BEWARE renting from EasyCar; non-existent customer service!

I rented a vehicle to be picked up at Lisbon Airport, Portugal on June 18th, with a vehicle return date of July 2nd. After paying for my rental, which included full insurance coverage, to EasyCar, I discover that my rental is actually being provided by a company called GoldCar.
After finding the GoldCar desk at the Lisbon airport, my wife and I quickly discover that we have a 2.5 hour wait in a line filled with other customers who have also been waiting. Once at the counter, the clerk tried to up-sell me their insurance along with a road-side assistance plan, as well as a variety of other useless, but profitable to the rental company services. I was told that I would have to purchase their fuel plan and that I could simply return the vehicle with an empty fuel tank: this is nothing but something for which I paid 90 Euros for the fuel in a sub-compact vehicle. Then I was told that I needed to rent their toll-road transponder for 18 Euros and that "paying for road tolls was very complicated." I did purchase this since I had read elsewhere about the ViaVerde (the toll-road branch of the Portuguese Government which seems to be run by college drop-outs who wouldn't be able to successfully run a business that wasn't government subsidised, more on this later). After 2.5 hours, about 110 Euros for fuel and the toll-road transponder, and 1200 Euro deposit held on my credit card, I was handed the keys and documents for a VW Jetta which I was told was in the parking garage and that I should inspect the vehicle closely and note any damage on their form. I asked for more specific directions, but the idea of a simple map escaped everyone at the rental counter. After finding the vehicle and moving it from the dark parking space to a place in the parking garage with natural light, I carefully inspected the vehicle for damage, took numerous pictures of the damage (there were in excess of 100 scratches and minor dents). The seats were also stained, which I noted on the form, although there is no place to note interior damage. After returning to the original rental counter to drop off the damage record, I waited another 10 minutes. At this point I had spent well in excess of 3 hours trying to pick up the vehicle. The next two weeks of the rental were fine, the toll-road transponder worked as advertised to keep track of the tolls incurred.

Returning the vehicle was uneventful and quick. I was told that my credit card would be charged the outstanding ViaVerde tolls. This part of the rental was exactly as advertised. However, approximately one week after returning home to Canada, I received an email from GoldCar telling me that they had not been successful in charging the road tolls to my credit card when they had tried. My credit card company had, wrongly, refused the charges they believed to be fraudulent. GoldCar did not even try to contact me - even though they recorded my address, phone number, and email address - to rectify this, they simply told me to contact ViaVerde directly to pay the outstanding tolls. GoldCar gets a colossal "FAIL".

After contacting ViaVerde by telephone, I was told by a very polite customer service agent that I needed to send them an email with the vehicle registration details and the rental period. I was assured that I would receive instructions on how to pay my outstanding tolls. The email was sent immediately as instructed. One week later I received an email from ViaVerde telling me that due to Privacy Protection laws in Portugal, they couldn't tell me what toll charges were outstanding, this information is only available to the registered owner of the vehicle: that would be GoldCar. However, I could go into a ViaVerde office to sort this out. Hmm, let me fly 10,000km so I can be told face-to-face that this information is protected by privacy laws. ViaVerde gets a massive "FAIL".

In frustration, I contacted EasyCar, the company from which I had originally purchased the rental. I asked them to help me in dealing with their sub-contractor, GoldCar, to sort this out. Instead of receiving any kind of support, the EasyCar customer service kept repeating they couldn't get the information regarding the tolls because of Information Privacy laws. I kept telling them that I knew they couldn't get the information from ViaVerde, what I needed was their support in dealing with the incompetent sub-contractor: GoldCar. After three email exchanges, all EasyCar insisted was that I needed to deal directly with GoldCar. EasyCar gets a, similarly, colossal "FAIL".

The saga continues. I suspect that at some point I expect I will receive a bill for the tolls, fines for not paying on time, and some non-sense processing fee for sending me the bill. I drove approximately 1000 kms on this trip, not all of which was on toll roads. The tolls should not exceed 90 Euros. I do know that failing to pay tolls within 96 hours (and they're not available within 48 hours of being incurred) is a 125 Euro fine. The processing fee from GoldCar, EasyCar's subcontractor, could be just about anything.

All I can say is beware! I did everything correctly and still got taken in!!!!!