Hi Mark, I’m so sorry to hear about your experience and I really, really hope you manage to get your money back. I cannot believe these practices are still going unchecked – it makes my blood boil!

Excellent friendly service

Stewart D

We absolutely agree with you, John. We were left feeling exactly the same way – mugged. Fortunately for us, the Goldcar employee we dealt with was actually very pleasant and not at all threatening but it does make you wonder what sort of carrot (or stick!) incentives the staff are on for ‘selling’ the excess insurance. We’re also amazed that Auto-Europe continue to use Goldcar but as long as they do, they will not be getting our business again.

There are even stories of customers being refused the car they booked unless they signed up for Goldcar’s daylight-robbery excess insurance. I unfortunately became a Goldcar customer because I used one of their agents, Auto-Europe, for a trip to Tuscany last month.

It’s a retail assault I will never forget and involved, as seems to be the norm, bulling, lying and scare tactics. I drove away from Pisa airport feeling I’d been mugged by a particularly well-organized gang of thieves.

I’m determined to make as much noise about Goldcar Rental as possible and have started by creating a dedicated page to my sorry encounter with them on my website. It includes links to press articles and review sites. I’ll add Buzz Trips to the long list of links.

http://www.daytripstoeurope.co.uk/Goldcar.htm

Wow! Bute Cartographics, eh? Excellent. I too hope the weather stays nice for you, Don, and I can’t think of a nicer place to be when the sun is shining 🙂

Oh, I couldn’t agree more, Colleen! It’s just another way to extract money from customers, particularly on islands as small as some of the Canary Islands like El Hierro where you’d have to drive in circles all day to use a full tank. Whenever I’ve tried to book someone who doesn’t operate the ‘buy a full tank and return it empty’ nonsense the prices have been waaay higher. Luckily, we didn’t only empty the tank but had to put petrol in twice more before we returned the car.
I just hope this whole practice of dealing with the crisis by trying to screw more money out of your customers leads to companies going out of business because as a consumer, I agree with you – it stinks. Feel free to rant on, any time you like 🙂