Horrific! The worst car hire experience we've ever had

My wife and i have recently returned from our honeymoon in Italy where we experienced some difficulty obtaining the the hire car we had pre booked with Auto Europe earlier this year.

I spoke with one of your phone representatives on the phone this afternoon who advised me to send you a detailed account of the difficulties we had at Fiumicino Airport when we went to collect our booking on June 06th.

After several attempts to find the correct queue and then waiting for approximately 1.5 hours i approached the Hertz rental desk. I gave the assistant all the booking information, passport, driving licence etc but when i was asked for my credit card i simply gave her my usual and only debit card. The same card i paid for the hire pre booking with back in April this year. The assistant politely told me that my card was not a Credit card and that they would not be able to let me have a car. Company policy i was told. We were quite distressed by this news as you will imagine. The lady then pointed out the section at the foot of page three of the downloaded voucher where it states that only Credit cards were accepted and said that she doubted if any other companies at the airport would be able to help us. Adding to our by this time considerable stress. She tried to call the toll free number on the voucher on our behalf - and could not ring through to your offices. We tried on our mobile phone - it would not dial through either. Adding to our considerable stress. She did helpfully point out that if they had not supplied us with a vehicle we would be able to get our £180.52 refunded. With no car organised at this point it didn't ease our stress levels much at all. I then asked at the next desk which happened to be Sixt. A really helpful guy there offered me a car immediately - it was quite a lot more money but at least we had the rest of our honeymoon in sight now.

I have hired cars over many years [you were recommended by a family member who said you were very good] and never have i ever encountered a problem of this kind before. I have never owned a Credit card and have always [as instructed] brought the card that i made the original booking with with me and it has up to now always been acceptable. When i made the booking i was not told at any point that i would need to provide a credit card i.e. not the card i was paying with then. A key factor it would seem so don't understand why the section in the downloaded voucher is so deep in the small print. I understand that i might have to be charged an administration charge but feel that as no car was supplied - as was suggested today by your representative - we may be able to obtain a refund in full. I hope so as obviously we have now paid for two cars instead of one. Lastly - i wonder why the telephone number would not dial through to your offices when i most needed to contact you? It seems to be an absolute must that should there be a problem of any kind that the customer should be able to talk to you easily and directly.

Auto europes response? Get lost - it's your fault not ours. We sent you our terms and conditions so we're keeping your money - all of it for providing no car.

Our response to this - we'll never use again and tell all our friends not to use. Ever.