This will be a very different post from what I normally put on this blog, but I decided to write it for a few reasons. I was very disappointed with my last experience with Europcar. I feel like writing this down will flush this out of my head and I can stop thinking and being annoyed about it. Finally I am hoping this will be useful to someone out there and maybe will make the company improve how they do business in future. Possibly another company will read this and improve their systems. While I’m writing about services, some of the topics I am about to cover aren’t too far from the topics I cover in my blog – mainly software.
Never say never
I really like this saying. I have always reminded this to myself when something seems difficult and it always helped me strive to achieve my goals. In this post I’m going against it and of course there is no guarantee that I won’t go against this statement in future. But right now this is how I feel and it’s something that I will remember for a long time.
Europcar and my attitude to car rentals
Europcar is a big company that operates in lots of countries. Their services seem to differ greatly across the territories they operate in. I have had very pleasant experiences with them in the past in the UK, Ireland and Spain, for example. However, as a global company, their image is based on all of their offices and in my current case, the disappointment came courtesy of Europcar Portugal and more specifically the Lisbon Airport branch.
When renting cars I’m not attached to a certain brand. I normally choose whatever makes most sense economically, but a certain name or reviews can make me choose one over another. Pretty standard really.
What’s more interesting is my approach to the cars I get. I do like cars and I appreciate things like build quality, mechanics, how the infotainment system works and so on. I almost play a bit of a role of a car journalist and do little comparisons in my head between the cars I get. I think by now I have a pretty good idea what a typical Renault, Ford or an Audi will feel like. I also respect the cars and take very good care of them for the limited time I have them for. I’ve always returned them exactly the same as I’ve received them. I was only charged for damages once by a company who is well known for treating its customers this way to a point where insurance companies have a special clause that they won’t cover you if you rent with them. Way to go – you know who you are! I’ve received banged up vehicles in the past and this somewhat taints my experience, but I understand you have no control over what you get.
So what exactly happened?
In the end of September 2023 we were visiting Portugal for a very good friend’s wedding. We took some needed time off to stay a few days in Lisbon and then the plan was to pick up a car and drive to the wedding venue. I am not the most organized person, but this time I booked the car 2 months in advance. I was super excited about it – I decided to treat myself and my partner and get a convertible BMW 2-series and drive with the top off. This way we could experience the country better and arrive to the wedding in style.
As it quite often happens, plans change. We enjoyed Lisbon, but got a bit bored of it and decided to get the car earlier than we had planned – 5 hours earlier to be precise. This would allow us to explore the outskirts of the city first, rather than heading straight to the wedding in the middle of nowhere. To do this I opened my booking and went to modify the pick up time – all very straightforward. Those extra 5 hours required us to pay for an extra day, but I was more than happy to do this. Here is where the software part comes in. The way Europcar’s system is built to handle this type of modification is the following: it will create a new booking and cancel and refund the old one. No issues with this! I was surprised to see the new price for N+1 days was actually cheaper than what I had originally paid 2 months ago in the UK. I was thinking: “New travel hack unlocked!”.
Everything went well with my new booking – my credit card got charged and I received an automated email that confirmed the new booking number. Since this is a low stock car, the local branch had to approve it to make sure everything is 100% done. The email quoted 8 working hours to do so.
I did my modification towards the end of the working day and was eagerly waiting for the additional confirmation email. On the next day I was checking my phone every half hour. Nothing was coming up, so at 4pm (almost 24 hours after my modification) I decided to ring Europcar. My heart sank after I heard what the support had to tell me.
Your new booking cannot be satisfied and the old one was deleted. This car is no longer available and we can’t offer you any similar alternative. We will refund you.
Europcar Support
I was ready to scream. Two months of eagerly waiting and now we don’t even have a car to get to the wedding venue 200km outside Lisbon, less than 24 hours before we’re due to leave.
I went back and forth with them for over 3 hours to try and sort something out, but they could not provide a similar vehicle. The only option was to make a new booking that was going to cost me more than what I had paid earlier. Even though I did nothing wrong and just used their system.
Lessons learned
So what lessons did I learn from this?
- Use the phone if you want to modify a booking with a car rental company. Or any other travel company for that matter.
- The travel industry is very technologically immature. Does anyone have any recommendations for companies that are technologically mature and things just work without unexpected surprises?
- There is some gap between the teams building the software and those that it is built for. Product managers must understand the industry, their users and the use cases very well. I would have been more than happy to get a message telling me that I should ring Europcar to modify my booking, because I’ve booked a special vehicle.
What happened in the end?
In the end I managed to get to the wedding. Actually I’m writing this from the middle of nowhere in Portugal, near Beja, dressed up in my suit. I got a car from another well known rental company. The car I booked was Audi A3 or similar. It’s a Renault – I’m sure Audi won’t be happy about this comparison while Renault might be flattered. The 0.9 litre engine doesn’t let me go over the speed limit easily, but the “sports mode” on the car makes the steering a bit stiffer and feel acceptable on the road. The trims are plasticky in places and feel a little cheap, but acceptable. The infotainment system and the sat nav was built in cooperation with Google and works pretty well.
Europcar have refunded the money from my booking made 2 months ago. The new unfulfilled booking is still blocked on my credit card. I’m sure it will be refunded and in the future I will steer clear from them – my time and wellbeing are worth more than the disappointment. But you never know – maybe things will change. Maybe I will have no other choice.
