golcar.pt

Beware Customer Service

Have used Goldcar from Faro Airport many times a year for several years without incident and found the staff there helpful and professional. A reoccuring issue is whilst the Portuguese Authorities have introduced compulsory charging in advance by car hire companies for potential use of toll roads. If those roads are not used Goldcar is supposed to refund the customer. It does not operate a policy of automatically doing this and so the onus is on the customer to write to customer services to receive reimbursement. No doubt many will have forgotten they had paid an advance toll charge. Writing to customer services and requesting the refund does result in repayment, but a system of automaticslly refunding customers what us due to them would demonstrate good customer service and PR for Goldcar.Unfortunately on 2 recent bookings have 2 separate problems and the customer services team have not demonstrated a reasonable level of ......customer service. Following a late evening pick-up when there was no requirement for air conditioning, the a/c in the hire car was found not to be working the following day with temperatures hitting 40°. The battery in the car key fob also ran out. Despite repeated e-mails to customer services about this, from someone who has given them 30 plus bookings in recent years the reporting of this and my only other incident are being ignored. On another booking shortly before the one above a €40 late pick up charge was imposed when car wasn't picked up at alloted time. Fair enough if I was late, but had actually arrived in time but was faced with a 45 minute queue at the Goldcar office due to a number of flights arriving at the same time. On this occasion the staff at the pick up office couldnt cope large number of customers due to circumstances outside their control, and when I was told they would need to levy a charge as I reached the front desk 30 minutes late (having queued for 45 mins) I assumed the reimbursement would follow contacting customer services Iin the same way as reimbursement of toll road advance payments.The good work of the Faro Airport office team has been undermined by the Customer Services Team when standards have fallen short. Coupled with there being no automatic reimbursement of advance toll road charges unless customers chase these result in this 1 star rating. Prior to the late pick up charge and the faulty car incidents, despite the toll issue, 4 stars would have applied.

Date of experience: Jun 16, 2025