Goldcar

Like many others I hired a car through Carjet and this was supplied by Goldcar.  I was charged in £ sterling and because of the exchange rate they used I reckoned that this cost me an extra £7.  I complained via Carjet was was told by Goldcar that I have the choice of currency to be used. 

Last week on arrival in Alicante for another little break I went to collect my car and told the girl I wanted to pay in euros - no problem.  She simply complied with my request.  When she gave me the bill I noticed that the fuel charge had two elemenets to it 75 euros against the word fuel and 15 euros against the word diesil.   This was a total of 90 euros of fuel for a car that has a tank capacity of about 55  litres.  I objected and told them that I had previously complained about this charge on 3 ocassions and had the 15 euros refunded.  The girl said this was the way they always charged for fuel.  The manager was called and I told him that Goldcar HQ had previously refunded the money and they had said it was an error.  The manager immediately withdrew this extra charge.

But let me tell you about my greatest saving.  I booked this car in Dec 2008 for 26th Oct 2009 and the quote was 196 euros.  Given all the problems with cars this year and the rise in prices I was curious to see how much the charge would be increased by if I had booked it now (24th September)  for the same dates in Oct.  The quote fell to 166 euros - same car - same company Goldcar.  I then tried the quote a week before I went on holiday and the price fell further to 156 euros.  I obviously cancelled the two higher quotes and used the 156 euros quote.

There are lessons to be learnt here.

Grover

Yes, Avoid these money grabbing thiefing b*&%^&ds at all costs!

.. Still waiting for my refund on the full tanks for my car hire when i returned them full on two occasions recently (see other Goldcar thread) ... and both were for less than 3 days ... i.e.  I should get a refund for unused fuel according to my terms and conditions i agreed to at time of booking.

Don't get me started on this Mickey Mouse car hire operation.

Do yourselves a favour and avoid ... there are plenty other hire car providers at the airports.

The thing that I find worrying is the attempt to charge for a new clutch if you happen to be the person renting the car when it packs in.  Commonsense tells you that clutch don't go because of a few days driving.  Given these are rented cars driven by a multiplicity of people over the course of a year then clutches should be specifically excluded from the charging for damages.  I would expect my broker to defend me to the hilt if this happened to me but I bet they wouldn't.

PaddyW