Beware - Goldcar Car Rentals Spain

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Comments

  • I'm sure most people are aware of the web site TRIP ADVISOR, have a look on there at the section 'Top Questions' re car hire on the Canary Islands, same 2 or 3 companies always recommended and the one to avoid at all costs is Goldcar!!
  • woffle99
    woffle99 Posts: 18 Forumite
    Thanks everyone for the stories. I had booked Goldcar (through rentalcars.com) but have now cancelled (for free thankfully). Very annoying that lots of these websites won't let you book while seeing who you are going to get.

    Can anyone suggest who to go to instead. Europcar looks fairly good to me?
  • shaynemawer
    shaynemawer Posts: 132 Forumite
    hi all, just come back from Tenerife and i'd recommend AutoReisen (was recommended to me) ok cars have a few little scuffs on them but at no point was they checked over when you return and in the time it took for me to check in at the desk the poor guy who was already at Goldcar's desk next to me was still arguing over extra insurance and fuel price they was trying to charge. Theres no need to buy any other insurance and was told to bring car back with roughly same fuel as went out, give or take a little. Also this older chap decided after getting to the airport he no longer needed a car and AutoReisen were excellent, just asked his name so they could sort car out in case of another customer and wished him a happy holiday..
  • pompeyrich
    pompeyrich Posts: 3,135
    First Anniversary Combo Breaker
    Forumite
    woffle99 wrote: »
    Thanks everyone for the stories. I had booked Goldcar (through rentalcars.com) but have now cancelled (for free thankfully). Very annoying that lots of these websites won't let you book while seeing who you are going to get.

    Can anyone suggest who to go to instead. Europcar looks fairly good to me?

    You can see who you are booking with on the Holiday Autos website before you commit to a rental.

    Get a quote, then click on car details, just below the picture of the car, then click on "further information" and finally "picking up your car". The first word or two states the car hire company. On the "fuel conditions" the fuel policy is clearly stated too. Some of the insurance excesses are high though so be sure to check them out or organise excess insurance beforehand.

    If you have a discount shoppping "reward" site at work, Youatwork or similar, using the link from there drops the price 10%, around £65 a week in June or £95 a week in August with Hertz.
  • [FONT=tahoma,sans-serif]This is the email I already sent to car[FONT=tahoma,sans-serif]hire3000 in terms of complaining about [/FONT][/FONT][FONT=tahoma,sans-serif][FONT=tahoma,sans-serif][FONT=tahoma,sans-serif]"GOLDCAR", But I didnt receive any reasonable and satisfactory reponse, So I am going to publish it in public.[/FONT]

    That was one my worst experiences I had with car rental in my life and I really I felt I am rubbed.

    One part of this feeling is devoted to TravelJigsaw ( CAREHIRE3000) and one part is about GoldCar company

    1) In the time of reservation you don't inform you customers about the position of the car rental company in the airport. I loosed 2 hours of my trip because of that. this company doesn't have any office in the airport. they neither doesn't have any sign in the airport that passengers should stay where. If I knew that this company doesnt have office at airport I may never booked the car from this company

    2) You must inform customers before booking or any action about the company that they are going to book. Personally from now on I will never get a car from "GOLDCAR" and I strongly prevent all people I know to not book from this company. this company behavior to customers is not at the satisfactory level.

    3) About the deposit , you or them never mentioned about 650 EUR deposit that they are going to block from my master card? I as a customer shouldn't know that how much money I need to put in my master card? after they blocked this amount they charged me 65 EUR for fuel cost for 40 Litr. in where and when you or them informed me as a customer about this stupid policy? I mean delivery of full fuel and return back of empty? who really can do this risk to deliver car empty? It is a fraud because we actually dont know that car is really full or 5 litr less than full. in the time of return back I had at least 10 litr more than empty. so simply you can see that this is a fraud. not in the time of booking nor in the voucher nothing was mentioned about this stupid policy.

    4) After they blocked that 650 EUR, I didn't have enough amount in my checking account to pay that 155 EUR further costs. So I said I pay with cash, they say is not possible to pay by cash, I said I will pay with my wife master card, they said is not possible, I said I need WIFI access to transfer from my saving account to my checking account and they said we don't have WIFI access here. They didn't provide me another way of payment. I really was in a bad situation and stress. they made my first moments of my holiday stressful by their stupid service.

    5) They even don't have any air conditioner in their office. for check-in and check-out customers should wait in a long Que in a hot temperature in the middle of desert ( their location of office!)

    6) After lot of problems fortunately I could manage to transfer money from my saving account to checking account to be able to pay that 155 EUR!! but 30 minutes later when we experienced a problem with car and I tried to call their Support (SOS number) I realized that I am really rubbed. I called over 50 times to that number with high roaming costs charged to me. call then was connected but operator said something that all lines are busy. I heared this stupid message for at least one hour. I tried to call all numbers was mentioned on the paper they gave us. but non of that numbers worked !! no one responded. I even tried to find a number from carhire3000 ( Traveljigsaw) to at least they help us.
    This was mentioned in the voucher :

    "Our offices are open between 8am and 10pm seven days a week, please contact us on 1800 535 571 or [EMAIL="reservations@carhire3000.ie"]reservations@carhire3000.ie[/EMAIL] with any
    queries or questions"

    A stupid thing was that no country code was mentioned for this number "[/FONT][/FONT][FONT=tahoma,sans-serif]1800 535 571", I tried to call [/FONT][FONT=tahoma,sans-serif]001800 535 571 , [/FONT][FONT=tahoma,sans-serif]001[/FONT][FONT=tahoma,sans-serif] [/FONT][FONT=tahoma,sans-serif]1800 535 571, 0044 [/FONT][FONT=tahoma,sans-serif]1800 535 571 and [/FONT][FONT=tahoma,sans-serif]00377 1800 535 571[/FONT] but non of them was true. even I tried without country code and also with my country code 00351 [FONT=tahoma,sans-serif]1800 535 571. but non of them worked.

    Now my questions is when something happens to a car, it is definitely emergency, why no one was responsible? I am really angry about this. that hour was full of stress for I and my wife, it really made first moments of our holiday the worst moments. Who is responsible for our
    [/FONT]solatium ?
    [FONT=tahoma,sans-serif]

    [/FONT]
  • First time poster and really hacked off with the sharp practices of this company. Their fuel policy is frankly a rip off. You take the car with a full tank of fuel and have to return empty. In my case, I hired a Citroen Picasso which has a 60L tank capacity. They charged me €119!! That is 50% over the market rate plus the tank obviously has fuel in it when returned. The return empty policy is duplicated by others but I don't expect to be ripped off for the fuel in the first place! I understood that I had an inclusive insurance deal but they then charged me an extra €60 for 8 days with no explanation and failed to even advise the option of taking a €600 fully refundable deposit to cover those less likely claims such as wheel and window damage and lost keys. In short their policy seems to be attract you in with a low online quote and then heap on the extras. I thought I was paying £207 plus fuel, in fact they charged £363 all in by the time I had paid them. Strongly advise that you still well clear of this company. Never again.
  • hamed
    hamed Posts: 1 Newbie
    I rented a car from Goldcar in Porto. They charged me almost 300 euro from a flat tyre (110 euro for truck and 185 euro for tyre!). After I noticed the tyre is flat, I call them, they told me the car is KIA and has guarranty for 2 years, so dont worry you are not going to pay. I accepted that the car is 2013 and has gurranty for 2 years, so instead chaging the tyre by myself, I asked the truck and take the car back to company! after arriving there, they charged me 185 euro for tyre, after 1 week I noticed they took 110 euro from my account for truck! without any informing or recipt! now they did not unblock my deposite of 900 euro yet!
  • mrs_scrooge
    mrs_scrooge Posts: 198
    First Post First Anniversary Combo Breaker
    Forumite
    I recently booked a car though rentalcars.com. When I found out it was with Goldcar I googled Goldcar as I'd not heard of them. I didn't like what I read so cancelled the booking online the next morning and was refunded instantly. Then booked direct with Hertz who were the cheapest of the big names for that booking.

    When we got to Malaga some of the rental companies had no queue, some had 3 or 4 in the queue (including ours) but the Goldcar queue was literally like nothing I'd ever seen before. We overheard one lady say she'd queued for 2 and a half hours to get to the front.The queue was growing as well...

    We've been hiring cars in Europe for many years but I've now come to the conclusion that you get what you pay for. Last year we queued for an hour and a half in Italy with Auto Europa. Never again, my holiday time is too precious.

    No problems with Hertz, professional service, full to full and speedy return.

    So my advice would be - book direct or book where you can see who you are hiring from or book where you can cancel without charge if you don't like the company you've been allocated.
  • My partner and I have just returned from Spain and had a terrible experience with GoldCar. May I point out that we are not hire car newbs, he has a house over there and so we deal with Spanish hire car companies at least three times per year.

    So we booked our hire car through rentalcars.com and were allocated GoldCar. At the time we didn't think much of it as the last time we booked through this website, we were more than pleased with the Hire Car provider. There was also a collision damage waiver included in the rental price which would indicate that if you have a collision, the cost would be waived (even in the T&C's this "collision damage waiver" is still not defined as what it is, there are a lot of "may"s and "if"s and the wording is very ambiguous). So when we arrived at the rental desk at Malaga, we were advised that I would have to pay a EUR600 deposit on my Credit Card and that if I had an accident, my card would be charged. This could have been any amount, and the representative was very keen to inform me that this could even be in excess of 5k. I then explained that I had paid for the "collision damage waiver" and he informed me that this only covers the body work of the car, and if damage was caused to any other part of the car, I would be charged. This set of huge alarm bells! As everyone knows, any collision can cause damage to internal components. So I called the website's customer service dept who explained that what the GoldCar representative was telling me was correct (it was amazing how quickly the agent was able to answer my query considering the T&C's don't even appear to know what "Collision Damage Waiver" actually means). The GoldCar representative then advised me that to ensure everything was covered, I would need to pay and addition EUR65 for the full cover. So my options were A) pay the additional EUR65 for something that I already thought was covered for or B) pay EUR600 on my credit card, costing me around £20 in charges, wait up to 3 weeks for it to be refunded and also fear that any damage, at any cost could be charge to my Visa. I decided to pay for the cover at EUR65. When I arrived at the car I was actually quite glad that I did. The car was a wreck! Dents and scratches all over, so there could have also been any kind of damage to the chasis which I truly believe they would have charged to me!

    On top of this, their fuel policy is utter rubbish. They give you a full tank and insist that it is returned empty (which I'm sure you'd agree, is very hard to predetermine). So 1 tank of fuel cost me EUR100! Wow that was expensive fuel.

    Also, when they get you to sign, they have you do this on an electronic pad and no where does it say what you are signing for. And when they give you the agreement, it's not in English so you still don't know what you've signed.

    In total, I ended up paying an additional EUR165 at the desk (which they converted to £144.64, apparently I agreed to this). When I originally booked the car through rentalcars.com, it only cost me £134. That really is piling on the extras at the desk!

    In summary, do not use GoldCar! On top of all of this, they are very rude, and love to scare monger you into paying for the additional cover.
  • Paul_W
    Paul_W Posts: 3 Newbie
    I hired from GoldCar at Alicante airport in May 2013. Had the usual 75 minute wait.

    All was well until I returned the car. I was due to return the car by 1.30pm....I returned the car at 9.30am and followed their instructions "for a speedy return" to drop the keys in their safety deposit box as their car park office was unmanned.

    On my return home they sent me an email "which might be of interest to me". They had charged me 36 Euros "late return fee". It was a battle and a half to get my money back even though I explained the plane I was catching took off at 1.20pm with me on it !! I had to threaten them with legal action in the end.

    Stay away from them. They tried it on and they got caught!
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