europcar.ie

Deeply Humiliating Rental Experience - Never again

A big red flag to never hire a car with Europcar Ireland.I rented cars for the last 20 years both private and on business with many different agencies. I never had such a negative & humiliating experience in my life.As part of our 17 Day Summer Holiday with my sons (11 & 14) we prebooked a rental car with Europcar and picked up our rental at Dublin Airport (count on at least 1.5 hours waiting time!). On the third day our car broke down an hour south of Dublin at 5.30PM upon which we called road assistance. It took several calls for them to arrive around 9.30 that evening. Unfortunately, the car was beyond repair (cooling system issue) and Road assistance left us around 10pm after calling a taxi for us to bring us back to our BandB about 35 minutes away from the broken car. The road assistance mechanic instructed us to keep our key (as road assistance would need to come up to our BandB and pick up the key) and contact Europcar the next day to arrange for a replacement car.We called Europcar the next morning at 8am to inquire about a replacement car and were happy to hear a car was available in their Dublin South location. What was shocking however was that they could not issue the replacement car until the broken car would be towed away by road assistance. And that task was put back to us.This is where things got unpleasant. We were exhausted (especially my two sons) from the prior day; we were stuck in a BandB without means of transport and nobody seemed to have any solution to offer. In addition we had to check out at 10.30AM so were literally outside the room in the guest room making our phone calls.We made several calls to road assistance (very long waiting times every call) and after a lot of arguing got green light to drop off the key in a hotel close to the broken car (they refused to come down to our BandB despite instructions from the prior evening) and then make our way to Dublin EuropcarIn addition: road assistance flatly told us to sort out transportation ourselves as they did not have transportation available. They were only allowed to use one specific provider and that one did not have any cars going that way. We tried several local companies ourselves as well as Uber and found it impossible to find a taxi ourselves as well. We eventually arranged private transportation to make the roundtrip back to Dublin.We arrived, quite exhausted, at Dublin south Europcar around 3pm that afternoon. Again, a lot of arguments and in short, they could not issue a replacement car as the broken car was not yet back in Europcar depot. This is 22(!) hours after our initial call to road assistance despite many many calls from my end. And still we are being made responsible for the whole experience.After a lot of arguing we were forced to take out a NEW contract which came with an additional rental agreement & costs plus an additional charge of 1800’euros deposit (on top of the initial 1800 that came with the initial contract).Being stuck with 2 children at 3.15PM, luggage and our evening booking in Connemara west Ireland (a good 4-hour drive) we were forced to accept the offer and made our way to western Ireland. In the following weeks I made many email inquiries and phone calls to figure out how to get back my deposit and double rental costs. Emails are NEVER answered so your only way is to make phone calls which in the end never resolved anything (despite good efforts from the staff).I had to escalate the issue to UK regional headquarters (Responsible for Ireland/UK/Nordics) to finally (after about 6 weeks) resolve the issue.In Summary :If your car breaks down the contracts with Road Assistance are extremely poor. And Europcar shows no empathy or responsibility to step in and help out (how easy would it have been to simply provide a new rental to a family stuck only 1 hour out of Dublin?). Local Irish staff is totally uncapable of resolving anything and they are clearly short-staffed as well.I did get a written apology but nowhere in the process did I ever feel it was meant or really will drive improvement.I will never rent a car with Europcar Ireland again in my life.Update 29 Oct : Europcar's response proves my point. They already have all details in multiple emails and documents and also escalations through the regional HQ. Their response is just an automated reply without any meaning or action.

Date of experience: Aug 04, 2025