Nova GREAT, Spanish sub-contract POOR

“Nova GREAT, Spanish sub-contract POOR”

Written on: 07/07/2012 by martyn_m (1 review written)

Nova website and prices start to finish are excellent. A great price for a Focus Estate or SW as they put it.

All done and dusted, deposit paid documents printed and my own CDW excess insurance sorted. So, no more to pay.

Land at Murcia San Javier after a 0430 start ready to pickup my car.

First of all the car hire location? Two vans in a car park. Massive queues and why is it taking so long to process everyone?

You've guessed it, all the add-ons.

By the time I get to the front, deline all the insurances then the big one. Now I'm almost 50 and have been hiring cars for many years but this is the latest scam. They now charge you for a full tank of fuel and you bring it back empty.

So you pay well over even the UK price per litre, you have no idea how big the tank is so you don't know if the (in my case) €100 including IVA is good or bad and then somehow you have to gauge if it will be empty on return. I reckon on my trip they probably ended up with 10-15 litres left, as it is just impossible to know how little you can get away with on return and you simply (and they know it) cannot afford to run out and have that expense plus miss your flight. So you err on the side of caution.

So I reckon with the inflated 'full tank' at the start plus the residual they make roughly €20-30 extra due to this scam. So look out.

I don't blame Nova but I reckon your chosen partners offer the prices they do because they know this little earner is there for them.

It really annoyed me and can I suggest you perhaps highlight if the partner hire firm operates like this clearly so that we can at least be aware that the rental will in fact be approx €100 more than expected at pickup?

Lastly, they tried to palm me off with a standard Mégane hatch, which I declined. They said that this is an SW I said I think not. By the time an Opel Zaffira turned up it had from arriiving at the van to drive off, an hour and a half. Pretty poor show.

Nova you need to select your partners better I feel.