Don’t Get Ripped Off By Foreign Rental Companies When Travelling Abroad

Thursday, 13. April 2017

As Easter is nearly upon us I thought I would share something I read with you in the event you are travelling abroad and may be renting a car. I read that a chap was in France and needed to rent a car. He was handed the keys of a diesel and whilst they can sound a bit rough when diesel cars initially start up, they generally settle down and, after a while, sound from the outside as well as the inside, no different to a petrol car.

However, in this case, as the engine warmed up it got progressively noisier and as the driver knew a thing or two about cars he identified, quite quickly, that the car had been miss-fuelled. He took the car back to the rental company and swapped it for another car but it was what he was told by the major rental company rep. that was a little worrying.

He explained that as most rental companies have mixed fleets of diesels and petrols it was quite easy for a non French speaking client to top the car up with the wrong fuel whilst rushing to get to hand the car back before catching their plane home. But it was suggested that some unscrupulous rental companies were handing over cars that they knew to be miss-fuelled.

Then when you returned with the car arguing that the client must have miss-fuelled the car and charging their credit card with the cost of repair as it ‘wasn’t covered by the insurance’. The suggestion was that they wouldn’t repair the car, simply keep it to one side waiting for the next sucker.

So if this is the case make sure you use recognised, well established, rental companies with plenty of on-line recommendations. Make sure that the insurance policy covers miss-fuelling, run the engine for a short while and if the noise on startup gets worse within 5 minutes reject the car and ask for a replacement. Oh and of course, whichever country you are visiting, get to know the words for petrol and diesel. By Graham Hill

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