terryscarhire.com

Lack of transparency and unfair commercial practices

I always book at local providers as opposed to Hertz, Sixt, Europcar and all the well known scammers, and never had an issue. I usually go to Greece, this was my first time rental in Spain, not sure it's a coincidence, but I was unsatisfied and surprised by the behavior of Terry's.First, let me tell that the car was good and the pickup experience flawless. Without their aggressive practices this would be a 5 star review. Everything was matching expectations until I picked up the car.The first surprise came when learning that I had to pay 9,15 EUR to get out of the parking lot out of my pocket. When asked about that, they referred me to a paper they sent to me AFTER we signed the contract, while this expense is not mentioned in the "what's not included" part of their website. I was actually happy about not having to go to an office and waste some 30-45 minutes, but I just would have liked to know in advance that this cost was on me. Minor thing, but still a lack of transparency.The second one was that during my stay my car got scratched supposedly by a vandalism act, there were some scratches on the body (nothing major) that I didn't do myself. It is well known, that Mallorca hosted protests against tourists, and I guess that's what led some idiot to do some key scratches to the car.Anyway they clearly state there's a no excess insurance on the body, so I expected no issue. I had something similar once in Greece and the company didn't even notify me of that, because I had an all-risk insurance (Greece>Spain).After I returned the car, they wrote me an email sying that because of the damage (that I didn't do), next hire would have a 500-1500 excess (depending on the car- lol what's that? 1000 EUR difference completely discretional? Is this Spain or Zimbabwe?) and if I wanted to avoid that "policy", which they created only after the hire - it wasn't mentioned anywhere in the contract we signed - I would need to pay 100 EUR for the damage.Therefore, their no excess policy is actually not real, and at this point I'm not even sure that an actual insurance policy was there, because otherwise, there would be no discussion whatsoever. The purpose of an insurance is exactly that in case of an unfortunate event like this, the insurance pays, and no consequence is due to the customer.It would be a 5 star review, but because of their random invented policies, unfair commercial practices, and lack of transparency this is unfortunately a 3-star this time

Date of experience: Sep 07, 2025