Dear Sir/Madam,
I am Jason Muscat from Malta and I am writing this letter of complaint with regards to my car rental from your company.
On the 20 th of August I hired a Volkswagen Touran from your company for 4 days, where I have paid extra charges to remove the excess of GBP500 in case of damage.
Please note that on the third day of my rental period around 05:00pm, while driving back to the guest house we were staying in Windermere, the car suddenly stopped from working properly. I noticed that I couldn’t insert the gears. At the same time smoke was coming out of the bonnet. After several attempts, to insert the gears the clucth collapsed under my feet, as a result the car couldn’t move. I managed to put the car aside and started thinking of what to do. The location was a remote area in the mountains at the Lake District. No radio reception was available. Kindly note that this was a very terrible moment for my family, especially for my 17 month daughter and for my brother, suffering from reduced mobiltiy, since it was getting dark and cold and supplies were ending. We were really afraid in not going to make it through since we had never been through such a terrible experience.
Luckily enough, I spotted an emergency phonebox, and a cottage in the nearabouts where I have called the emergency service. From the nearby cottage, I have called the road assistance too claiming that a tow truck should arrive in 90 minutes. When the police arrived, they told me that from experience it was going to be more than 90 minutes, so they decided to take us to a safer place, which was situated about half an hour drive from the car location. They called the road assistance informing them of the place we were at.
At around 09:00pm I phoned back to the road assistance since the pickup truck hadn’t yet arrived. I told them that the place was going to close and to send the assistance as soon as possible. They told me that help would arrive soon. At 09:30pm – almost six hours after the car broke down, the tow truck from T.J’s came and picked us up. Together we proceeded in collecting the car and then headed back to Windermere. We arrived there at midnight, where we managed to get the car in a safe parking.
The following day, in the afternoon, we had to reach Manchester airport in order to fly back home, so in the early morning I phoned Thrifty car rental office in Trafford Park to see what was going to happen. The staff at the phone advised that I could get a replacement car, however it was going to be a standard car. I objected instantly since, I couldn’t fit all the luggage in a standard car, that was the primary reason for which I have rented a bigger car. Your staff insited that this was the only car available and offered no alternitaves. After several attempts in convincing your staff of my situation, she told me that she was going to call me back. After sometime she called back and told me that suddenly a Zafira was available. In the meantime, another tow truck from another different company (RAC), came to tow the faulty car. It took us quite some time to get the car on his equipment since it was parked in a parking lot, and it was raining heavily. I am still recovering from the cold.
The Zafira was delivered at 12:30 pm, just in time to do all the paper work, get all our stuff in the car and leave to the rental depot. We made only one stop during our way to Manchester, just the time to grab something to eat and then headed back to the depot were we handed over the car and keys at 05:30pm. As you can see almost the last 2 days of our holiday were ruined due to a malfunction of the car. My family is stressed out after this terrible experience.
To add insult to injury yesterday I received a call from your representative, intimating that after inspecting the car, the charges totalled to GBP680 had to be down on the driver. I rejected these accusations instantly and advised her that I was not going to pay a penny, since the malfunction was not caused by me. As a matter of fact I have enquired on this fault, where it has resulted that a clutch damage takes a long time to be caused.
In this regard I am asking you to clear all these charges instantly and I am demanding compensation for ruining our last days of our holiday and for delivering a faulty and unsafe car from the beginning, thus putting my whole family at risk. This is unacceptable.
Please note that this is the second negative incident we had with your company. Last year after renting a car from Manchester airport and delivering it back in Etrop Grange, I have handed the car keys to the receptionist in the hotel as agreed, with the difference that we were not provided transportation to the airport as per our previous agreement, leaving my family stranded at the doorstep with all our luggage. We had to call a taxi to get to the airport.
I was under the impression to make business with a serious company, but appareantly I was wrong.
Kindly revert at your earliest.
Brgds
Jason Muscat
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