Fridays RANT ....not from Green Giant but the normal calm and collected Jim Reid

[jimreidvehicle 255]

As I have been ranting on Social Media, Green Giant has asked me to vent my fury on Car Dealer Forum as one of his guests, like a guest blogger I guess (wow that's a lot of guests and guesses) As it is still holiday time I thought I would have a holiday RANT, read on.........

In June , Gail and I jetted off to Spain for some sunshine as Scotland has experience one of the wettest and coldest summers of all time. I could tell you about the 40 degree heat , the cloudless skies or almost perfect villa we stayed in however the biggest bugbear is this :-

As part of ordering the flights through Jet2 they offered the cheapest deal on car hire also, so we ordered a fantastic deal on a VW Golf Petrol or equivalent, when we reached Alicante Airport in scorching heat we were forced to wait in a queue the size you would expect to see at Wimbledon (actually maybe there were people camping in the queue), one hour and 30 mins later we reached the front stupidly thinking the hold up would be the fact that they had recently abolished the paper part of the driving licence and you had to gain a code from DVLA (which we had done , see smart cookies)   BUT NO, the queue was due to the hard-sell staff, upselling insurance cover and upgrades on the cars that had already been booked ( yet we try and make a few quid from a GAP policy and have to jump through hoops).

So we get to the front of the queue, after 3 hours on the plane and another 1 hour coming through security and passport etc and did I mention the 90 minute queue? We had all our paperwork ready , driving licence and went for the straight to the point "we don't want any upgrades" package, so now looking forward to a lovely Tsi Golf or similar , the guy says we don't have any petrol Golfs on books, so would a diesel one, do , "of course" thinking I could save a bit of cost on fuel with better MPG, " that will be 50 euros extra for the week" and £140 EURO for fuel as it comes with full tank of fuel,

EH NO! You will have to find an equivalent petrol, I said, he mumped and grumped and back he came after 5 mins holding the keys to a Seat Leon, so I said is that the same price as the petrol Golf, YES he replied, RESULT I thought, but NO, another way of milking money.... the LEON has a larger fuel tank than a GOLF, no he obviously didn't know that I'm a car buff!  BULL!!!!!!!  the car has the same 50ltr tank in both cars,8 EUROS MORE, but he wouldn't budge and the fact that I was going to get back a percentage of the fuel back anyway as we only planned small trips using the car I left it at the agreed price!

Now I won't bore you with the 'the car is brand new ,has been fully checked and there are no marks on the car' remark from him only to find a car with 20+ kms on the car obviously through the normal wars of Spanish driving and high kerbs, I went to reception and got them to change the damage marks on the car paperwork, all 5 of them and note that it had no parcel shelf (helps when you are experienced at checking in cars at the garage!) So drama over, the car did really well, actually I really enjoyed the poke of the power and the comfort of this small car, lovely wee engine with a turn of power and frugal, so much in fact that we returned the car with over half a tank of fuel, which I wasn't caring about because the reception guys said ' return it with any amount of fuel , we credit you for what you have not used minus a fuelling charge , which was best for us because I'm a nightmare trying to find a petrol station near the airport, so bingo!

We have now been back from holiday for more than 6 weeks and still no sign of the credit for the fuel even though we have sent Jet2 numerous emails with a picture of the fuel gauge showing the exact miles and fuel left in the car when we dropped it back. So being a Social Media monster I took to twitter last week with my rant, they did the normal thing take you offline with a DM say everything is ok and they are looking into it, which is the same message now 8 days in a row!

So the point of this story is this! DON'T EVER BOOK A RENTAL CAR THROUGH JET2 , THEY RIP YOU OFF! AMEN!

           

[Steve92 80]

Gold car by any chance ? A lot of the cheap companies do the fuel surcharge trick, I had a brand new fiat 500that I still managed to find a tiny dent in but to be fair Avis were good, they were fine on drop off too. I booked mine through ba, no idea why but return flights to Majorca were £504, adding 9 days group a car hire made it £414 ...... No idea why but it was a nice little car. Someone still managed to put a mark on it, but nothing a felt tip pen wouldn't fix.

[jimreidvehicle 255]

yup Gold Car, easily spotted in the Airport, they have the longest queue!

[GreenGiant 287]

Oh.

Got a rental car booked at Alicante airport in a few weeks' time....

...with Goldcar...

May rethink that now.

However, I booked through doyouspain.com and filtered out the full/empty fuel policy bandits and selected full/full. Needless to say, that costs more up front, but they can't stiff you for the 'cost' of the fuel.

And I have an Annual car hire excess policy for waaaay less than they try and strap you up for. This obviously means they have no additional income from any bolt-ons so will be looking to find any damage they can when I return so they can try and charge 600 Euros for a small chip on the bumper.

I always take great care when collecting a rental car and take many many photos of all blemishes and also make sure the damage report is FULLY completed before I even leave the car park.

Needless to say, the holiday car rental business is constantly being cited as a major tourist scam that needs sorting. Shame other governments in the EU don't give as much of a toss about conforming as we seem to.

[umesh 336]

I was just trying to think who I booked with couple of years ago .. I'm sure its Goldcar ? 

Same issue queued for 2 hours ... tried to up sell me a car , when that failed they offered me a smart car ! i refused I said how are going to carry our luggage etc - I had booked a 'small car' not a micro car .. eventually got a fiesta .. THEN told me my CDW insurance would not apply and I had to leave a 'open card / 500/600 Euro - I refused and eventually they accepted ... ( Sounds like a retail customer's story about buying a new car from a main dealer  ) sorry ! 

Felt so , sorry for the next elderly couple who were just being taken through the same rip off script .....

when I returned the car, it was hard work - a lady said just leave it there - I insisted she walked around with me and signed the agreement to say no damage ! 

total rip off ! 

[Steve92 80]

That's why the likes of record, gold car etc are so cheap. Avis and hertz can be reasonable when you take into account no fuel charges and that they give you time to walk around the vehicle and give you a printed receipt at the end. They do try and sell the insurance but like Jim I have a policy for that which covers more. If you ever go to the Canary Islands try plus car. We use them every time we go to lanzarote, it costs around 100 euros for 9 days, you don't need to leave a security deposit and there is no insurance charges and no excess. Cars are up to 3 years old and anything up to 60k, but the posh stuff is newer.