawler whose customer service was quite slow and the web form you need to use to update the issue does not work very well. Eventually they have agreed to refund of 56.26 Euros. A reasonable result in the end but a lesson learnt regarding the full tank "option".