The damage that never was (Europcar)

Member Name: chericbaker

Product:	Europcar
Date:	08/07/08 (197 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Friendly staff at Lyon, roomy vehicle

Disadvantages: Utterly dishonest or incompetent later

Four of us hired a car at Lyon St Exupery airport in May 2008 through Holiday Autos and they chose Europcar as their local agent. We had no problems at all with the car (and no bumps) and when we returned it to the airport a uniformed Europcar employee carefully inspected it and (in front of us five adults from three different families) said there was no problem, nothing to sign and sent us off with a smile. She did notice a bit of loose plastic trim under a door but accepted that was just normal new car loosening - she certainly didn't see any need for a damage report. It probably cost a few cents worth of glue to fix back on. "Nice company to do business with" I thought.

Back home they sent us an invoice saying "Damage Surcharge" (no other explanation) for a ludicrously round figure of EUR 1,000.00 plus VAT which they translated at an appalling rate (which I don't believe they're allowed to do without permission) into GBP 975.24. That's 1.226 EUR to 1 GBP when the real rate on my credit card the day we took the car back was 1.27. Then they compounded the scam by taking it from my credit card account in two chunks, presumably to avoid large amount checks that could have stopped the scam at source.

Since then I have spent a considerable amount of time writing, emailing etc with no response whatsoever from Europcar France and nothing useful from Holiday Autos or Europcar UK either. But just in time my credit card company (Nationwide, who give excellent exchange rates on overseas purchases) have come up trumps and put the scam amounts into dispute status so at least they haven't hit my bank account.

My guess is that Europcar puts severe pressure on its employees to meet short term targets whatever the long term cost in terms of customers outraged by their behaviour. It's not just that I would never use Europcar again - I'm so annoyed by their scam that I want to warn as many other people as I can too.

We did pay Holiday Autos a modest sum for a damage excess waiver - but their terms say they can only reimburse a damage excess charge if there is a damage report. How could there be a damage report when the Europcar inspector agreed there was no damage and nothing to sign?

The previous time we rented a car in France I chose Sixt, from Montpellier airport. We had the same car, a Ford CMAX, as from Europcar but none of the nasty aftershocks.

Since this happened I've told people from Enterprise and Avis about it and both were incredulous that a company could be so stupid as to inspect and accept a returned car then later hit the customer's credit card account.

Update 2 days later: finally my persistence has paid off. First Europcar France reversed the GBP1,000 hit on my card, substituting a still outrageous GBP200. Then Europcar UK refunded the remaining amount so I've just lost a lot of time. What sealed it was The Guardian newspaper forwarding my email account of this saga to Europcar UK. Well done The Guardian! Apparently all this was over the bit of loose plastic trim the Europcar inspector noticed but didn't deem worthy of a damage report.

Summary: Europcar? Never again! At least I got my money back in the end.