TUI Holiday inc Car Hire, But No Record Of Hire!

Steve_Mac

Hi,

I wonder if any of you lovely MSEers can help me or give me some advice. I’ll try to give you all the information, so you don’t have to ask me more questions! This is a bit long-winded so bare with me!

I booked a holiday in branch through TUI, staying in a villa in Kefalonia. We fly out this Sunday. Car hire was included in the package, which is to be picked up at the airport. On my booking confirmation with TUI, the hire car provider is named as Enterprise, however it looks as if they have used Europcar as an intermediary company, as on the booking confirmation there is a line which states ‘Save time when collecting your car by pre-registering at: Europcar.co.uk’ The TUI sales assistant wrote down a Europcar ID number for me, which I have used to create an account with them. I have not been given a car hire reservation number.

This is where it starts to go awry. When I looked on my Europcar account, there is no record of any booking for a hire car. I have called Enterprise, who say without a booking reference, they cannot confirm if a booking has been made, and I should go back to TUI. I also rang Europcar, who said that there is currently no booking, and that I should contact TUI.

I went back into the branch and explained this, and they have tried to find out what is going on. They have said they are waiting on an email and will call me when they have more information. I have also contacted TUI customer services, both by phone and via their website. I’ve had no reply from the website, and all the operator on the phone could manage was to send me a copy of my original booking confirmation (which I had in my hand when I was speaking to him!).

Sigh...don’tcha just love customer services!

My fear is that when I turn up at the Enterprise desk at Kefalonia airport, they are going to have no record of a booking, and won’t be able to provide me and my family with a car. To be honest, I am currently expecting that to be exactly what happens.

So, if that is the case, what are my options? Do I grab the TUI rep at the airport and hold them hostage until they find me a car; do I hire a car from another company and then claim the cost back from TUi; or is there another option that I haven’t thought about?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

koalakoala

Calm down, I'm sure it will be fine.

When we book cars through BA they never show up on the car hire website.

Indout96

Same as Koalakoala
"You" have not booked a car with the hire company Tui have and the booking will be in their name not yours. assuming you have your holiday documents from Tui showing the car hire you should be fine.

richardw

Have you got a voucher from TUI for the car hire?

photome

I am with the OP, I would want some form of car hire voucher or at least a booking reference that works on the car hire companies website

agrinnall

I would certainly want to get confirmation of which company is providing the car, as far as I know there is no link between Enterprise and Europcar (they had a High Court battle over the use of the letter 'e' in 2015) so I'd be surprised if one is being used as an intermediary for the other.

lea2012

We had a similar issue with TUI when we went to florida. Car was booked with Alamo I think but when we went to try and do an online registration so we could skip the queue at the desk it wouldn't recognise our booking. We went back and forth pre-tavel and got nowhere but all was fine when we arrived and had no issues.

Steve_Mac

Just thought I’d post an update on this. I’ve finally got somewhere!

My wife suggested I ring the Enterprise branch at Kefalonia Airport. I had nothing to lose so I gave it a try. They took my details and said they would ring me back, as they weren’t in the office at that time. To be honest, I didn’t expect them to call back.

However I have just got off the phone with them after they called me, and said they do have a car booked in my name! So all is well :-)
It’s amazing that three huge companies can’t sort it out between themselves, but a single phone call to another country gets the result!

Thank you for all your input.