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“Don't use AutoRent - They do not care”

written by lorniedoone on 07/09/2011

We hired an estate car from Autorent in Portugal for 8 days after using Enjoy Car hire as a broker. It was to cost us about €500. We picked up the car and were advised that it had been in a collision the week before and they had not had time to fix it. If we had problems, then we should call them.
When we got to the car, it was dirty and the electronic key did not work. They did not have another car available so we had little choice but to take it and tried to have a relaxed attitude to a less than perfect car.
Upon driving the car we found that it seriously lacked power to the point of being dangerous at junctions and the windscreen wiper squirters did not work. We had to keep stopping to clean the windows until we got to our villa to try and sort it out. Eventually we fixed the front one, but the back one did not even point to the car. The air conditioning was almost non-existent in the abck of the car.
Looking at the rear of the car, the left side (where the accident had occured) looked lower than the right - possible damage. It also cost us €20 in petrol to go 18km. Another sign that all was not well.
We persevered with the car but after 3 days, we had had enough and called Autorent. The lady I spoke to offered us a new car but it was not the same size (we had 5 people and luggage), so we could not take it. She said she would call back with an offer of compensation after I said that we would rather have the right size car and not use it except to get back to the airport at the end of the holiday. She found this reasonable rather than waste any more time of our holiday. No one called back for 2 days and eventually I got hold of them and was berated down the phone by a guy called george who said that he had plenty of other people to give the car to, so I should just bring the car back and break the contract if I wasn't happy. I demanded to talk to a Manager and after 2 hours he called back and we got a little further ......or so I thought.
He was very empathetic but said we had paid the money to Enjoy Car hire (the broker) so he could not refund anything. He would reimburse the cost of insuring the extra 2 drivers as both had refused to drive it. I would have to contact the broker when I got back from holiday.
I did this and the broker told me that they only got a small deposit and AutoRent DID get paid. So I was blatantly lied to to absolve their responsibility.
I have since had emails from Autorent saying that their engineer found no problems other than the wipers and that I must have been carrying a heavy load to use that much petrol (one small driver and no luggage). They have done nothing other than offer us a day's free rental next time we book with them - as if we would ever use them again!!!!
They claim their car was roadworthy - but as anyone knows - if you don;t have working wipers, it will not even pass an MOT. Let alone the other problems.
AutoRent are an appalling example of how not to treat their customers. Do not use them. They do not care about your safety or about morality!