Argus / Car Trawler - Report Bad Experiences Here!!!!!

stressedoutmother

Argus car hire seem to have some dubious practices. I have read on here some people have been messed about by them and I am currently trying to get my deposit back after cancelling a reservation. I checked before cancelling and their website clearly states that you will not lose your deposit. It seems that they do not care about their customers and are happy to fob you off and never return calls. It also appears that since they are located in Ireland, you can't file a small claim against them. Though at the time of booking it is not clear that the company is not in the UK.

I am so pi**ed off with this seriously unprofessional company that I am going to write to BBC Watchdog. Please if anyone has any similar reports about them, can you either pm me or reply to this thread.

Many thanks

Stressed x

sarahches

I had issues last year where I booked 2 cars for the same time for Cyprus. To cut a very long story short I requested 2 x C2 cars and got 1 C2 and 1 A2, ie one under sized car. They didn't want to know and passed me to Alamo, who the rental was through, who blamed Argus. I lost count of the emails I sent and you can't speak to anyone on the phone after your rental. COMPLETE NIGHTMARE.
I did phone Consumer Direct (got their number from local trading standards) and they were very helpful. They said I could go small claims against Argus and M&S (the credit card we used to pay for car) even though they were Irish. However due to personal circumstances I didn't get that far.
However I did get MD's name and address which are:-
Mr Paul Daly
Cartrawler Ltd
59 Argus House
Terenure Road East
Rathgar
Dublin 6


Good luck and sympathy to you.

dmg24

I booked a car for my parents in Ireland. I can't recall exactly what the car sizes were, but they received one much smaller than they had booked (not good for bumpy little roads in the middle of nowhere!). Again Argus were blaming the car hire company.

On a less important note, I didn't get my Quidco cashback from them. Quidco have now stopped advertising them due to continuing problems.

stressedoutmother

sarahches wrote: »

I had issues last year where I booked 2 cars for the same time for Cyprus. To cut a very long story short I requested 2 x C2 cars and got 1 C2 and 1 A2, ie one under sized car. They didn't want to know and passed me to Alamo, who the rental was through, who blamed Argus. I lost count of the emails I sent and you can't speak to anyone on the phone after your rental. COMPLETE NIGHTMARE.
I did phone Consumer Direct (got their number from local trading standards) and they were very helpful. They said I could go small claims against Argus and M&S (the credit card we used to pay for car) even though they were Irish. However due to personal circumstances I didn't get that far.
However I did get MD's name and address which are:-
Mr Paul Daly
Cartrawler Ltd
59 Argus House
Terenure Road East
Rathgar
Dublin 6


Good luck and sympathy to you.

Thank you so much Sarah! I will go through the small claims then! I booked 4 times in total and used quidco - they didn't pay ANY cashback.

angel

Oh great, I've just booked a car with them for June. Just my luck.

chalky_bertie

I used Car Trawler for a trip to Sth Africa last year and everything was fine. Once I booked it I kept emailing and phoning the hire company they had allocated to me in Sth Africa just to make sure they had my reservation. No compaints with them.

MarkyMarkD

I think the lesson is to pay by credit card and to pursue your credit card company, not Argus themselves, if you get into difficulty.

You will be very unlikely to have to go as far as small claims court with a credit card issuer, if your case is solid.

sarahches

Previous to last years experience I had used Argus before and so had my parents, both for Cyprus, without too much problem. The cars were older than some car hire companies, approx 3-4 years old and it showed, and the state of child car seat but that wasn't Argus fault.

As MarkymarkD says pay by credit card, at least you have some comeback, and take 2 copies of your booking so you can raise issue with 'too small car' at the time.

MarkH100

This company was (and remains) an absolute nightmare for us.

Booked car for Croatia and paid deposit - they sub contracted to a two bit company called City Car Croatia - who then did NOT have a car for us when we arrived - eventhough our name was on their list!!!

Now cant get anyone from Argus to help or repsond - and obviously I have no deposit back from them (oh, and I paid more for the alternative car hire I had to make).

Moral - never ever use this company - cheapest is definitely not best!!!

LesD

We've used Argus many times for bookings in Spain and never had a single problem.

As usual, it needs saying they are a BROKER and do not actually supply the cars. So most problems will, indeed, be down to the car suppliers.

If you have a confirmed booking for a C2 car and the supplier rolls out an A2, that cannot be down to Argus. Similarly, if the hire company has your name on their list but no car, how can that be Argus's fault?

Perhaps this thread should be renamed - ALAMO/CITY CAR CROATIA; REPORT BAD EXPERIENCES HERE.

headpin

LesD wrote: »

................

As usual, it needs saying they are a BROKER and do not actually supply the cars. So most problems will, indeed, be down to the car suppliers.

If you have a confirmed booking for a C2 car and the supplier rolls out an A2, that cannot be down to Argus. Similarly, if the hire company has your name on their list but no car, how can that be Argus's fault?

..............

Unless of course the broker (eg Argus) "forgets" to tell the Rental Company exactly what size car the renter has requestd?

And, perhaps, the rental company does not have a car because their relationship with Argus means they are at the bottom of the pecking order when it comes to ensuring a car is available when things arnot runing as smoothly as they may like?

Just some thoughts.