Report Abuse

“Hidden extras tripled online quote - but £70 to cancel. ”

written by on 25/08/2014

I have to give a rating to submit this review, but I would not give Hertz a single star if I didn't have to. I would definitely not recommend this company to anyone.

We don't normally use a hire car, but our own car developed a fault the evening before we had to travel 200 miles to look after our grandson for the night, so we looked online to see how much car rental would be and whether there were any locally that could provide us with a car.

The Hertz website was very straight forward, just asked us which size car we wanted and when we wanted it for. I was surprised that with just that information the system was able to book a car for us at our nearest Hertz centre. As it was cheaper to pay online, we went ahead and booked a car for 10am the following day, and paid £55 for a 3-day rental, including unlimited mileage and full insurance cover. This was much more within our budget than 2 return train tickets (total £135) would have cost.

I phoned early the next morning as I didn't have a credit card and asked if that would be a problem. That's when I was told about the £200 deposit. This would be taken from our account, but apparently it takes longer to refund to a current account than a credit card.

I was also asked when we booked the car (7pm the previous evening) as the booking hadn't come through to them and they would have difficulty sourcing a car for us by then. The online system, he said, could see that they had so many cars returning, but didn't take account of the fact that they had already been booked out. yet if we'd tried to cancel there and then, it would have cost us £70 late cancellation fee!! He said he'd see what he could do and would call us back.

We spent an hour worrying about whether we would be able to leave on time, and eventually called Hertz back to be told they had sourced a car, and hoped to have it there by 10am - I said great we'd be there by then but he put me off saying the car would still need 'prepping'. He couldn't/wouldn't/didn't give me any indication of when we should collect it, so, rather frustratedly, I said we'd be there by 10 anyway.

In the event we got there at 10.20 (I decided 20mins at home was preferable to 30mins in a reception area). The car was there, un-valeted or cleaned,, but we were just thankful that we had transport to get to our grandson.

It took another 30mins to sort out the paperwork, during which we found out that the insurance included with our online quote was basically just third party. If there was any damage to the car - even a scratch or a chip from a stone, we would have to pay the first £900 (!!!) excess. We could avoid this by paying £18.99 a day for extra cover. It would also cost another £7 a day for an extra driver.

Then we were shown the final bill - which also included £20 tax - which we didn't realise hadn't been included in the original quote - and a deposit of £116 (at least that was less than expected). The total payment taken from ur debit card was £276 - way over any travelling budget we had. Admittedly we'll get the deposit back, but apparently that takes longer when paid with a debit card, so we'll have to wait 10-14 days for that.

It would have been cheaper and less stressful to have gone by train after all. I told the assistant I was not happy, that all these extras should have been apparent at the time of booking, so we could have made a decision based on the true cost, and that I would certainly not be using Hertz again.

As I said at the start, we are not used to renting cars. £160 plus £115 deposit may even be a bargain for 3 days car hire. My gripe is that we should have been made aware of the true cost of the rental at the time of booking, so that we could have decided whether or not we could afford it. As it is, I felt tricked into renting from Hertz, and trapped into going through with the rental by the £70 cancellation fee. A total rip off. I shall most definitely NOT be using Hertz again, and shall not be recommending them to anyone.