Stranded in a small town in Norway for a week when our PREPAID rental car was not there (they closed the office 4 months before and neglected to tell us) and all the customer service person at Europcar could muster was “I am sorry for the inconvenience”.
Our nightmare with Europcar started when we booked and prepaid for our car 6 months before our trip. We arrived in Sogndal airport on schedule and I knew something was amiss when the Hertz guy replied when I asked where the Europcar desk was “why don’t you wait until I am finished with everyone and I will try and help you”. Europcar had apparently closed the local office 4 months earlier and had failed to notify us by e-mail or phone even though they had both. The awesome Hertz guy did everything he could to find us a car (Hertz and Avis were sold out) – even driving us to the Avis office in town just in case, and then to our hotel. His manager apparently called Europcar that night and again the next morning to tell them they needed to take care of their stranded customer. No action.
We contacted Europcar that night via on-line chat and that’s when I got the “sorry for the inconvenience” message. And then they gave me the phone number of the customer service office in France. I tried calling that number but the message I got was only in French with no option for any other language.
The Europcar person on the online chat said that they had a car in another town a few hours away, but they refused to send someone to get it. (You have to realize how many hundreds of dollars we are spending a day to be in Norway - and they cannot be bothered to go get a car for us when THEY are the problem). That is exactly what Sixt car rental did for us that night. The awesome guy in the TI who was a Sixt agent sent a driver to the next town 1.5 hours away to get a car for us. Without that we would have been stranded for a week. Bright an early the next morning our Sixt car was waiting for us.
Europcar’ s customer service has been virtually non-existent. I have contacted them several times via email with a request to respond immediately. All you get back is an auto-reply to the effect of “We are very busy. This is our peak season. Please be patient.” And then nothing. Hey Europcar – just in case you don’t understand – it’s MY peak vacation season and it would be nice to get some service while I spend hundreds of dollars a day in a foreign country trying to arrange for a replacement car.
It has taken weeks with numerous emails to get a refund on the money I paid them. And then they did not refund me the full amount – due to exchange rate miscalculations they shorted me ten dollars. That’s a really nice touch – take my money for 6 months, drag your feet on returning it, and then stiff me a few dollars!
The only bright light in the whole thing (other than the great help from Hertz and Sixt) was Heidi at the Norway Europcar customer service center who eventually secured my refund – and apologized whole-heartedly. Thanks for the help Heidi.
My lessons learned:
1. I will never, ever rent from Europcar
2. I will probably not prepay again (I had checked the viability of Europcar before we paid and they even offered a full refund if you cancelled within 24 hours, so I figured I was safe). I also found out afterwards that Visa will not help you in this case because they will only help with a claim made within a couple of months of payment - not service (I think that was the time limit). Since I prepaid 6 months ahead they would not help me.
3. I will never deal with a company that does not have an easily accessible English customer service number. Just try to go on Europcar’s web site and find a customer service number for the UK office (that’s the office my refund request had to be processed through).
The flip side is that both Hertz and Sixt provided excellent service.