gryllosblog   Gryllo's (aka Ian Lewis') blog. All things to do with travel, wildlife especially birds, history, architecture and anything else that interests me.

Back in July when we hired a medium sized car from Auto-Europe at Munich Airport I was very pleased with them, after all they supplied me with a very nice BMW. However when we returned the car the guy receiving it went round the body with a magnifying glass and a torch, rubbing his fingers over the body work trying to find the smallest scratch possible. Of course he found something, a scratch about one or two cm long and no more than a mm deep on the rear bumper. We had no incidents what so ever and this could have been caused by a stone on the road or someone pushing past the car when it was parked.

Of course we took out collision damage waiver, but that still left a 800 euro excess which could be reduced to 200 euros by paying a further 200 euros which we declined.  I never thought that we would be charged for such a tiny scratch, so imagine my surprise when I got a bill for £461 (536 euros) in my credit car statement. I have spent the last two months corresponding with them but to no avail, they claim it cost that much to repair the damage!

As you can imagine I have hired many cars in my travelling career and inevitably have returned some in worse condition than when they were picked up. Twice Janet has locked the keys inside the car and we have had to break a window to get in, once in Australia I was caught in such a fierce hail storm that it dented the entire roof and again in Australia someone scratched the whole side of the car when it was parked. The outcome in all these case, small charges or no charges at all.

The conclusion is clear – avoid Auto-Europe!

Here is a photo of the ‘damage’. The green mark is the pen the inspector used, the damage is the faint brown smudge in the centre.