Well it seems I should of read the reviews before I booked with this company?, as they am really are dreadful, I tried to book a hire car via Jet2 web site, so you would think no problem if they front them(jet2), but they really are only a 3rd party, I must say that I had more help from the jet2 rep in our holiday venue, than I did with these morons.
I just wanted 5 days hire paid my money and the extra insurance on top to be carful.
Cost me £148 for car and the £38 for the extra insurance. So any way did what I needed to, got right through the drawn out booking site they use right to the end, it took my payment, then I discovered they didn't have where the car was being dropped off, so I get in touch via there web site and send them the detail my contact numbers and email address, for them to shortly after come back and say they had my address and they would see me at 10am, on the 12th of June at my venue makronosis village apartments in Ayai Nappa Cyprus, any way I go to collect the car at our reception, for agreed time of 10am I waited and I waited and I waited some more? No show? I know they had my details and even sent a pin location on my Google so we was both clear… so I ask hotel to call them, to find out the the hire company not these jockers where waiting for me to call them… OMG? Useing firm rental cars.com, and then things just go worse, when the car hire company finally did show at like 11am, on asking the lady who brought the car where have you been, she fed me some rubbish about data protection and rental cars.com don't send out contact details to the hiring firm? What a load of cod's wallop, this simple would never be the case, so we decided to sit down and do the paper work proofs etc, I pull out my passport drivers licence and my Mastercard business card, when the lady went to take the over inflated deposit like €650.00 she then said that my card was a debit card not a credit card… I said it's a Mastercard it on the card?, she said she couldn't take it and confirmed this with her office. So I said well if I can't pay this way I can't go ahead have to cancel.
She scanned my wallet and said I had a credit card in my wallet? She could take that?, but I didn't have enough on that card to cover there debit.
So I told the lady it's been a nightmare from start to finish this forget it I'll rent a car local forget it.
She looked angry and muttered some thin under her breath, I said excuse me what did you say, her looking like she had been chewing a bumble bee I told her just refund my money and let's move on to her saying ok I'll get office to sort it.
I then decided to get in contact with this rental cars.con?? Com,? I sent the first message to someone who said it was to late to be refunded as I was in my hire time I sad? And explained the issue and then got a reply from someone else completely random not the same person, I had this four or five other times with all different people, clearly they were in a call centre somewhere in Manchester or could be anywhere.
I tried to call there office costing me £15 to not get through, I have since been backwards and forwards trying to get my money back, nothing nobody's interested?, take your money and run AVOID THIS COMPANY at all cost, clearly a scam joint, and noticed on the reviews here they haven't had many reviews over the last year and only 7% bad reviews I doubt that very much. I still without my money and I'm going to take this to a small claims court and charge them interest on top plus costs and out of pocket expenses also. Terrible company can't be trusted no way… steer well clear. Hopefully I'll get my money back from my credit card company VIRGIN, fingers crossed anyone else I hope you read this before your ripped off as well. Andy Evereon.

TOTAL SCAM. This correspondence says it all.
- Message
Goldcar did not give us a car as per your agreement with me. They mentioned there was "no contract in this booking". We were forced to make a direct booking with them at much higher price for a car we did not want / book with you. Please therefore refund my payment of eur.165,74 immediately and confirm by return to john@###

-Dear John,

Thank you very much for getting in touch with RentalCars.com. My name is Ryan and I will be dealing with this today.

I have found your reservation and from what I can see, when you made your reservation you used your initial for your first name, rather than your full first name. This will make the agreement invalid as it will need to match the documentation you are asked to provide when picking up the car (e.g. Passport). Therefore, we are not able to issue a refund. Please find the following from the T&C's of the rental agreement:

• Please see 'What you need at pick-up' above - and note that the counter staff will not provide a car unless all requirements (age, driving licence, payment card, documentation, etc.) are met. If this happens, you will not be entitled to any refund or compensation.
For future reference, if you have any issues like this then please call us directly from the rental desk and then we would be able to apply a refund of a 3 day loss, as per our cancellation policy.

However, we can still refund the Full Protection Insurance you purchased as an extra when booking the car.
Please let us know if you would like us to go ahead with the refund of your Full Protection Insurance.

One more thing. If you'd like to help us improve, please keep an eye out for an email asking you three questions: two about me, and one about Rentalcars.com on the whole. If you wouldn't mind taking a minute to answer them, I'd really appreciate it.

Kind Regards,
Ryan.

Reservations Department

-Dear Ryan

I am flabbergasted!
1) you are referring / quoting a paragraph that doesn't mention anything about mentioning a full first name.
2) If you specifically needed a full first name you should have mentioned it where I just mentioned my initial while registering. There are plenty possibilities for you to have the program not accept a single letter or point out that you need a full name.
3) You confirmed to me in writing that the booking was confirmed. You also quoted my name as J. Tofield without any mention of the initial not being sufficient. All correspondence and online information is mentioning only my initial. Plenty of opportunity for you to discover and point out a problem before hand I would think.
4) The text you are referring to (what you need at pick-up) is mainly about credit cards. The payment terms and requirements are described in excruciating detail which leads me to believe that your companies focus is on a financial level. My credit card is in the name of J. Tofield and not John Tofield. Since there was no issue paying the alternative car with this card mentioning only my initial it seems total rubbish reasoning to decline my refund request.
5) If the initial i.o. A full name is a common issue then you should have taken it up with Goldcar long time ago.
6) As per you message below: "you used your initial for your first name, rather than your full first name. This will make the agreement invalid…"
It is clear that you confirm herewith that there is no valid agreement thus making my payment to you not needed. You have charged me for a service that was non-existent which may or may not be illegal.
7) I have a signed, stamped and dated document from Goldcar which says "No contract in this booking". This leads me to believe there was no booking at all and the whole issue about an initial or full name is just a scam.

I am leaving it at this.
You will refund me the full amount and insurance without further delay and confirm this back to me.

Trusting to have informed you sufficiently and considering this case closed herewith.

Kind regards
John T

- Hello John,

This is Iram from rentalcars.com, I will be handling your case today.

Upon looking at your booking I have issued a refund for your full protection insurance (33,92 €) which you should receive within 5-7 days. I am unable to issue a refund for your rental as the pick up date has already passed.
I apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Kind regards,
Iram
Reservations Department

Three more mails followed back and forth but all replies were too ridiculous for words.
I have involved the creditcard company now.
J

Hi guys, I had a terrible experience with Rentalcars.com for my 13 days' car rental (Over $2100) and lead me to think if they are a real scam.

1. There was a change of flight and arrival time by Singapore Airlines. Thus we contacted Rentalcars.com a few days earlier and asked if it was possible to pick up the car late. Rentealcars.com provided me with car supplier's contact details to liaise with. They had also helped me email them to inform about this late pickup.

2. The car supplier was well informed and thus a late collection arrangement had been made in advance. On the day of collection, I reached the car supplier outlet and my car was there for collection. However, upon checking their system, they found out that they were not able to process this booking given the reason that "booking site" had marked it as "no show", and the payment was held back by the "booking site".

3. I contacted Rentalcars.com on the spot immediately, initially they asked me to rebook on rentalcars.com, but there was no extra vehicle available as the last car was reserved/locked under my previous booking. After negotiation, their customer service staff agreed that I could book with the same car supplier there directly and call them again after that for a refund since it's not my fault. (They should have voice record on this)

4. After I got the car, I contacted rentalcars.com, they told me that I could only appeal this case after 13 days when my rental ends. This was a bit weird and I requested to settle this earlier, but they refused and told me that it's their policy and nothing else can be done.

5. After my trip, I contacted rentalcars.com again. They told me it would take 28 days for them to "investigate" and at the end I don't think they had done any investigation, but simply replied me with a template email that no refund can be granted as I didn't arrive on time.

6. I had tried to argue that we had well informed all the relevant parties in advance (we have emails as proofs, in fact, rentalcars.com had even help us email car supplier), now they just claimed that they could not honor the booking due to late arrival? And they ignored the fact that their staff had verbally agreed on the refund if I still booked the same vehicle for the same period from the same car supplier. Unfortunately, all our reasonable arguments were simply ignored by them.

At such, I begin to seriously think if Rentalcars.com is a real scam. If they do not allow late pickup, why did they ask us to contact suppliers to make any special arrangement? They should inform us to cancel and rebook instead. (when we first contacted them, it's still within free cancellation period.) And after that, they lied to customers and tried to deliberately delay the refund process so we would miss out the credit card dispute deadline. I can't believe a huge company like rentalcars.com need to commit this kind of scam. And as a victim we do not know if there is anything else we can do to claim back the loss.

I never picked up the car bexuae there was no attendant and no car
You cannot get anyone on the phone and they charged nybcredit card ITS A SCAM

Hello, must unfortunately join the negative reviews of the other customers. Would like to describe here also once our "case" and our "experience" with billiger-mietwagen / rentalcars. Had booked this late summer a car for 19 days from the airport in Kalamata / Greece. So far so good. Since we have a vacation apartment there, this was so far no problem at all.

Have booked this time only unfortunately about billigermietwagen, including fully comprehensive and all Pipapo (glass protection, underbody insurance). On site, early in the morning, we are in the office of Europcar in Kalamata. For this, we had to cross the entire airport and walk along a busy road (with luggage!), because the "office" was out of the way. No employee came, as announced, to pick you up. On the spot we were met (or rather "attacked") by very brazen, unprofessional agents who forced us to take out another insurance (?). My seriously ill mother was not even offered a glass of water after the flight. Instead, we were presented with the "new" conditions on a scratch sheet. Without these, we could not make the booking and would not have any protection! We were so thrown in front of the head that we decided directly not to take the car from Europcar. Instead, we went back the long way to book through another provider.

The same day I informed billiger-mietwagen / rentalcars and asked for a confirmation of the cancellation. I was advised to open a "service case". I also did this twice, but to this day (about two and a half months later!) I have not received any feedback. Beyond that, I've made easily a dozen phone calls and sent emails, asking again and again. If it wasn't so much money, it would have been a bit unintentionally funny. For example, one day I asked billiger-mietwagen and got a reply that I should contact Rentalcars if I had any problems. A little later I then called Rentalcars and was again told to please contact billiger-mietwagen. Instead came put off and warm words. I am now pissed off and do not understand such business behavior at all.

I am left with so many questions:
- Why do billiger-mietwagen / rentalcars not cooperate with each other?
- Is this how you treat your customers?
- If one needs further additional insurances, why is this not made transparent?
- Why do they rip off their customers?
- Why do billiger-mietwagen / rentalcars cooperate at all with such unserious offerers? Is there only the profit in the first place?

If I do not like a product or a service at Amazon, I can still complain days later. At billigermietwagen / rentalcars I have complained on the same day (!). I did not use any service (i. E. rental car) due to the described fraud attempt. Why is there no standard procedure for such cases?

As a customer, I feel cheated out of my money in the most primitive way and would not book from this site again. It remains a very stale aftertaste. If nothing happens in the next few weeks, I will contact the consumer protection and a lawyer. I will continue to vent my anger and post on social media until I get my money back.

Best regards,

The company is refusing to reimburse a rental charge for a reservation that "they made on my behalf" after telling me the reservation had failed to process.

I attempted to make a reservation online one evening via rentalcars.com. Both attempts resulted in a message popping up "Unable to process..." So I went and made a rental reservation with another company.

Seven hours later, early morning the next morning, I was sent a reservation confirmation email by this company. All I can figure is the failed transaction from the night before ended up in some queue somewhere and someone found it and put it through. I didn't do it. The rentalcars.com system did it or someone that works there did it. It's just a guess on my part what happened in the background at rentalcars.com.

Soooo, as soon as I noticed the reservation email in my email inbox, I cancelled the reservation and I notified them of the mix-up and explained what happened and asked them to refund the money charged to my credit card (their system wouldn't refund the rental charge claiming it was a same day rental). You won't believe this, but they told me (and I have it in writing), that same day reservations that are cancelled are not refunded.

Again, I told them what happened (in writing in email). They continue to claim that in the wee hours of the morning that I made the reservation, which I absolutely did not. I was physically not internet connected at that time. It was impossible for me to do that. They seem to have a website issue where they tell the prospective customer that transactions fail and then some number of hours later they put the transaction through.

It's not a lot of money. Just $33.80 USD. It's the principal. Their system is in error. I've not experienced a company being so difficult on a simple issue like this. Clearly they don't believe what I am telling them. Why would I go and reserve another car and spend more $ for the same size car for the same itinerary at the same location?

I've contacted my credit card company to dispute this and get it worked out.

I figured I'd share what has happened to warn everyone that rentalcars.com has website problems and they don't accept accountability when strange things happen as a result!

I won't be trying to rent through them again.

rentalcarscom.com / booking.com (same company) are #thieves, my 70yo mum turned up for her pre-booked car, didn't get it - they were overbooked - no reimbursement, 5 months & 10 emails later still keeping her money #preyingonthevulnerables

I have reported them to ACCC as they broke their agreement and wouldn't provide refund as my travel was affected due to COVID restriction changes.

They literally took all my money and rendered no services. I flew into Chicago's o'hare Airport due to a family emergency where my grandmother was in the hospital and I was told she may not recover and I should see her now if I wanted to see her at all, the good part was she recovered while I was there, the bad part however was I ended up stranded in Illinois at a car rental place. I had booked a reservation a few days before my flight and told them when I would be arriving I also told them how long I would need it as I was going to be there for a week so I got the insurance and prepaid to ensure my stay. When I arrived I was told that I needed to pay a deposit which was fine it was only a deposit not extra fees. When I went to pay the deposit with the same card I had made the reservation with I was told they don't accept this kind of card, I found that to be ludicrous but eventually I decided that I should cancel my booking and rent from elsewhere which they said would be fine except that I booked through a third party rentalcars.com and I would have to cancel with them. So I called the customer service line and waited on the phone for nearly 2 hours to get a machine to tell me that they were closed for the evening and to leave a message which I did. I was still at the rental car place and now I had no money to rent another car so I frantically called family members who said that we (I was traveling with my sister) were too far away and we might have to hitch hike which we did until my youngest aunt picked us up in exchange for gas by the time we got to my grandmother's my phone was at 3% and I plugged it in, in the morning I jumped up to call rental cars but my phone was dead I checked the outlet, the charger, the cord, and the one thing that didn't work right was my phone, but my phone was 6 years old so no one would fix it, two days later I got paid from work and was able to purchase a new phone, the first thing I did was call rental cars, I explained to them my situation and why I couldn't cancel immediately and they said they wouldn't refund me, they said they would refund me one day $72 out of the near $400 they already took from my bank account as of I didn't call the day I couldn't get the car, they even told me that I was a no show and I was never there, I had pictures of the place I had been to, Google maps recorded me being there, I disputed the charge on my card and they reversed it, saying that I knew my card wasn't accepted there, but I had never been before and this was my first time using this site, and if my card wasn't accepted at this establishment wasn't it shouldn't they stop me from making the booking, I never got my money back, I didn't have enough evidence to support my claim, I feel taken advantage of and cheated and I want everyone to know what this did to me, I paid them nearly $400 for nothing and because I disputed it shortly before rent was due it dropped my bank account to -$300 and I just got out of the negative today this started at the end of April btw

My wife and I had rented a car using rentalcars.com. The pickup was at CTA Airport (Sicily). The company we chose was GoldCar. The kind and available (yet helpless) representative could not fix the issue created by rentalcars.com allowing to rent a car despite not having the mandatory prerequisites for a successful rental (International Driving License). Before anyone could checkout on the site, there must be a full-page, blocking overlay where users can't proceed further unless they had fully read and confirmed with more than one checkbox under the message stating "TO RENT THIS CAR YOU MUST HAVE AN EU-ISSUED DRIVING LICENSE. ANYONE LIVING OUTSIDE THE EU MUST HAVE AN INTERNATIONAL DRIVING LICENSE OR YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO PICK UP THE CAR!
In short: My wife rented the car and is a US citizen. She was never told she MUST HAVE an INTL. Driving License in order to be able to pick up the car at GoldCar therefore we found out at the teller on the day we went to pick up the car! In addition the idiotic policies at the broker, made it impossible to use myself as the driver on my wife's rental as they required the renter to have an Intl. Driving license... even if the main driver on the rental was a perfectly qualified driver... Absurd! I have an Italian driving license as I am dual citizen (IT-US) hence would fully qualify to pick up and drive the rental! But no! We had to cancel the rental so I could rent the car under my name. Being out of options we tried... Guess what... No cars were available because my wife still "held" the un-rentable car and no other ones where available that day! More absurdity.
So the we were basically forced to cancel or there would be no cars for me to rent... but that's not all! We could not know if there was and what would be the difference in price until we could actually make a reservation for that very same car... and obviously we could not do it via the agent at the GoldCar teller or ourselves... the rentalcars.com agentwe had to call in the UK would do it... the additional nonsense of having to call international made costed us an additional 10 Euro. Truly Revolting!)
So once canceled we would have to get a new rental policy and... surprise-surprise... instead of passing the existing rental my wife got for 150 Euros few weeks earlier, it would have to be a brand new one at the cost of 800 Euros for the same car that was ALREADY waiting for us to pick it up! Sheer insanity!
So in the end... massive loss of time and money even more massive inconvenience! We lost our rental, we lost 50 Euro to pay a cancellation fee that was not caused by us but by rentalcars.com (we didn't want to cancel to begin with!) not to mention the problems that the loss of the reserved car meant. From having to waste money on bus transportation as we wasted a trip from AG to CT and back (since the 2 visiting relatives could have come to AG themselves), to wasting the whole day between bus rides and later car rides as we had to drive back to AG so we could pick up a car that luckily a family member was able to lend us. That also meant to canceling a previously scheduled visit to Syracuse, (due to wasting the entire day riding buses and driving back to Noto) as well as dealing with the issues created by these incompetents and scammers of a broker! Incidentally, sorry businesses in Syracuse, we couldn't come and spend money there thanks to the subject of this review. So we were left without the much needed transportation means, had to cut and re-schedule our tour of Sicilian cities we were going to visit, we had to waste time and get frustrated for the aggravating experience. I really can't recall an experience that was more horrendous and unpleasant than this one with rentalcars.com. Never, never, never again! Stay as far as you can from these disaster-waiting-to-happen of a company! Regrettably we can't rate it in the negative numbers as they truly deserve. Nobody has ever been a more deserving recipient of a minus 5 stars rating than them! Shame on rentalcars.com their disgraceful site, policies and services.