Europcar International review: Extremely disappointing experience: unsuitable vehicle, ineffective support and negligible compensation

We booked a rental in the United States for around 20 days through Europcar, selecting a Jeep Compass CFAR or similar – Compact SUV.
At pickup, however, Europcar’s local partner FOX provided us with a 2024 Nissan Kicks S FWD, a significantly smaller vehicle which, in our view, was not genuinely comparable to the reference vehicle used by Europcar for the category we had purchased.
The experience at the pickup desk was already very negative: the employee was rude and unhelpful, focusing mainly on selling additional services. Among these, we were charged USD 149.80 for Roadside Assistance, despite roadside assistance already being included in the Europcar booking we had purchased and paid for.
The most serious issue, however, was the vehicle itself. During the trip, we encountered and documented heavily worn and mismatched tires, deteriorated and ineffective windshield wipers, poor highway stability and inadequate air conditioning. During heavy rain, we experienced serious visibility problems and felt the rear of the vehicle lose stability. Our safety was at risk.
We repeatedly reported the situation to both FOX and Europcar, by email and by phone, from the very first days of the rental. Despite this, we did not receive any effective and timely solution.
As a result, we had to reduce our driving speed, modify parts of our itinerary, give up some planned activities and spend a considerable amount of our vacation dealing with phone calls, emails and repeated attempts to obtain assistance. A rental car should allow you to enjoy your trip, not become a constant source of concern.
We subsequently prepared and sent FOX and Europcar a detailed complaint dossier including photographs, videos, a chronology of our reports and a comparison between the vehicle booked and the one actually supplied.
FOX eventually recognised approximately USD 230, but expressly clarified that USD 149.80 was simply the reimbursement of the Roadside Assistance charge that had been duplicated. The actual compensation offered for all the problems, lost time and impact on our vacation was therefore only USD 80 – just over 10% of the total rental cost.
We then asked Europcar Italy to review the case directly, considering that we had purchased the service through Europcar and not directly from FOX. Their response was essentially that FOX had already handled the case and that Europcar would take no further action.
This is probably the aspect that disappointed us the most: we purchased the service from Europcar and expected Europcar to take full commercial responsibility for the experience sold through its own channel, rather than simply referring us back to the decision of its local partner.
We would never have complained about a normal travel inconvenience. In this case, however, we are talking about a vehicle substantially different from what we expected, issues that we considered significant from a safety perspective, repeated reports, lost time and concrete changes to our vacation plans.
After this experience, our trust in the Europcar brand has been seriously damaged. We are very unlikely to use Europcar again and equally unlikely to recommend it to friends, colleagues or for future group travel arrangements.
An actual compensation of only USD 80 for everything that happened is, in our view, simply inadequate.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to give less than one star.