Car Rental abroad – a cautionary tale

[JayCeeDee]

 

We booked a car hire through RyanAir and got ripped off by Goldcar for £100, there has been no support from RyanAir other than a pathetic apology and no action.

We left an €1100 deposit and €126 for petrol to hire a car from Goldcar in Murcia last week. I’d forgotten the PIN for our Credit Card so used a Debit Card instead. We made – unknowingly/unwittingly and in all innocence – the mistake of paying in £ sterling. It got converted at a rough rate on the day to £1142.99. It wasn’t wonderful, but we accepted that.

When it came to re-paying the deposit we only got £1045.12 back – a shortfall of £97.87!!

On contacting Ryanair – who our contract was with because they had taken our money – we got the following pathetic excuse for an apology.

 

“Thank you very much for your correspondence in relation to the experience you had when renting with Goldcar through Ryanair Car Hire.

Looking at your rental agreement and final invoice I can confirm that you have been charged for a deposit in EUR and and upgrade and airport fee in EUR. However, because your card is in GBP the currency was converted. Unfortunately, are neither Ryanair Car Hire or Goldcar responsible for charges for the exchange rate and/or differences in the exchange rate.

I understand this is not the answer you were hoping for. I apologise for any inconvenience this might have caused, but we can not offer you a refund of the exchange rate.”

 

Now I would have understood £20 lost on a couple of exchange transactions and accepted that as my mistake, but £100 is taking the proverbial!!!

The case  is ongoing and I’ve left similar posts to above on our FB, Ryanair FB, Goldcar FB and my new Twitter account!!

 

 

[PlaneMan]

Good luck  You’ve done the best thing, shame them in public

[Dave Rice]

I use a FairFX currency card, best thing I’ve ever done. It’s a Mastercard and you pay locally (or take cash out of the ATM)  in Euros. Never had any trouble using it.

Top up is easy, you link it to a UK debit card and use an app on your phone to top it up (more or less instantly) and view transactions. We leave any balance in there for next time but you can take it out as cash at a UK ATM .

Transactions are free and ATM is 1.50

[blacklion1725]

Ryanair I avoid wheever possible – if I have to fly with them (do in a couple of weeks) I double check everything. Their seats are horrible (bolt upright and hard as nails) and they charge you for EVERYTHING. Currency conversion is a racket – I’ve been stung so have a lot of symapthy.

[Bob Williams]

Memories of visiting Brugge in 2000, about 7 months after the currency was introduced across the EU. We took € Travellers’ Cheques and discovered that one of the best hotels in Brugge was not yet set up to deal with it! ? The receptionist called the manager, who advised us to change them at a local bank, “We prefer Sterling anyway, and you should make a small profit: the € is still weak against the £”. He was right, but a discovered inefficiency was not hopeful for the future. Many of my German friends were not happy with the Southern European nation members joining the €: they saw it as Germany, the UK and France eventually having to support those nations. Not altogether wrong, were they?

That’s not a Brexit viewpoint: I voted Remain. And we eventually had our own currency worries, didn’t we?

Thanks for the warning though John. If I ever manage a European holiday again, I will take my own wheels. If. In my time I have driven Europe in many types of vehicle, in RHD and LHD, so it would not worry me. While I am sat in a driving seat, I’m fine. It’s getting out and getting everything back into Firing Order, that is the problem! ??

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Drezha]

Unfortunately it sounds perfectly legit to me with no fault of Ryanair or Goldcar – most banks will charge you a fee as a percentage for the conversion as well as the conversion rate – usually a percentage fee, so that sounds like how you’ve been stung – that’s jsut less than 1% of the amount charged. Not the answer you wanted, but unfortunately that’s the facts.

However I sympathise, as I was caught out on the Ryanair car hire as well recently – we hired a car and last time we were in Ireland, we’d had to pay the deposit on a credit card at the desk (had to be credit card). As I didn’t have the cash, we had to pay the additional insurance waiver, which was fine, but made the hire pricer. Well, this time around when we hired, I made use of the insurance that Ryanair were offering at the time of hire (as the hire through them is actually cheaper!). So £15 later for the insurance for the three days, we turned up and checked in for the car, to be told that we needed to pay the deposit still or get the additional insurance because the insurance we had didn’t cover it! The insurance we’d purchased would cover us in event of an accident and the car hire firm taking the deposit and then we claim through the car hire firm. Anyhow, that cost us about £90 to get the insurance from them – tripling the £30 car hire fee! Wont be making that mistake again.

As per Dave, I have a similar card – a Monzo account, as I’m over towards Ireland and back. I’ve also a Revolut card as that lets us transfer money to it, convert to Euros, and then send to a bank account in Ireland ready for our wedding next year. Conversion is far cheaper than competitors such as Transferwise!

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Richard]

I have never hired a car in Europe, too many tales of woe have assaulted my ears. Many years ago I bought a car in Italy and drove it round Europe but hat was before credit cards and the like. Exchange controls were still an issue, so bouncing into Italy with 100,000 lira notes was not really supposed to be on; we had one each but luckily did not get stopped at the border. Apart from that I think it was travellers’ cheques with the odd dollop of cash. I know we had a continuous drive across Germany, France and sSouthern England on the last day as the funds were running low. The ONLY place were were ever stopped was Sussex, at 03:00 in a police road block. They rarely got drivers with a Middle Eastern driving license, an IDP, a UK license, Italian log book and insurance issued via a Middle East agent. plus UK passports. They did not read Italian but noticed the plates did match the number in the book, so we were soon on our way.

Like Bob, that is not an experience I expect to repeat, the insurance would kill the idea straight off the bat.

[JayCeeDee]

blacklion1725 wrote:

Ryanair I avoid whenever possible – if I have to fly with them (do in a couple of weeks) I double check everything. Their seats are horrible (bolt upright and hard as nails) and they charge you for EVERYTHING. Currency conversion is a racket – I’ve been stung so have a lot of sympathy.

 

You’re right they do charge for everything. Seat allocation on the way out cost £3.99 ( Check in is 5 days prior to flying. ) On the way back the same seat allocation was £10.00, but by that time you’re out there and at their mercy. Their “Bag Drop” at Stansted tried it on too. Had I not known what my case weighed ( 15kg out of a 20kg allowance ) when the bag drop machine told me I needed to purchase a £20.00 over-allowance ticket if I’d been in a rush I might well have paid it.

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