rentalcars.com, Europcar, hidden charges. Do we have firm basis for complaint?

MrsCheese

Back around Easter we travelled to Geneva and picked up a rental car. We got this rental car through an price comparison site https://www.rentalcars.com. It's the usual set up, you fill out a form with your requirements and then it comes back with various quotes. We did not need snow tyres or chains so we were sure to remove that from our requirements. The list came back and we chose Europcar based upon the price quoted.

When we returned we found we'd been charged and additional £71.75 - no invoice, no discussion, no contact. I challenged the charge via my credit card company and contacted Europcar to ask what it was about and they didn't bother to respond.

We've now heard back from our credit card company and it shows that in the terms and conditions of the hire that between certain periods of the year that snow tyres are mandatory and are charged separately. So technically we are liable for this payment.

I am rather disgruntled about this. I feel strongly that this was a hidden charge. Whilst I hold my hands up that I should have been more diligent in my review of the terms and conditions, I feel the price comparison site should have made this clear as the price quoted is not the price that is going to be charged. According to the Ts & Cs there is no way anything other than the price quoted + £71.75 will be charged, thus the price at the point of sale is hidden and unclear to consumers.

The options that did come back from the rentalcars.com included other rental firms with cars that had snow tyres on them. These were more expensive than the base price of Europcar, but cheaper when the £71.75 charge is applied; i.e., we would have chosen a different company were it clear what the real total cost of hiring the car was. It is also here where the plot thickens...

After choosing Europcar my wife received a call from rentalcars.com who pointed out that the excess on Europcar was very high and thus they were trying to up-sell insurance cover to offset our risk. In the end we chose to do that as it worked out marginally cheaper than selecting a different rental supplier. So rentalcars.com are happy to "look after us" by pointing out something we "may not have noticed" when it comes to something they can upsell, but they didn't inform us of the true overall charge. Whilst I can't say for certain that the prices quoted would have been cheaper still; i.e., if we had gone with another car rental firm that we wouldn't have faced such a high excess, I am more than suspicious that is the case; i.e., the hidden cost making the car the cheapest works best for both Europcar and Rentalcars.com as Europcar gets the business and rentalcars.com gets the up-sell.

I will be contacting rentalcars.com over this but I was wondering if we have any firm basis for complaint here and if so, what would people recommend out there as a course of action for us to take? I suspect this doesn't truly constitute as mis-selling as it's buried in the Ts&Cs, but it is certainly hidden and not transparent; I also don't feel it is an example of the sort of thing that gets an industry regulated.

Any thoughts and views very gratefully received.

Caz3121

Comparison sites are not great for comparing like for like when one site includes elements in the core price and others have them as added extras.
I have had similar with one-way fees where some include and others charge separate
It is similar when booking flights and you want to check baggage. flights with free baggage will be compared against flights with no free baggage so you do need to do a little more work to calculate what is the best deal for your requirements
The T&Cs do state -During the period between 15 November and 30 April, winter tyres are mandatory and will be charged at CHF 9.00 per day including tax, up to a maximum of CHF 144.00 . - it is not really "buried"
As you will have had to tick the box to confirm you have read the T&Cs before confirming the booking I doubt you will have much recourse
As to the excess insurance, I find it best to purchase my own and say "no thank you" when they try to sell extra

MrsCheese

Thank you for your response and I understand where you're coming from (I did point out that I hold my hands up to this in the original posting) However I, rightly or wrongly, feel that if you go to a price comparison site then you expect them to be transparent about all the charges for whatever is being compared. So whether they are good at it or not, I believe they should be and should strive to be just that.

Totally get the comparison with flight baggage, only those aren't mandatory (although I have before now seen additional charges for things that you simply couldn't fly without).

In this case we had a price X without snowtyres to compare to a price Y with snow tyres... only the price X wasn't and never would be the price a person hiring that car would ever pay during the period we were requesting the quote for. There were no circumstances where that would have been the case and thus it is not transparent for consumers trying to compare the different offers. Anything in the Ts&Cs which is a fixed cost during that period is therefore buried from initial view. I could have used the word 'placed' instead as it is less emotive, but as I wrote I was rather frustrated. So whilst the information was there to be obtained, it wasn't clear at the point where the majority of consumers will do their comparison.... thus not a good quality comparison site.

The extra insurance was a fair deal and we weighed up our perception of the risk based upon where we were going, our risk appetite, etc. we chose to take that up based upon the understanding of the costs; it wasn't like one of these ridiculous additional covers on an electrical item that works out more than it'll cost to replace the item over the lifetime. My issue there is simply that if the true cost had been displayed and transparent then we would have selected a different deal in the first place. I'm pointing to the incentive for rentalcar.com to be in on the lack of transparency by placing the fixed cost of the snowtyres in Ts&Cs rather than on the main price.

It may just be something we need to chalk down to experience, but I certainly don't have a positive view of rentalcars.com or Europcar and won't be using either again.