Spanish car hire fraud avoidance: price benchmarking help, anyone?

codger

We're holidaying in Murcia later this year and looking to hire a car for 14 days. As car hire criminal fraud isn't so much an exception to the rule in Spain as the rule itself, it's becoming ever more difficult to find an operator which hasn't had serious complaints leveled against it, including, in no particular order, Goldcar, Solmar, Centaur, Record, Dickmanns, Drivalia, and Firefly, all of whom feature prominently in that region of Spain .

Legal / statutory protection against being a victim of Spanish car hire fraud is non-existent; Spanish tourism authorities and Spanish local councils remain blithely inert, this less an indication of laziness as a reminder that in Spain, institutionalised corruption is as much a hallmark of the country as ever.

In hope of finding at least some minimal protection, we have in the past used UK-based brokers via which to book our cars. Yet even the Which? Best Buy broker with whom we've previously dealt has just quoted us the rates from four different suppliers, every one of which has an appalling track record. Either this broker couldn't care less about the suppliers it's dealing with because the commission payments it receives are too good to forego, or even it can no longer find itself a Spanish car hire firm of repute.

In any event, it's become clear that hiring a car in Spain via a broker or aggregator site offers no protection; they'll all walk away when a customer is hit with fraudulent credit card charges -- charges that only become apparent after the customer has returned home.

Common to all the above cases is the fact that the cheaper the rate offered, the higher the likelihood of fraud. There being no protection against such risk -- UK law won't help you; a UK broker or international aggregator won't help you; the UK charter airline with which you flew on holiday and via which you were mistaken enough to hire a car won't help you; and Spanish law won't help you -- what to do?

Short of not holidaying in Spain at all, it seems to us that staying with the majors makes the most sense. But that assumes one can afford rates geared to expense-account business travelers, not family holidaymakers on limited budgets. Not everyone can.

In our case, the notion is unworkable anyway: at the time and date we're traveling, no majors are worth using / are available (Hertz isn't operating at weekends or from Murcia airport, and Alamo -- with whom we have an account -- is partnered to a local operator of less than stellar repute.) It means we must now track down smaller car hire businesses which don't figure in the list at the head of this post . . . but at what price?

After hours -- literally -- of research, including Internet reviews not all of which could or should be taken at face value, we've been advised by friends to approach a certain small family-owned business that has been operating for the past 17 years in the region we're heading to. (Sorry, but I'm not going to mention the name here: I've encountered cases before of people saying 'I have no connection with this firm other than as a satisfied customer' only for it to turn out that the poster / the reviewer is a shill. I'm not shilling, but no-one here can actually know that.)

That particular car hire firm has just quoted us the GBP equivalent of £206 for a fortnight's hire of a Fiat Panda (or equivalent). By contrast, that same class of car is being offered to us by doyouspain and our UK broker for £115 -- which, to us at least, says all that needs to be said about believing that there's such a thing as a free lunch / free paella . . .

That same small hire firm is also seeking to charge us 5 Euros a day for top-up insurance cover / 70 Euros for a fortnight's hire (£53). I know we can buy our own insurance here in the UK for quite a lot less than that, but, but. . . if we're going to turn up at the collection desk and be hassled over the acceptability of our insurance policy, then £53 might, just, be a small price to pay. (Though yes: we'd deeply resent being manipulated like that.)

Our question, then. We refuse to believe that the rates offered to us by aggregators and brokers are real-world figures, rather that they're indicators of a high probability that we will be screwed over by the Spanish car rental firm involved. Equally, however, we don't know what the theoretical "going rate" is / should be.

Advice, then, from anyone here with experience of the car hire market in Andalucia would be greatly appreciated. Is it possible to assess the value / the credibility of a rental deal against a benchmark, a "going rate" figure for an honest car, from an honest rental company? In short: is the £200+ quote we've received for a fortnight's rental of a Fiat Panda (excluding top-up insurance) a reasonable price or is it an excessive one?

Thanks!

antenna

You should try the Ex-pats forums for advice...google murcia forums,or something similar...but even then take care...

jfdi

I hired from Firefly at Murcia Airport before Xmas, for 2 weeks.

Got a bargain hire rate ( not the cheapest offered though), pre bought my top up insurance in uk beforehand and we had no troubles at all.

As a bonus the car was quoted as full tank of fuel ( I hate that but they all were) but it was actually return it as you receive it,, quarter tank to quarter tank in our case.

There was virtually no queue in the airport and the staff were lovely.

I did have to leave me cc number with them as when you use your own insurance should anything happen the car company charge you then you claim it back from insurer, but nothing did.

codger

antenna wrote: »

You should try the Ex-pats forums for advice...google murcia forums,or something similar...but even then take care...

Absolutely! There are ex-pats on one forum posting favorable mentions of a car hire firm claimed to be run by "another British couple" but which most definitely isn't. The posts, and the recommendations, are fakes. Then there's a poster to Olive Tree Press who calls himself by an English forename and extols his "thoroughly honest" rental car company which, it later turns out, has umpteen complaints against it. On TA there's even a freelance writer, no less, who acknowledges that he works for one of the Spanish car hire companies but posts his "objective" advice nevertheless, this despite the fact that the complaints against his employer are many and varied. And so it goes on. And on.

As Abraham Lincoln once famously said, you really mustn't believe everything you read on the Internet. . .

codger

jfdi wrote: »

I hired from Firefly at Murcia Airport before Xmas, for 2 weeks. . . .

Sincere thanks for the heads-up, jfdi. This kind of detailed info from a genuine poster is very welcome. I'll go re-check Firefly -- I think it used to be called 'Advantage Car Rental', which had a terrible reputation, but perhaps that's another of those misunderstandings / misrepresentations which can and unfortunately often do occur on the 'Net. Thanks again.

zagfles

I've hired in Spain loads of times and never had a real problem. A lot of the time I've used local companies in the resort and have paid cash, not card. If I need to book in advance/use a credit card I'll only use one of the bigger well known names, and will get excess insurance before I go.

One think to watch out for in Spain and Portugal is some car hire companies won't cover you even for third party claims if they claim you've been "negligent", this is very worrying since many/most accidents are due to someone's "negligence"...so watch out for this!

codger

zagfles wrote: »

I've hired in Spain loads of times and never had a real problem. A lot of the time I've used local companies in the resort and have paid cash, not card. If I need to book in advance/use a credit card I'll only use one of the bigger well known names, and will get excess insurance before I go. . .

Us, likewise. We've actually been hiring cars in Spain since the early 1970s, and haven't yet -- stress: "yet" -- been caught out. Our best experiences include in-resort rentals. . . but that's only possible when on a package holiday and actually in the resort. For the past 20 years or so, we've rarely taken a package holiday anywhere, so have usually finished up at a destination many a mile from the airport. Getting a taxi from the airport to the holiday accomm would most often have resulted in a to-and-back cab fare almost as high as a fortnight's rental.

As to using one's own insurance: yup, we have that. But there are now an increasing number of cases where Spanish car hire firms have flatly refused to accept independently-purchased cover. They claim that the hire is at their discretion, and that under Spanish law, they're entitled to do what they want. Which, of course, is exactly what many of 'em are now doing. (This kind of extortion -- because it is just that -- tends to apply on hires which have not been pre-paid; in other words, the customer has landed at the hire company's desk with only a voucher that promises a car. The voucher has no legal worth because a promise is not a contract.)

jfdi

codger wrote: »

Sincere thanks for the heads-up, jfdi. This kind of detailed info from a genuine poster is very welcome. I'll go re-check Firefly -- I think it used to be called 'Advantage Car Rental', which had a terrible reputation, but perhaps that's another of those misunderstandings / misrepresentations which can and unfortunately often do occur on the 'Net. Thanks again.

Just one thing I'd say - don't forget the bulk of reviews are published by disgruntled customers, if everything runs smoothly you have no need to 'vent your spleen' so to speak.

So lots of bad reviews could just mean they're very popular! Few reviews, good or bad, would worry me more, I must say!

PS - I've also got a pal with a holiday apt out there who swears by Goldcar from Murcia airport. We hired with them once from Almeria and the car etc was excellent, but they lied about the charges we'd incur so I'll never use them again.

eDicky

codger wrote: »

if we're going to turn up at the collection desk and be hassled over the acceptability of our insurance policy,

Don't even mention that you have your own extra insurance, just politely and firmly decline theirs. They will block a substantial amount on your CC to cover excess, instead. Just make sure that every single item of existing damage, however small, is listed and signed for on the damage report before you drive away.

eDicky

jfdi wrote: »

PS - I've also got a pal with a holiday apt out there who swears by Goldcar from Murcia airport. We hired with them once from Almeria and the car etc was excellent, but they lied about the charges we'd incur so I'll never use them again.

This tends to illustrate that the quality of any particular hire company can vary widely between their different locations. It's important to take into account the location as well as the company when reading of bad experiences or recommendations.

codger

jfdi wrote: »

Just one thing I'd say - don't forget the bulk of reviews are published by disgruntled customers, if everything runs smoothly you have no need to 'vent your spleen' so to speak.

So lots of bad reviews could just mean they're very popular! Few reviews, good or bad, would worry me more, I must say!

Agreed. It's human nature to voice a complaint as quickly as possible, whereas voicing praise is something that's not-so-urgent and ultimately, doesn't happen at all. We factor that in. What has changed, where car hire is concerned (and especially, Spanish car hire) is the nature of the complaints.

Once upon a time it was about scruffy cars that didn't live up to the promises made about them, or surly service from staff who, allegedly, "refused" to speak English. But that content has changed, and markedly so since 2008. Now the complaints are about. . . fraud. Sustained, systemic fraud.

As I mentioned before, there are two ways of dealing with the risk of being a victim: never going to Spain again / hiring a car in Spain again. . . or tracking down a firm which values its customers as much as its reputation.

As that seems to be something which will, inevitably, result in higher costs, it's why I'm enquiring if anyone has a 'benchmark' guide to prices so that I, for example, can know not only when a price is so low that the risk of fraud is inevitably high, or a price is so high that I'm actually being screwed over anyway by a firm that's ostensibly "reputable".