Europcar took money unauthorised from my account

KBsun

I’ll try and make this as concise as possible, but I’d appreciate any feedback on my options here. 

I hired a car in France via Europcar. I booked for six days and “blocked off” a deposit of £500 when I picked it up at the depot. Unfortunately upon leaving the airport, the car was damaged by a disintegrated curb that was stuck out into the road, so we had to return the car. They immediately replaced the car for us and informed us they'd send us an invoice for the damage and we could use that to claim back the money from my insurance. I was fine with this and thought it would be a straight forward process, and I was grateful they replaced the car without any hassle.

When we returned the car, we left it in the car park and returned the keys through the mailbox as instructed by the lady on the front desk. As such, nobody was there to inspect the car over, although there was no damage at all.

a number of weeks after this, I noticed a £360 charge had been taken off my deposit. I was confused as I knew the cost of a Citroen tyre replacement would not justify that amount. I requested an invoice from Europcar and it took WEEKS and multiple ignored emails to finally get one back. And the invoice doesn’t match up to the amount taken. In fact, over £200 is entirely unaccounted for. 

I’ve been in contact with the UK branch of Europcar (they were the ones who provided me the invoice), and I’ve asked for clarification on the unaccounted money but I’ve had no reply, despite multiple emails. 

I’m absolutely furious and I’ve never dealt with a worse company. I hired a much nicer car in Spain earlier in the year for half the price and absolutely no hassle at all. I can’t tell if there’s been an error in their systems, or if someone there is pocketing money from unsuspecting customers. But I’ve no idea how to get this money back given I am now being ignored by Europcar. I’ve looked at reviews for the company and a lot of people are having the same issue I am - random amounts of money being taken out of accounts and no explanation for it.

Does anyone have any advice on what I can do here?

eskbanker

You could perhaps try https://www.ecrcs.com/

Does the invoice definitely relate to the original incident that necessitated the change of vehicle, or is it possible that they're alleging damage to the second vehicle that wasn't inspected on return?

KBsun said:

I noticed a £360 charge had been taken off my deposit. I was confused as I knew the cost of a Citroen tyre replacement would not justify that amount.

I'd have thought that they wouldn't simply be looking to cover the actual cost of the tyre itself, but associated expenses too, although I'm not sure what's permissible, in terms of fitting costs, staff time, lost profits, etc, and maybe the wheel rim also needed attention, although any of that should be included on an invoice....

brianposter

Exactly who did you hire the car from ?