written by qwertywoo on 13/12/2013
DO NOT USE AVIS CAR HIRE! We visited Spain in July 2013 and hired a car, booked earlier in the UK through a website called DoYouSpain.com. We arrived at the Malaga Railway office and paid with our credit card.
Once back at home in September, we received a letter from Avis Malaga stating that the Spanish authorities had contacted them regarding a traffic violation we had committed. Neither of us have ever committed a traffic violation or had points on our licences, but fair enough - we were in a different country and perhaps had made an error. Avis deducted £34.00 from our credit card as an administration fee for them 'passing on our details'. They said that the Spanish authorities would be in touch soon with details of their own fine. Several months later, at the close of 2013, the Spanish authorities have still not been in touch.
When we contacted Avis Malaga, they have said that they "cannot find the name of the Spanish authority they gave the information to". What?! If we committed a traffic offence, why have the Spanish authorities not been in touch with us? And why can't Avis pass on the details of the authorities so WE can contact them? This has lead us to believe this is a huge way that Avis (or that particular office) is making a healthy profit from. DoYouSpain has been of no help either. AWe will obviously never use them again.
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Atholom's Response to qwertywoo's Review
Written on: 14/05/2014
I will try to help you, about traffic fines in Spain, fines across Europe is something still dodgy, cause, there´s no cross information between countries in this matter, is something that lately has been some news about, but always for people driving their own cars in other countries, in the car hire business is another matter, when a customer receives a fine, that could be a speed radar, parking fine, etc., now with the new law, there is no need to stop the driver if the police agent can identify the plate number of the car, the Rent a car company receives the fine cause the car is registered under their name, so is mandatory to identify the driver that was hiring the car in that moment, and for this many companies charges an admin fee, now, if the rental agent wrote properly your address the traffic agency in Spain (Trafico) will send it to you, with the instructions on how to pay from your country.
What I think happened here, is that the rental agent didn't write properly your address, so the traffic agency send the fine to that address, it bounces back to Spain, and now Avis had to pay the fine plus a penalty for not give the correct address, so resuming all this, you have no problem, the rental agent I´m sure had a nice comment form their manager and theres nothing to pay for you..... hope this explanation is good for you...
regards.