Upsetting dealing with their member of staff (Europcar)

Member Name: sarah101

Product:	Europcar
Date:	28/08/08 (445 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Was a nice car

Disadvantages: The entire booking in process was awful

I am giving this review from what I have experienced and I will never again use Europcar but I am in no way saying you should not (just to cover myself!) This is an honest account of my dealings with them so far. I will update this reviw when I have had a response from them.

Booking through a third party, no problems paid an extra £60ish for maxi cover and £30ish for an additional driver. Used the CDG France office and I have never in my life come across such rude people. I stood in line for 5 mins with another group of people behind me waiting, with two ladies on the desk not serving but doing paperwork. As I have worked in customer services and retail management I did not want to go over until I was called incase they were doing something important. I only went over to one lady after people ignoring the queue went straight up to one lady and got served straight away. I went over and said excuse me a few times with the woman not even looking up to me, waited thinking it was a language barrier when she finally did look up I asked her if I was in the right place and she said yes, I asked her if she could deal with me or did I need to wait to see the other lady. I was ignored once more, I went back to my place in the queue believing this woman was not able to understand me. Shockingly she called us forward a few mins later and spoke fluent english!

Thinking she would perhaps appoligise or explain her earlier behaviour was another error on my part. She continued with this level of awful customer care and told us we had not paid for insurance, which we assured her we had and showed her out print out with MAXI cover clearly written on. At this point she consulted her collegue and spoke in French laughing at several points and it was painfully aware even to the children that they were making jokes at our expense. When the second member of staff said we had paid for insurance we were relieved but they then went on to say we had to pay extra for an additional driver, again we explained we had paid that already but they said we had to pay it again. We had no choice but to pay the extra 40 euros and additional cost for local tax which we expected.

When it came to checking our passports and driving licences again came the talking and laughing in French between the two women. I am positive they were laughing at us for some reason and even if they were not, surley someone working in a customer care role would know speaking in a different language to a collegue and laughing and looking up at the customer and laughing again would be considered rude!!!

Once we paid the money and went to collect our car we were stood waiting once again to be ignored for around 15 mins. The man in the office did explain the wait and was helpful when he dealt with us and we asked him about extra cover and he assured us it was on the booking and it was nothing to worry about - something the first lady said we did not have even when her fellow europcar employee said we did!!

The only good point I have to make about my experience was that the car was lovely, bigger than expected and easy to drive. When we dropped it back it was the same three women in the main building and the lady we dealt with this time seemed ok, but just took keys and said thanks.

I have emailed to complain when we got back and apart from the automated response of thanks for your query we will get back to you asap, we have had no contact in nearly two weeks. So I called a few days ago and the woman I spoke to said on their system it has only been 4 full working days from the time the email was logged, although it was 12 days - it took 5 days for them to log the email. She explained that they had emailed France and they would be dealing with it as it was a serious complaint it was not just a case of over paying. I said I was dissapointed that in those 12 days they did not feel the need to just drop a simple email explaining that they were dealing with the complaint and would get back to us soon. She also told me their t&c's state it will be 7-14 days for them to get back to people. She assured me it was not being ignored, but at this point I did not find it very assuring! This woman was polite and helpful but as I said to her I did expect some contact as after making a complaint like that after receiving awful service I would expect someone would want to prove to me this is not indicitive of the whole company.

I have overplayed this in my head, was I rude to the woman first? - NO my first contact with her was excuse me only to be ignored after already being ignored in the queue. Was I rude to the other woman? - NO all I said was that I had already paid for maxi cover and could not understand why I was being asked to pay for it again. Did I have something funny on my face? - NO I had just been to the toilets and splashed my face with cold water! I can see no reason for this womans behaviour and the second lady was not much better. I can honestly say I have never experienced poorer service in my life. Until this point I have never complained about something but I left that building feeling so upset, infact all 4 of us did.

At this point now, 14 days after my emailing my complaint I do not know if I will get my money back (even though that is not even the reason I complained!) I have received no actual appology from Europcar for being treated this way.

As I said at the start of this very long review - thanks for those who have read it all, I will update when I receive a response from them with what happens. Again I am not telling you not to use Europcar I am just giving an account on the way I was treated by their staff!

Summary: I will never use them again I have never been treated with such dis-regard by another human being