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Beware Goldcar and flight delays

Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2020 7:25pm
4 replies534 views4 members subscribed
Sue Davies 1957

Posts: 5

5 helpful points

Location: Alcalali

Joined: 1 Aug 2019

Yesterday we travelled from Cardiff to Alicante. A usual trip made unusual by an 8 hour flight delay. Arriving tired and weary at the Goldcar desk they announced that as we were over 6 hours late Rental Cars had cancelled our booking. On contacting Car rentals.com they said this was incorrect. On further discussion Goldcar admitted THEY had cancelled the booking - apparently they only hold bookings for 6 hours. Firefly hold it for 24 as a comparison. Needless to say we were not the only passengers caught out. My original car hire for 17 days full to full with free additional driver was £44.00. Goldcar now quoted 400 plus additional driver plus late fee! Total would have been 550 euros.  Many other travellers worn down by the delay paid. 

We refused. 

Mainly because the three men working behind the counter were rude, surly and in one case were trying to make all clients take out the extra insurance etc etc. We opted to stick two fingers up to a corrupt system. We went on line using Do You Spain and rebooked a car for 8.00am with Firefly whose staff had been honest, helpful and a marked contrast to Goldcar. However it did mean a very unwelcome night on an airport bench courtesy of Goldcar - I do hope people reading this avoid Goldcar to show them that bad customer service really can come back to hit your profits! The moral of the tale, e mail your car rental supplier informing of any delay just to cover yourself. In our case Goldcar are off our list of car hire for all family and friends. To Mario the guy who works nights on Goldcar I just hope what goes around comes around!!! Our bill with firefly was still 218 euros. However a huge saving on the Goldcar price quoted. 

Movingon

Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2020 8:56pm

Movingon

Super helpful member

Posts: 1857

1607 helpful points

Location: Albatera

Joined: 7 Feb 2018

Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2020 8:56pm

Good to get these things off your chest but personally speaking I've used Goldcar on a number of occasions, as have friends and family, with no problems to speak of.

Just sayin'

Villas

Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2020 9:07pm

Villas

Legendary helpful member

Posts: 4317

3505 helpful points

Location: Sax

Joined: 29 May 2017

Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2020 9:07pm

Movingon wrote on Wed Jan 29, 2020 8:56pm:

Good to get these things off your chest but personally speaking I've used Goldcar on a number of occasions, as have friends and family, with no problems to speak of.

Just sayin'

My friends too. There are many other companies to select. 

Those that loose, loose to others. Good forum for others. V

Kimmy11

Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2020 10:59pm

Kimmy11

Legendary helpful member

Posts: 6869

12554 helpful points

Joined: 8 Aug 2017

Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2020 10:59pm

Hi Sue,

Sorry to hear of your experience, but I'm not surprised.  Goldcar has the worst reputation of all the hire car companies and Alicante branch has been particularly bad for years.  When Europcar bought Goldcar at the end of 2017, their Operations Director promised to address the issues at the root of customer complaints, claiming that Goldcar staff needed to be retrained - if they did any retraining, it didn't work:

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/may/06/goldcar-named-worst-car-hire-company-in-which-survey

Kind regards,

Kim

Daakhaos

Posted: Mon Feb 3, 2020 6:04pm

Posts: 4

Location: Alcalali

Joined: 6 Oct 2017

Posted: Mon Feb 3, 2020 6:04pm

I agree to the last and the original post, Goldcar is really not similar to many other companies. They really have a bad reputation, specifically in pushing towards their expensive insurance and telling lies about validity of other insurance options. Please check the research of several consumer unions, if you do not believe (like consumentenbond in NL). They own Interrent as well, btw.

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