EUROPCAR italy damage charges

londonTiger

I think car hire companies should be made to have their sales clerk read out their legal obligations in the same way loan providers do. So sales clerk will inform the hirer the it is their duty to inspect and spot any faults,. If not they need to sign a form with the clerk saying no faults found.

When I took a car out, the clerk looked like they had better things to do, just handed me the keys and said do you want to look around to look at the vehicle? I thought she was just being nice and didn't think much about it. Just said nah its alright and walking in

OddballJamie

londonTiger wrote: »

I think car hire companies should be made to have their sales clerk read out their legal obligations in the same way loan providers do. So sales clerk will inform the hirer the it is their duty to inspect and spot any faults,. If not they need to sign a form with the clerk saying no faults found.

When I took a car out, the clerk looked like they had better things to do, just handed me the keys and said do you want to look around to look at the vehicle? I thought she was just being nice and didn't think much about it. Just said nah its alright and walking in

I took a new AA policy out last week and the person transferred me to a recorded message with the terms on. I stuck between genius idea and lazy b*gger.

Back to car rental, when I was last in Florida they just pointed at the lot and said take your pick from that line, keys are in the car.

fartington

the email addresses on the attached invoice were invalid.

I managed to trawl the internet for an email of a manager and got a reply and they are looking in to it.

To be honest I am always terrified of using a hirecar for these reasons. I only drove the car to the airport and back and kept it in a garage, and walked everywhere and took the train and I have proof of all that if needed.

Exactly, very big damage I understand, but damage that the car is already covered in anyway, it seems it is down to discretion/mood of rep. I have not used europcar in a while, usually I do Avis, and they have not done this damage thing to me, however Avis had other probs eg. adding extra insurances on that I did not and expressly told them I did not want, so avoided them this time and tried europcar....

fartington

got a reply and told under their T & C
if I DO NOT sign for damage, then I cannot dispute charges

that is a catch 22, as if I DO SIGN for damages, I cannot dispute as I have accepted

fartington

they have now taken over £300 from my card this month. No explanation as to why.

dipping in to my card is FRAUD

plus initial complaint regarding damage still not resolved.

knightstyle

What card is it? Contact your card company and ask for a refund on these unauthorised withdrawals then let Eurocar try to sue you. If you didn't sign a form about the vehicle condition at the time of picking up they will not win.

goonarmy

Credit card? Then they can have it cancelled.

George_Michael

goonarmy wrote: »

Credit card? Then they can have it cancelled.

If you mean cancelling the credit card, this won't have any effect on agreements made before the cancellation.
If this wasn't the case, people could book into hotels and pay on checking out then cancel their card before the hotel staff discovered that the minibar had been emptied and all the towels and bed linen had been packed and taken away.

Car hire is exactly the same. When signing the agreement (or entering a PIN), you normally give the rental company permission to debit that card for charges that are not known about at the time, (such as speeding & parking fines or damage to the vehicle).

goonarmy

George_Michael wrote: »

If you mean cancelling the credit card, this won't have any effect on agreements made before the cancellation.
If this wasn't the case, people could book into hotels and pay on checking out then cancel their card before the hotel staff discovered that the minibar had been emptied and all the towels and bed linen had been packed and taken away.

Car hire is exactly the same. When signing the agreement (or entering a PIN), you normally give the rental company permission to debit that card for charges that are not known about at the time, (such as speeding & parking fines or damage to the vehicle).

No the payment cancelled as its an agreement between the card issuer and the hire company.

fartington

I have had the main part of the charges refunded now.

the initial £80 was admin charges

the later £300 which I presumed was fraud was in fact the actual damage bill.

The reason for the confusion was that they just billed me with the £300 without telling me what it was for until I disputed it.

They sent a pic of 2 marks, 1 of which was in a different location to the 2 marks pointed out on site to me.

I contacted the CEO office in UK and a very helpful manager tried their best to resolve over a few weeks.

I will not be able to use europcar after this experience because it is just too frightening for them to have your card and to just bill you like this. Plus for 2 insignificant marks and then have to spend several weeks sorting it out.

to put it in context, I got a large gash fixed in UK, approx 5 times bigger and also deeper than the europcar marks, as a retail customer recently for £200. So europcar charging me almost £400 is effectively trying to make a huge profit on damage fixing.