Car Rental Issues Dub Airport

pedro7

Hi all,
Firstly I apologise for the length of this....

I recently came home from New Zealand for a 3 week holiday. My partner and I's first time home in 18 months.
I had booked a rental through a comparison site for €178 for 17days. Seems a bit too good to be true right? I thought so to so I emailed the company involved directly with my booking reference price quoted and my question, "is the 178 inclusive of everything? Insurance etc?"
I received a speedy response stating that it was all inclusive of insurance and there was an optional €16 per day charge as insurance excess cover. My travel insurance covers rental excess so I thought great I found a bargain.

Any way skip 4 months and I land in Dublin after a 34hr journey and get to the counter. I'm greeted by a lady who imidiatly informs me my price is not inclusive of insurance and that it will cost more. I show her the email from the companies head office and she says she needs to speak to a manager... Guy sitting beside her chatting to a mate on the phone. She tells him what's happened and he nodded and continued the conversation for over 25minutes right in front of us. Strike 1 bad customer service!

Anyway, the call eventually ends he apologises and says my quote doesn't include insurance. And that it will be an additional 16 per day unless I take liability of the full value of the car. I slowed him my email from the company and he calls the person I corresponded with. He leaves the desk to talk in private. When he returned he apologised and said they had made a mistake but he would work something of a deal out so i wouldn't be left stranded. He gets his calculator out and says €430 with a smile. This is for a compact BTW.
He tells me that's "the cheapest car that will leave the airport today"..... In a tired rage I say no thanks and leave in a taxi.

When I got home I did some googling and it seems this companies own website is giving me a price of €300 with fully comp insurance.

So it looks like this company at the airport was trying to pull a fast one on 2 very tired people.

Is there anything I can do about this? Has anyone experience similar problems? I wasn't sure if I can name the company but will gleefully do so if allowed!


Feels good to vent that one!

Peter

Sir Arthur Daley

Are you having issue with insurance excess?

AngryHippie

If its the Rental company that shares a name with some famous Offaly hurlers, I wouldn't bother with them again.

Went through the Yellow Multinational one recently. and everything was spot on. They had missed a little dent on the pre-hire inspection report, but they sorted that quickly during pick up, I paid the extra $16 for zero excess as I was only in country for ten days, and was going to be parking up on street overnight a few times. If it was any longer I wouldn't have bothered, as the $1k excess wasn't extreme.

Sir Arthur Daley

AngryHippie wrote: »

If its the Rental company that shares a name with some famous Offaly hurlers, I wouldn't bother with them again.

Went through the Yellow Multinational one recently. and everything was spot on. They had missed a little dent on the pre-hire inspection report, but they sorted that quickly during pick up, I paid the extra $16 for zero excess as I was only in country for ten days, and was going to be parking up on street overnight a few times. If it was any longer I wouldn't have bothered, as the $1k excess wasn't extreme.

Are you seriously suggesting you only paid only $16 for car hire excess insurance for 10 days?

pedro7

No issues with the excess. I thought I was very accommodating with them. I was perfectly willing to pay somewhat more then the €178 quoted even if it was their mistake in the first place.
My issue if it's not clear, was with the fact that they made a mistake here, then tried to charge me €125 (asked for 430 they're own website charges 305) more then the going rate on their own website. Then trying to make out like they were giving is a great deal. The kiosk next to them, it turns out would have rented the same car for 200less! If we were thinking at all we should have gone and asked all the other companies there for quotes. We were just so tired and not thinking properly. They've also caused me to loose priceless time at hone with friends and family as I need to get lifts and use public transport everywhere now.
Not the Offaly hurlers namesake you're thinking of. It's a big brand international.

greeno

I had a similar issue with I believe the same company at Christmas returning from the US. It was Xmas eve and we had to travel to Donegal so we essentially got robbed blind for about 300 euros and there was little we could do about it.

What's more is I rented a golf and they wanted to offload a Mini Cooper on me that would barely hold one suitcase never mind the two we had.

AngryHippie

I think it depends on who you get at the counter.

They are very inconsistent.

I usually reserve it through the airline to get the rate and loyalty points. But I do get rentals in Oz for work fairly frequently, so it looks like I'm a regular in their system.
$16 per week. $32 total

pedro7

AngryHippie wrote: »

I think it depends on who you get at the counter.

They are very inconsistent.

I usually reserve it through the airline to get the rate and loyalty points. But I do get rentals in Oz for work fairly frequently, so it looks like I'm a regular in their system.
$16 per week. $32 total

That's a good point my partner rents cars in NZ from this company regularly. Ill check that out and see what happens. I just found emirates have an offer with erocar so I'll call them once they open. Thanks!

pedro7

greeno wrote: »

I had a similar issue with I believe the same company at Christmas returning from the US. It was Xmas eve and we had to travel to Donegal so we essentially got robbed blind for about 300 euros and there was little we could do about it.

What's more is I rented a golf and they wanted to offload a Mini Cooper on me that would barely hold one suitcase never mind the two we had.

We were lucky my girlfriends parent's don't live far from the airport.
It just seemed they were taking advantage and trying to pull a fast one. Like you say if you need to get away into the country they have you and they don't mind abusing it.

Trying to promote Ireland as a tourist destination and then as soon as they land companies try to shaft them. Not nice.

dudara

I just don't rent through the comparison websites. I simply don't trust the offers that I see there. Is insurance covered or not? What are the catches etc?

I always prefer to book directly. At least that way I have a clearer view on what I will be charged. I have status with Hertz and I am yet to have a bad experience with them.

keithclancy

dudara wrote: »

I just don't rent through the comparison websites. I simply don't trust the offers that I see there. Is insurance covered or not? What are the catches etc?

I always prefer to book directly. At least that way I have a clearer view on what I will be charged. I have status with Hertz and I am yet to have a bad experience with them.

The rule of thumb is to book on the European site, this in my experience usually always includes CDW.

I used autoeurope.ie for the last 6 years now multiple times in multiple countries, Ireland, UK, US, Greece, Germany, France, Netherlands and a good few more and have never had a problem.

The excess is covered on my Travel Insurance (as long as its 160km away from my home address)

Have also used cardelmar and carhire3000 but ended up with Thrifty too much, they're not bad but their cars are a bit battered and its a bit further from Dublin airport

Also they've tried to pull a fast one where at the airport they say you must drop the car back empty but if you just go out to the depot you can just drop it back full.

Normal price I pay from Dublin airport is 10 euros per day, lowest was 7.85/day and highest was around 14 euros per day.

You just need to double check on the voucher whats included:


Picture of my inbox so nobody thinks i'm a shill :P



Booking Directly with Hertz for example has little benefit for me, Hertz is a franchise anyway.

emo72

my brother has this nightmare when he comes back. he got caught once with massive extra charges. he just wont hire a car anymore in ireland. it is bad for tourism in fairness.

pedro7

Yeah thats what I thought imagine a tourist having this situation. I didnt bother renting one at all in the end. I put myself on some family members car insurance policies so between them I'll have a car all the time. For a lot less!

FamousBelgian

pedro7 wrote: »

Hi all,
Firstly I apologise for the length of this....

I recently came home from New Zealand for a 3 week holiday. My partner and I's first time home in 18 months.

[...]

Is there anything I can do about this? Has anyone experience similar problems? I wasn't sure if I can name the company but will gleefully do so if allowed!


Feels good to vent that one!

Peter

I had the same experience three years ago at DUB with Budget. The car was e16 per day, in summer, prepaid, which was suspiciously lower than the competition but was supposed to include the usual CDW with the typical excess of 1200. They tried to charge me for the CDW saying that it was never included in bookings made thru third party websites. At that point I have to do a calculation and ask myself is it worth the hassle to walk away. I listen to some ridiculous story and in the end the clerk offers a deal of only e60 for the CDW for the week, which I took.

Since then I've had no trouble at DUB and I rent there about six times a year. I usually use rentalcars.com or argus (there are so many of these sites now) and I usually get a car from one of the multinationals excluding Hertz and Avis. Some of the rates have been so ridiculously low (like e3 per day in January!) that I'm almost embarrassed but I've never had any hassle with insurance on pickup or nitpicking the damage on return.

For insurance I have e500 covered with the card I use and I have an annual excess policy for e50 that covers the rest (luckily never had to test this). Enterprise/Dollar/Thrifty have been the best with Budget (yes, I got them again) having the worst cars, like just meeting the minimum for the class you booked.

I'd say the OP should complain to the rental company (I guess you can post their name here. They sell to the general public, after all) claiming they didn't honour the prepaid agreement. Getting a refund from the booking site might be another issue since they'll need to verify you weren't a no-show. I had an issue with Avis at DUB once where they tried to charge me for damage from the previous renter. I complained to both booking site and Avis and got a refund from one and a voucher from the other.