europcar.pt

Scammers

Really wish I could post 0 stars as the service has been awful.We rented a car in July 2022 which was included in the cost of our holiday. On arrival at Europcar Faro I found the staff extremely pushy. They were trying to get us to upgrade and add on various extras. I know this is kind of expected at these sorts of places but I do feel they went over the top.We were offered an extra to pay for tolls (I believe it was about €20) and we were told this would cover us for unlimited transfers through the tolls in Faro. We agreed to this and thought nothing further of it.When we collected the car there was another customer waiting for hers and she advised us to be very careful as she had previously been charged for a dent on the car which was already there. We were extremely careful when checking the car over.When returning our car the process was fairly straightforward. The Europcar staff member looked over the car, signed it off that there was no damage, discussed the fact we had paid for the tolls so assured us there was nothing further to do or to pay.In October 2023 (15 months after our rental) I received a letter from EPC saying we owed about €3 for unpaid tolls which had risen to about €45 for additional fees. At no point had Europcar emailed me or called me to let me know anything was to be paid. So they had transferred this “debt” to some sort of agency.I therefore contacted Europcar and ended up spending hours of my time trying to resolve this. After weeks and weeks of waiting they eventually received a reply to say there had been some sort of error at their end which prevented them from requesting the additional money. I then had to send yet another email saying there never should have been anything additional to pay as I was told the tolls were included and also told the same info when dropping the car back.After waiting an age for another reply I was told that the fee I had paid for the tolls wasn’t actually unlimited and it only covered up to the €20 I’d paid - anything additional would be charged on top. As previously mentioned this was completely the opposite to what we were told.Eventually Europcar agreed to pay the admin fees (due to their multiple admin errors) but not the toll fees. I was shocked they wouldn’t just write the balance off as some sort of goodwill gesture but they weren’t budging. They made me pay the full amount or threatened additional fees and only when I’d confirmed I’d paid the full amount would they then transfer the money for the admin fees.I’ve finally received the money into my account today after weeks and weeks of emails. I certainly won’t ever use Europcar Faro again or Europcar in any other destination for that matter. It feels like the whole company is bent as anything.AVOID AT ALL COSTS

Date of experience: Dec 11, 2023