Car hire company refused to provide car

Darwood · 15 October 2019 at 7:45PM

Hi everyone

I think this is a bit of a deadloss but thought I would check with the knowledgeable folks on here anyway.

On 12th August 2019 I purchased car hire with Avance Car Rental via Carjet online with Santander credit card for £156.32. As my wife would be doing the bulk of the driving I put her down as the named driver although I paid with my credit card.

When we tried to collect the car from Kefalonia airport on 10th September the local agent would not release the car as my wife did not have a credit card in her name as per their terms and conditions. She offered a debit card and I offered my credit card but they would not accept either of those and would not alter the booking to make me the named driver. We ended up having to walk away and hire a car from the company next door for another €290 on top of what we had already paid for the first car. Not a great start to our holiday.

I have emailed Carjet asking for a refund of the £156.32 as we never got to have the car but they have replied as pasted below. I realise it is our own fault but is there any way I can get my money back? From what I have read online here a section 75 isn't applicable when you purchase via an agent so I'm guessing I can't do that as we bought via Carjet and a chargeback isn't really applicable in this situation. Am I out of luck?

Carjet reply:

The conditions are different for each company in our website.
We are a broker and we make sure that the infos about each company policy are available for customer before and after the booking request is completed.

Entering our site and searching for a car hire you will see that down each car picture there's always the name of the specific company you could hire with and close to this logo you always find their specific Terms.

Also your booking was from the 13/08/2019 at 00.19 and on the very same day we made sure to send you a voucher with! all the terms once again.

The Payment and cancellation policy were available:

Payment:
A major credit card (Visa or Mastercard) in the name of the main driver is required in order to collect the car. (Please note that cards without the driver's name on will not be accepted). This company will not accept prepaid, recharge or virtual credit cards - or any card on which the relevant characters are not raised (embossed).
American Express cards are accepted.

Cancellation policy:
To obtain a refund of a prepaid booking you must cancel it before the start of your rental using the links contained in the voucher or through the "My Booking" section of our website. No refund will be given if you do not collect the car.

We are really sorry but no refund can be provided as the car hire company has been respecting all this Terms.

Regards
Darwood

cubegame · 15 October 2019 at 9:07PM

This is s fairly standard condition for a car rental so I'm afraid you've lost your money.

mattyprice4004 · 15 October 2019 at 9:23PM

As above, the terms were clear and available to you - you didn’t stick to them.

A life lesson

Darwood · 15 October 2019 at 10:19PM

Ah well. Thank you both for the info anyway. An expensive life lesson but not a mistake I will make again. Car hire companies are pretty much scum of the earth though. What really irks me is the fact they got my money and would still have been able to rent that car to someone else. Also their complete unwillingness to make any concession. Absolutely no reason why they couldn't have taken my credit card and made me the main driver. I think they make it deliberately difficult hoping people will make a mistake and they can get their money for nothing.

Goudy · 16 October 2019 at 7:31AM

I'm afraid you made a mistake and they, like most hire companies aren't going to break their own terms and conditions.

Not wanting to rub salt in your wounds, but you might have bypassed the credit card thing altogether if you had booked direct with a local company.

There are many good local companies very close to the airport that offer hire cars with full insurance that don't require you to leave a deposit, so you can if you want, pay in cash or debit card.

They also don't usually ban or charge you extra to take a car on the ferries, so it's no problem if you fancy a visit to Lefkada, Ithaca or Zakynthos.

I hope it hasn't put you off the island, I visit quite often as I have place out there and have had only good experiences with nearly all the hire companies, though I've yet to use Avance, I don't think they're been operating on the island that long, there's been a bit of a tourist "boom" recently and a few new companies have popped up along the airport approach road.

I've even had good experiences with Goldcar. Their wireless card reader wouldn't work in the temporary arrivals "shed", no matter who much jumping up and down and arm waving they did with the machine, so they couldn't and didn't take a deposit.

Car hire company refused to provide car

Comments

Categories

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free