Hire Car Charges

Maqfly

I hired a car on the Europcar website in the UK for a car in France. I paid for the contract by credit card upfront. £85 for 4 days seemed very reasonable. Everything went well. 2 weeks after my return I was checking my credit card statement and discovered there was another amount of £120 taken from my account by Europcar. £40 of this was for fuel but the other £80 was for previously undisclosed charges in France. I complained to Europcar but they said that because this was a 3rd party hire and I have complain to them. Is this right? Surely my complaint is with Europcar in the UK. They operate the website.

NiftyDigits

If you booked with https://www.europcar.co.uk, they should chase it up for you.
You write that the charges are 'undisclosed'. Does that mean that you do not know what they are or that you do know, but you weren't told about them beforehand?
What are they?

Maqfly

The Charges are: 1 "After Hours Collection". I picked up the car at 10am as booked and returned it at the same time. 2 A "Fuel Emissions" charge and 3 "Overloaded Road" charge. None of these were flagged up on the Europcar website.

The car was collected at the Roscoff ferry terminal. I suspect the after hours charge is because the office there is not normally manned.

If the French want to impose extra charges so be it. But I feel they should be disclosed beforehand. Once I confirm a contract with a car hire company that should be it. I have to comply with the conditions of the contract. So should Europcar.

NiftyDigits

Maqfly wrote: »

The Charges are: 1 "After Hours Collection". I picked up the car at 10am as booked and returned it at the same time. 2 A "Fuel Emissions" charge and 3 "Overloaded Road" charge. None of these were flagged up on the Europcar website.

The car was collected at the Roscoff ferry terminal. I suspect the after hours charge is because the office there is not normally manned.

If the French want to impose extra charges so be it. But I feel they should be disclosed beforehand. Once I confirm a contract with a car hire company that should be it. I have to comply with the conditions of the contract. So should Europcar.

If you are sure that you are in the right, then dispute the amount with your CC provider. They'll freeze the amount payable by you and ask you to supply full details.

As you paid by CC, they are jointly liable for the amount.