Greece Car Hire and No Petrol Available

mrchew007

Hi - what happens if we collect our hire car in two weeks time and there is no petrol available due to the Grexit. Who is responsible in this situation ?

Generali

mrchew007 wrote: »

Hi - what happens if we collect our hire car in two weeks time and there is no petrol available due to the Grexit. Who is responsible in this situation ?

Prime Minister Tsipras.

You can write to him at:

Maximos Mansion
Irodou Attikou Street 19
Athens
Greece

antenna

What if it rains?.......What if they run out of electricity? or salt and vinegar crisps?
or the germans reserve all the sunbeds? (well they paid for all of them)..descisions descisions!

Norfolk_Jim

You are - since no government guarantees that petrol stations will have petrol to sell. Do you intend to drive a lot? The car hire firm should provide you with a full tank. If you can get by on that then the worst you would face is having to pay the hire companies extortionate rates on refilling the tank for you when you return it to them.

christaitfife

Firstly it is massively important to remember that the news media in this country thrives on crisis and disaster. What you are seeing on TV and reading in the news about Greece are isolated incidents and scaremongering. Almost every holiday resort in Greece is operating as normal - indeed a recent report I read about Corfu states that this season income is UP, visitors are UP, spending is UP and generally (other than the government being crap) everything is good.

I wouldn't worry about a shortage of petrol caused by the economic state of the country. I say this because areas of Greece have in previous years run out of petrol for no known reason - it is the Greek way. You are more likely to not be able to get petrol because someone forgot to order it than an economic collapse!

Also, these queues at cash machines are not happening all over the place - mainly just Athens. One of the biggest problems faced by pensioners trying to withdraw from cash machines is that they don't have cash cards - just bank books. Because there is no other way for these people to get cash they are joining queues at cash machines in the hope of getting some help - which they don't, causing ore delays.

SW17

christaitfife wrote: »

Firstly it is massively important to remember that the news media in this country thrives on crisis and disaster. What you are seeing on TV and reading in the news about Greece are isolated incidents and scaremongering. Almost every holiday resort in Greece is operating as normal - indeed a recent report I read about Corfu states that this season income is UP, visitors are UP, spending is UP and generally (other than the government being crap) everything is good.

While there is little doubt that the UK media likes to sensationalise, your picture of the tourism situation is a little optimistic. While I would never claim to have the full picture, I do have reasonable insight into some events, and however well the year may or may not have started for various Greek islands (and some were already suffering due to the drop in the Russian market), the reality now is that new bookings from key Northern European markets have dropped substantially in the last couple of weeks.

Hotels in Greece and operators with commitments have started offering deep discounts to stimulate demand. It could of course come back quickly if a deal is found, but l don't think it's fair to suggest that "all is well", even if it is not as drastic as the media paint it.

Blue264

mrchew007 wrote: »

Hi - what happens if we collect our hire car in two weeks time and there is no petrol available due to the Grexit. Who is responsible in this situation ?

This was the only problem I experienced over the last few weeks ( got back Saturday night).

On both occassions, the local car hire companies we used knew the best garages to try for fuel. On Aegina, there was only one garage with petrol on the entire island when our car was delivered, and another two were getting deliveries later that day. In Chania, Crete, the best bets were the Eko and Aegean garages and the most unreliable were BP garages.

When you collect your car, ask. The car hire companies appear to be phoning round the garages to keep tabs on the situation and are your best source of info.

Nobody is responbsible in this situation, but you could ask for the car to be full when you take delivery and pay a premium for that service.