Monday, August 24, 2015

Daylight robbery

When we were in Mallorca, we hired a seven seater people carrier to transport us around. The company we used was Goldcar.

My son in law picked the vehicle up from Palma airport and paid 110 euros for a full tank of diesel. Several journeys later, it was showing we needed to refill. We could only get 55 euros of fuel in and then it was up to the brim. Clearly a full tank from empty was half the price that Goldcar had charged and I very much doubt it was actually full to start with.

After several more similar journeys my son in law took the vehicle back with three quarters of a tank of fuel left for which they gave him a 18 euro refund.

No doubt Goldcar put in a further 10 or 15 euros of deisel, claimed it was full and charged the next customer another 110 euros.

The whole business stinks of dishonesty. Why don't they just charge a proper rate for hire instead of making it up with the so called extras?


2 comments:

Bill said...

The relatively inexpensive daily/weekly hire rates ('headline' rates) have to be paid for somehow, which it seems to me impacts more on short hire periods than those of longer duration; the seemingly amazingly-low daily rates are just designed to pull in "punters". I generally rent cars for at least a month, often two or upto three months to coincide with my lengthier stays at my home in Spain so whilst I notice the "rip-off" you mention too it is a matter I don't concern myself with too much in the greater scheme of things - my next rental (towards the end of September) will be for a period of 5+ weeks. Some of my friends do rent from Goldcar, although I never have; for the past several years I've rented from Centauro and they are certainly not the cheapest, but the vehicles I get from them are generally clean and trouble-free - on the rare occasions I've had a problem I've gone back and exchanged the "dud" for another car with little hassle. I know it's frustrating to feel you are being "ripped off" and I sometimes feel that way too with car hire, but I simply can't get too worked up about it - I don't like to squander money, obviously, but to be honest I have more important matters to occupy me right now - the impact of the latest fall in stock markets on my investment portfolio for one, but I will survive I'm pretty sure - and so will you I hope. Have another glass of wine ... ;)

Pete said...

The Evalia has a fuel tank capacity of 55 litres. Goldcar are charging €2 a litre. Ouch.