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I am writing to you in an official capacity with regards to the alleged damage to a car that I hired from Inter Rent Almeria, Spain.
I took photos of the car when i collected it and no obvious damage was evident. When I returned the car, the attendant looked under the front bumper and said we had damaged it. (we have rented numerous cars with other hire companies and I have never seen anyone get on their knees so readily to check!).
We immediately rejected that this could have been caused by ourselves and my wife opened up the photos on her phone that were taken when we collected the car. On zooming in on the photo there was indeed a black mark visible on the front bumper (the same place as was now pointed out to us on delivery back) but the lady attendant (Helen we think her name was) said that she didn't accept our collection photos as they could have been doctored! In that case it would be nice it your company took photographic evidence of all parts of the vehicle on collection too.
Even though we are adamant that the damage was not caused by us we were told to release the funds held on our credit card we had to sign to accept them at a cost of €320!
We were given an email address the attendant wrote on the top of the contrato (lei@goldcar.com) to contest it.
My wife sent an email to contest this damage and forwarded our initial collection photos before we boarded our flight as the manager would not be in the site office until the afternoon on Monday 2nd December 2019.
Upon receiving my credit card invoice this morning, we notice that you have indeed taken €320 from our card but the email sent from your office shows damage to the total being charged of €220 - where has the other €100 gone!
The charge to us on our credit card has been disputed and is being looked into by the credit card company.
We have also asked for the Spanish Complaints book via an online access (as we are now currently in the UK) which you are required by law to give to us if asked for and we were told to complain online. I will be contacting the Spanish authorities with your reply and that fact that you did not supply your complaints book when requested.
What is more interesting is that when we raised the issue on social media platforms (as we didn't take out your extra insurance as we already had our own excess), it was surprising how many other people contacted my wife regarding the same thing along with pictorial evidence of the similar damage in the same place on their hire cars. here maybe other possibilities but the number of similar incidences seem to be pointing to something other than coincidence. This evidence will now be sent to the Spanish Authorities to look into.
