locauto

LOCAUTO Car Rental – Pisa, Italy – Do NOT Rent From Them!!

April 28th, 2010 | Author: admin

If you ever travel to Europe, specifically Pisa, Italy do NOT ever rent a car from these ASSHOLES!!!! We made arrangements in advance for a rental with them with a quote of about $330 for 5 days and it ended up costing us a total of about $650 because they are too lazy to do their jobs!!

IF YOU SEE THE BLUE SIGN WITH THE WHITE ELEPHANT – TURN AND GO THE OTHER WAY!! THEY SHOULD BE CALLED LOCO-AUTO – BECAUSE THEY ARE CRAZY AND THEY WILL SCREW YOU OVER BIG TIME!

When we arrived at the terminal there was only ONE GUY working and his name was GIOVANNI – yeah ok whatever, we were in Italy right? He told me they would hold a $1500 security deposit for the car, that I would get back when we returned it. After we finished the paperwork, he told us to go out to the parking lot to the car and notate on the piece of paper he gave me all the damages to the car. HE DID NOT ACCOMPANY US. He gave us the license plate for the car but not the slot where it would be and said to look for the LOCAUTO logo which has an elephant on it. We went through every single parked car, TWICE, where the LOCAUTO cars were parked. We did not find it. So I left my travel companion outside with the luggage and went back in. When I got there, another customer was complaining to him about the damages to their car and the fact there was only ¾ tank of gas, and Giovanni was waving his hands and talking LOUD in Italian. Hearing and seeing complaining customer should have been my big clue that this was a schiester operation, but I was so tired from traveling for 18 hours straight that I was not thinking clearly.

I told him we could not find the car and once again, he was the ONLY ONE working that day. He told me to go back out to the parking lot and wait for him. When he finally finished with the prior customer, he located the car, in the HERTZ parking area, not the LOCAUTO area with the elephant logo signs, and brought it to us. I asked him to wait because I wanted to notate the damages to the car. He said to CIRCLE where the damage was on the car, and bring it back to him inside so that he could sign it. I had no idea this was not ‘proper’ procedure. (I found out later when we returned the car that he was supposed to underline and initial where the damage was for which we were punished and penalized although we did what we were told). We found 4 separate damages to the car. I had my travel companion look very closely to make sure we noted all damage, to which she bellows.. “WTF is this? Rent a Wreck?”

the left rear wheel well was damaged
the left rear bumper had a huge hole in it and was cracked
the front bumper was damaged with a large scratch
the right rear wheel well was scratched very badly and some of the paint was gone. (this is the one that I was accused of doing although it was clearly there when we got the car)

I circled on the paper where all the damage was and went back inside. I asked him to sign the paper and put his name on there. There were no other cars available as I heard another customer come up to the counter and ask for a car. He said there were none. After he INITIALED only the paper, not where I had circled the damages but somewhere else on the paper, I went back out to the car. We loaded our luggage and started to leave. I noticed the tank was not full, but only 7/8 so I went back inside AGAIN and asked him to initialthat I would return the car with this much fuel. OMFG talk about the worst customer service anywhere!?!?!

We returned to the airport on Saturday Sept 13^th. When we returned it, it had been raining all day. The car was obviously dirty from the rain. As I returned it, there were 2 people working that day behind the counter. One of them came outside to look at the car. She said that I did the damage to the right rear wheel well and that I was lying about it since the form was not filled out properly. I told her that I did exactly what I was told to do by Giovanni. She said I was lying. This STUPID ITALIAN BIOTCH called ME, a CUSTOMER, a LIAR TO MY FACE!!! I asked her to call him and ask him. Of course he did not remember so he came up to the airport. He went out to look at the car and of course could not remember the damage that was there since he was not there on the day we reviewed the car for damages, but inside dealing with another upset customer. I pulled out the paperwork again showing them where I had circled the damages. She told me that is was not done right, that each damage had to be signed/initialed by the LOCAUTO employee. I tried explaining to them that I did exactly what I was told. They looked at me like I was stupid. They said it was not signed by Giovanni so the damages were not properly noted. I asked them how much they were going to charge my account. They said they did not know until they washed the car – because of the rain – and that I would find out when I got back to the US. I told them I wanted a receipt and the total that was being charged to my card. They refused to provide it.

We did not have much time to argue with them because we were catching a flight to Malta within an hour and a half. In essence they were holding us hostage there at the counter, refusing to give me a printed receipt and I not knowing what was being charged. This made me very uncomfortable. Once again, I pulled out the paperwork explaining to them what I was told to do and that the damage to the right rear wheel well was already there. They waved me off and sort of laughed at me. Rather than continue trying to get a resolution to something we could not resolve, and knowing we had a flight to catch, we left their counter, feeling confused and violated. The charges did not appear on my VISA statement for over a week.

When I initially rented the car, I made a deposit of 20.80 euro. The remainder of the balance was 117.76 Euro – documentation provided. When I was able to log on to my VISA account to see the total, which was finally charged on 9/17, I saw they charged a total of $673.89 for the remainder of the rental and the supposed damages that we did to the car, which we did not do.

I followed the verbal directions that were given to me by the attendant that day. Giovanni was the only one working the counter. After reviewing my experience with them as well as listening to the other customer complaining about the damages to his rental, I am not sure they are not running somesort of scam. The other customer, English male, was also told to CIRCLE the damage to his car, so it seems that were the instructions that were verbally given to customers that day so they could scam them out of funds for their own use or whatever. Clearly they were not using the extra monies charged for damages to rentals because the cars were Rent-A-Wrecks to the max. So here these assholios are over-charging customers then not using the money to fix the torn up cars? WTF? Maybe they are giving it all to Giovanni so he can get his hair done.

We have learned from this horrible experience: 1) not to rent from LOCAUTO ever again and 2) to take a photo of all damages to the car with the rental representative in all the photos.