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“Very badly damaged car”

written by on 12/08/2011

We hired a 7 seater car from Auriga Crown starting from the 25th July for 2 weeks. On arrival at Murcia airport there was no queue at the desk and we were seen straight away. I got the impression that the staff had either had a very long, bad day or they just didn't enjoy working there, they weren't exactly the friendliest of people. However, we were served quite quickly and were delighted when told that we had a Ford Focus C Max and not a Zafira. It was dark when we arrived so we couldn't quite see the state of the car on collection however we were made aware that there was a couple of damaged areas and they were marked on the form we received. The next day when we went out to the car for the first time in daylight, the true state of the car became apparent. It was an absolute mess. To say it was slightly damaged was an understatement, it was a wreck, there were dents and scrapes all over the place, the car looked as though it should have been scrapped a long time ago. It was embarrassing to drive. The steering felt heavy, we had to check the air pressure on the first day, only to find out that it was way out on one side, not a major issue but it shoudl have been checked before being given to us. We stuck with the car because we knew that 7 seaters were really difficult to come by, we had great difficulty getting this one. After one week we were packing the car up to go to the beach and found that the boot door wouldn't close properly, the catch had gone on it. We phoned AC to complain and couldn't get through to the Murcia office so had to call the head office. They told us to take the car straight back and we would receive a replacement. We drove the 20 minutes to the airport and went to the desk who imformed us that another car would not be ready for another 2 hours. Slightly annoyed we left and came back 2 and a half hours later only to find that the car was still not available. A further hour and a half later we received our next car. A brand new Citroen C4 Picasso, 7 seater. Absolutely lovely, clean car without so much as a mark on it. The contrast was absolutely unbelieveable I can't understand why a company would have 2 completely different standards of vehicle in their fleet and that they weren't embarrassed handing out the C max in the state it was. The airport staff weren't even apologetic that there was no car ready for us, they just told us to go for a drink somewhere and come back later. I wouldn't use this company again and would never recommend it to anyone else.