Did I get scammed? Car hire in Albania

mapryan

TLDR; Credit card didn't work for deposit but car hire guy let me take it if I gave him 100Euros to cover money for insurance excess

Detailed;

My Halifax Clarity credit card didn't work for the car hire and neither did my wife's (we both have Halifax Clarity cards). Therefore, we wouldn't have been able to take the car because they had nothing to secure against the car in case of an accident or speeding ticket.

I then called Halifax and spent about 90 mins on the phone with them and they said that they weren't seeing anything on their systems at all and they weren't denying any payments.

On the card machine itself, it was coming up with code 811 and the message "System malfunction". When I looked up this code I see it translates to "Insufficient user permission for processing payment transactions"

After getting nowhere, the representative suggested he would let us have it if we paid the insurance excess in cash (roughly 100 Euro). So, we finally got our car and were underway, but I feel sure I've been scammed

I subsequently used the Clarity credit card in other places in Albania without issue.

Could the representative have just unplugged the machine or somehow changed it's settings?

What makes this odd, is that I tried another hire car company the following day and got the exact same error on their card machine. However, I was behind an Italian fella in the queue and he was also paying his excess in cash

Any thoughts? Is this unusual/normal in Albania? Was I scammed?

elsien

If you were paying €100 for the deposit/insurance excess anyway, how is it a scam to pay by cash instead of by credit card?
In what way are you out of pocket? It’s only going to be an issue if you were expecting your hundred euros back and don’t get it. Which you haven’t said is the case?

mapryan

Probably should have been clearer. I didn't want to pay the insurance excess as I had my own excess policy.

Also, I feel like the excess cash was more than likely going into the guys pocket but that's their problem I guess

elsien

Same thing applies though, surely?
It’s still not about how you paid, it’s about whether you actually needed the insurance in the first place. 

zagfles

elsien said:

Same thing applies though, surely?
It’s still not about how you paid, it’s about whether you actually needed the insurance in the first place. 

Sounds like the car hire place was forcing the OP to buy excess insurance because they couldn't block the policy excess (usually around 1000 EUR) on the credit card. So OP was forced to pay for something he didn't need, as he already had excess insurance. 

Likely to be a scam. Happens with car hire everywhere, that's the problem with comparison sites, car hire is offered at a ridiculously low rate so it's the cheapest on comparison sites, so they make no profit on the car rental itself, instead they give you the hard sell or in some cases practically force you to buy unnecessary extras at the desk when you pick it up. 

mapryan

@zagfles that's it exactly.

bagand96

One of the common car hire tricks of the shady operators, even in more visited countries like Spain.

5pudzM0re

Just back from Albania. We also rented a car locally and already had insurance cover, but had a similar experience with our Clarity cards which we keep just for travel. We had to use a regular credit card for our car hire deposit in the end.
We travelled around the Albania and the Clarity card was more often than not, declined. We've used it for years in many countries and this was the first time we have had any problems. Had online chat with Halifax and they said it was an issue with the local merchants/vendors, nothing to do with Halifax. Ended up using my Chase card to get by, so glad we had an alternative. Sadly I've lost faith in my trusty Clarity card now, although I think it's an Albania quirk.

DullGreyGuy

mapryan said:

TLDR; Credit card didn't work for deposit but car hire guy let me take it if I gave him 100Euros to cover money for insurance excess

Detailed;

My Halifax Clarity credit card didn't work for the car hire and neither did my wife's (we both have Halifax Clarity cards). Therefore, we wouldn't have been able to take the car because they had nothing to secure against the car in case of an accident or speeding ticket.

I then called Halifax and spent about 90 mins on the phone with them and they said that they weren't seeing anything on their systems at all and they weren't denying any payments.

On the card machine itself, it was coming up with code 811 and the message "System malfunction". When I looked up this code I see it translates to "Insufficient user permission for processing payment transactions"

After getting nowhere, the representative suggested he would let us have it if we paid the insurance excess in cash (roughly 100 Euro). So, we finally got our car and were underway, but I feel sure I've been scammed

I subsequently used the Clarity credit card in other places in Albania without issue.

Could the representative have just unplugged the machine or somehow changed it's settings?

What makes this odd, is that I tried another hire car company the following day and got the exact same error on their card machine. However, I was behind an Italian fella in the queue and he was also paying his excess in cash

Any thoughts? Is this unusual/normal in Albania? Was I scammed?

With third party Excess Insurance you still have to pay the excess and then reclaim it from your insurer after. It therefore offers the hire car company no guarantee that they are going to be able to get paid the excess if you return the car in a mangled mess (or dont return it at all). 

If for some reason the card wouldn't operate it doesn't seem unreasonable for them to either 1) take the deposit in cash or 2) require you to pay to have the excess reduced to 0. Arguably 1 is preferable given the deposit also covers non-insurance things like a late return or wrong amount of fuel etc. 

Did you really travel with just a single card? Why not try another card? The €100 is just taken as an authorisation so assuming you return the car in the same condition etc the money will never be collected and so no need for it to be on a "travel" credit card because fees only apply to collected funds. 

What happened at the end of the hire? Did you get the €100 back?