Car Trawler/Holiday Autos - Firefly Spain

MiserlyMartin

I was charged £79 extra to my credit card when I had already paid 88 EUR for the car hire voucher to Holiday Autos. After querying with the parent Cartrawler, they have been told by Firefly car rental in Spain that I was charged due to the fuel policy. But I knew about this, so I made sure I returned the car completely full to the brim.

I gave the woman the keys when I dropped the car off but she did not give me any paperwork back as she said the car would be checked over later (there was nobody to do it at the moment) Despite my protests of having nothing in writing she wouldn't do anything apart from nicely tell me not to worry and everything would be sorted out no problems.

Now I have this problem. Has anyone else had trouble with Firefly / Car Trawler?

NiftyDigits

What was the fuel policy??

If Full to Empty, you have to pay for the fuel at their price and return the car empty. With some Full to Full policies, you still have to pay for the fuel at their price, but if you bring it back full, they refund the fuel charge.

You really need to read the T&C when it comes to car hire.

111KAB

With rentals as Nifty will tell you there are really three alternatives.
1) Go cheap ~ normally through a broker and read the small print as you will probably have a full to empty fuel policy if over 3 days rental and there will be pressure to buy extra insurance.
2) Go local ~ often not on airport (but nearby), cars tend to be a bit older.
3) Go national ~ Hertz, Avis, etc. Generally not cheap (unless you have got through a broker so again watch T&C) but in most (not all!) you will get a decent new'ish car and service.

I'm afraid you pays your money you take your choice but Car Trawler are getting significant amount of bad publicity which has been a problem for Monarch Airlines since they took them on as preferred car hire suppliers. Firefly are at the 'cheap end' as well.

car_rental_victim

I had the same experience with Firefly booked through Rentalcars.com. Firefly are a ripp off and conduct illegal practices beware! The yclaim to be a subsidiary of Hertz and are even sharing the same office in some airports like Valencia. This meas nothing in terms of getting a decent car or not being sold extra insurances or fuel. They did not give us any paperwork either. Worst: their cars are not roadworthy. The car they wanted to give us had tyre thread below the legal limit. When we told them they refused to give us any car and ripped the contract out of my hand. No refund to date from Rentalcars either. I have given up on the money and went to Europcarts who were decent in the end. Beware of Rentalcars.com (broker). They offer cheap deals and leave you allone when anything goes wrong. Their promise of full CDW cover is worth nothing at the car rental stations. If you care for your own saftey, do not want to be ripped off and want a hassle free experience stay clear of Firefly and Rentalcars.com!

MiserlyMartin

car_rental_victim wrote: »

. Their promise of full CDW cover is worth nothing at the car rental stations. If you care for your own saftey, do not want to be ripped off and want a hassle free experience stay clear of Firefly and Rentalcars.com!

Yes this was a Hertz desk too. They aggressively tried to sell me the Firefly insurance. I pointed out that the voucher I had paid 88 Euros for already included full CDW with no excess. The lady told me that only covered me 3rd party! I said that cannot be right. I refused to take it but was then told I would have to pay a large deposit on my credit card... I think 3000 Euros?! Anyway once I still refused to take the insurance the lady was nicer and told me not to worry about the bodywork and charges. I think they are taking advantage of British holiday makers here who know no better.

NiftyDigits

111KAB wrote: »

With rentals as Nifty will tell you there are really three alternatives.
1) Go cheap ~ normally through a broker and read the small print as you will probably have a full to empty fuel policy if over 3 days rental and there will be pressure to buy extra insurance.
2) Go local ~ often not on airport (but nearby), cars tend to be a bit older.
3) Go national ~ Hertz, Avis, etc. Generally not cheap (unless you have got through a broker so again watch T&C) but in most (not all!) you will get a decent new'ish car and service.

I'm afraid you pays your money you take your choice but Car Trawler are getting significant amount of bad publicity which has been a problem for Monarch Airlines since they took them on as preferred car hire suppliers. Firefly are at the 'cheap end' as well.

Your comment(in bold) is quite wrong. I've booked a new BMW '1' Series direct for £18 per day. Full to Full policy. Have my own excess insurance.
I use an appropriate discount code in conjunction with Quidco.
Wouldn't even dream of using a Broker.

NiftyDigits

MiserlyMartin wrote: »

Yes this was a Hertz desk too. They aggressively tried to sell me the Firefly insurance. I pointed out that the voucher I had paid 88 Euros for already included full CDW with no excess. The lady told me that only covered me 3rd party! I said that cannot be right. I refused to take it but was then told I would have to pay a large deposit on my credit card... I think 3000 Euros?! Anyway once I still refused to take the insurance the lady was nicer and told me not to worry about the bodywork and charges. I think they are taking advantage of British holiday makers here who know no better.

You have failed to reply to the question about the Fuel Policy.

As to the insurance, it was the Broker who suggested that you have insurance with no excess, but did you read the exclusion details?

This is why I always book direct, in that I can check exactly for what I am covered.

The staff can tell you not to worry about charges, but I guarantee if you damaged the car in a way that was not covered by the insurance, you would have a rude shock.
If it isn't in writing, you have a problem.

Forumnewbie

"Has anyone else had trouble with Firefly / Car Trawler?"

Yup we have just spent over two days and evenings trying to unravel a disastrous booking made with CarTrawler, aka 121.com, aka Holiday Autos (which they have just purchased).

On the phone, with all their price comparisons open on their website, I was taken through to booking with Car Trawler by MoneyMaxim.com (from Martin's MoneySaving article on car hire). I had phoned them because of a glitch on their website. They told me that Car Trawler were a pukka company - only the best. It seems to us that none of these people know what they are doing with your money. Beware! And don't expect an apology - oh no - all MoneyMaxim say is that they can't expect companies to change how they operate!

CarTrawler simply don't know what they are doing and the price they quote you means nothing. What we have found slightly unorthodox is the following. We all make international purchases on eBay, Amazon, Rentalcars.com, travelsupermarket.com and American car hire comparison sites, and we always pay in pounds Sterling. The companies hardly ever mention another currency and if they do, they have the pounds equivalent.

Therefore we have never had all the price discrepancies that we experienced from Car Trawler, or had to pay in anything other than sterling, there on the spot, for the product we have purchased.

Unlike booking through other car hire sites like Rentalcars.com, where you are given a price in pounds and you pay it upfront, with Car Trawler you pay some unknown amount which isn't clear during booking, or in fact until you get the Voucher sent by email, and even then their figures are a mixture of Euros (which they deal in!!) and in our case ZAR - we needed the car in South Africa. None of it makes arithmetical sense.

What is kind of unorthodox is:

1. The debit of their hidden booking fee of 55.52 Euros or £48 which has not been refunded yet despite cancellation. We were unaware of this until this figure appeared on the Voucher - unexplained Euros 55+ - and we found out what it was when we phoned their call centre in Poland - an "extra charge made for the booking"! We would never have booked with them had we known about this fee, or paid in anything other than pounds.

2. We were not aware of how much we were paying on the booking form until the Voucher came through by email and we checked it. The voucher made it even more unclear because it did not state pounds Sterling anywhere. Also it left out key information we required like the additional driver we had requested - was this included or not?

3. Car Trawler have no idea about the exchange rate we would have paid for the Euros or the forex bank charges for that additional booking fee/deposit.

4. Poland states the reason for it being charged in Euros is that they have tried once before to pay on behalf of another customer in pounds Sterling and "it didn't work unless we did it in Euros". They seemed somewhat perplexed by this, but said they had to do it. They agreed it didn't mention this on their website or booking process. This didn't inspire confidence..

5. We have also been on the phone twice to the Europcar in South Africa (the car hire firm and phone number appeared on the Voucher) - at some expense because they made us hold on whilst they audibly dealt with customers in the shop! We finally established that the amount which appears on the voucher in their view is "too low" and we will have to cough up more when we arrive than it even states on the Voucher i.e. instead of ZAR 5,100.04 (on the Voucher) we will need to pay ZAR 5,778 + ZAR 275 for the additional driver.

6. Car Trawler say it is ZAR 250 for an additional driver, not ZAR 275. Another discrepancy.

7. They fully accept that ZAR exchange rate may go up or down, which is a bit of a gamble for us, and also we may have additional charges on our credit card and commission to pay, which paying here in pounds would not accrue. They have not taken this into account when giving us the quotation in pounds Sterling.

We have to say that and in the end, when we thought we had better cancel the booking because they could not change anything, Car Trawler did the cancellation swiftly, although no refund yet of the Euros charge. We could have done without spending 2 entire days trying to organise our car rental - after having thought it was sorted out with help from the MoneyMaxin website and staff - and the stress involved. So far we haven't had an apology from the latter or Car Trawler, although I am not holding my breath. We would never use them again! The only comfort is that now we have booked elsewhere, we won't be having those money disagreements when we arrive at our destination after a long haul flight. And we have saved ourselves a few ££ too.

MagicRat

We have had almost exactly the same situation as the original poster - a booking through Holiday Autos of a car for four days from Madrid Airport, with Firefly. A very good rate of £60 or so, a request to return the car empty, and a free (or so I was told) upgrade. When we returned the car, no paperwork was offered.

And then a week later, another £117 taken from my credit card. Some of this will be in respect of fuel and I imagine the rest for the "free" upgrade but trying to get any nformation from Cartrawler is, as others have pointed out, next to impossible.

It is some comfort to know that this situation is not unique - and I wil lof course try and avoid Holiday Autos/Cartrawler in the future

JIFFIJAW

Well, I'm down on the costa de luz, near Gib at the end of a two month motor home drive down here and looking to rent a villa for two to three months. So decided we wanted a car to use for at least a couple of months. Got my wife and myself annual world wide excess insurance for £41. Then rented a small car locally (Albitana Car Rental) for 154 euros a week -- had to leave a 900 euro deposit. The excess waiver from Albitana was something like 54 euros/week so excess insurnace paid for itself immediately.

Did various web searches and found that cars picked up from main holiday centres seemed ridiculously cheap -- so, yes, through Car trawler/Firefly were offered a 'VW Golf or similar' for 8 weeks for 164 euros. It is full to empty and the extra driver is 47 euros more. So drove to Seville yesterday with some trepidation thinking something must not be quite right with this offer.

So we have an Opel Meriva with 45k kms on the clock and that is a long way from pristine. We had to pay 97 euros for the tank full which is probably a rip off. We had to leave a 400 euro deposit because we didn't take the excess waiver (which was offered at 84 euros) and there were dark noises about no roadside assistance without taking their waiver. Then there was the 47 euros for the extra driver and an IVA on these extras of 30 euros.

So, I'm driving a car for the next 8 weeks that cost 164 euros prepaid plus another 173 euros for the extra driver and full tank of gas.

Even assuming that I get NO value from the tank of gas that's a total of 337 euros or 5.8 euros a day.

Maybe, I'm in for some unpleasant surprise that I haven't allowed for -- but at the moment that seems like one hell of a deal.

So, !!!

Macadamia

I am another person who has been stung by this company, and am so tired of getting nowhere with my legitimate requests for a refund of an overcharge I am ready to start legal action.

We are not talking big bucks but there has been a blatant overcharge. (5 days unrequested insurance on a two day hire)

But firefly is in Spain - cartrawler in Ireland. So I am wondering just who to sue and where to sue.
Has anyone gone down this path before?

I would be really grateful for any pointers or 'tales of experience.'

(or - Should I be posting this on another board?)