Guys thank you for your posts at least I know I'm not alone. Like most of you I don't live in the UK but I booked a car rental through www.Car-Hire-UK.com. The first sign of trouble came when they deducted 917.47 from my Visa card a full week before the Car rental was due to start. 600 pounds of this was an Insurance excess and 80 pounds was a fuel excess which should never have been deducted.
When I arrived at the airport to pickup the car the representative from car-Hire-UK.com insisted I signed a Visa slip for 940.47 again even though the money had already been deducted from my Visa card. This should have rung alarm bells, and I still don't know if they are going to try and hit me again for another 917.47 now they have this signed Visa slip.
I returned the car to the Gatwick Long Stay Car park as instructed undamaged and fully fueled, I placed the key and the Car Park ticket in the envelope and wrote the location on the back of the envelope before handing it to the shuttle bus driver again as per Car-Hire-UK.com's instructions. I then followed up with a phone call to their returns telephone number, all by the book. Fortunately since there was no car-shire-uk.com representative to inspect the vehicle I got my passenger to do a visual inspection with me in case they decided to claim damage at a later date.
it's now been 7 weeks since they took the money from my Visa card and 4 weeks since I returned the car. Phoning the company is pointless they always say the same it's with the accounts department, if you ask for somebody to phone you back they never do. Ask to speak to a supervisor and you get left on hold listening to music and as for emails, well as you can guess they never reply..
I have lodged formal complaints with trading Standards and spoken to David Buller regarding this company, I have also lodged a complaint with Bromley Police and filled in a dispute form with Visa.
Strangely enough after 3 1/2 weeks of unreturned phone calls and email I was phoned on Friday by guess who? Mr Michael Stephen Goodwin AKA Car-Hire-UK.com. Oh good I thought he's phoning to apologise and let me know he's going to refund my Insurance and Fuel excess that he should never have taken in the first place. He actually phoned to threaten that unless I withdrew my complaint with Trading Standards, The Police and Visa I would never get my 680 pounds refunded. Oh yes and he would sue me for libel. I think you can guess my response, basically no way in hell was I going to withdraw my complaint until the money was returned to my Visa card. I suggest we all contact Trading Standards and the police with our complaints so they understand the magnitude of the problem with this company.
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