Horrible Experience!

My husband and I rented a 'midsize monospace' with Europcar through Expedia (Paris, France) for 5 weeks. We have two little ones so we needed something somewhat large. When we landed and went to pick up our car, the woman at Europcar urged us to upgrade to something bigger. We did, and were happy that we did so. We had a Peugot 5008, which was a good size. We drove to Bretagne after that, stayed there for a week. Then we left and started driving to Briançon, a 14-hour drive. That’s when things took a turn for the worse. The dashboard in the car started displaying “Top up ADBLUE, start impossible in 5000 KM”. We had NO IDEA what that meant. So when we stopped for lunch, we used WIFI to google this problem. We found out that ADBLUE is a product that needs to be added to diesel cars in order to reduce emissions. We bought this AdBlue and immediately added it to our car. The message on the dashboard was still being displayed. We bought another bottle of AdBlue and added even more. The message on the dashboard kept being displayed, and the number of the KM continued to go down. I immediately called Europcar to ask them about this issue. They told me not to worry about it because it’ll go away. As we got closer to our destination (11 PM), the message displayed START IMPOSSIBLE!!!!! Thankfully we got to the mountain house at 12. The next day, the car was DEAD! We called Europcar, and they sent over a mechanic. He told us the car was done and he had to tow it. GREAT! I called Europcar back and asked for a replacement car. The lady on the phone told me, “Sorry we have nothing to give you, there are no cars your size available.” REALLY? NOTHING? We needed formula for my baby so I was very UPSET. After spending virtually the entire day on and off the phone with Europcar’s customer service, we get a phone call telling us that they have a car for us in Gap, which is 3 hours away. They called us a cab, and my husband went in the taxi to pick up this car. While en route, it came to our attention that the car that they wanted to give us would not fit our family of four. Halfway into this route, the taxi had to turn around and bring my husband home. We called the next day non-stop and FINALLY we were told that NOW the location in Gap had an appropriately sized car. We were told at this time, that Europcar only covers up to 150 Euro of taxi rides, and that that allowance was met on the previous day. We had to cough up the 190 Euro taxi ride for the second time my husband took the trip. This car ended up being noticeably smaller than our original car, which was another issue in itself. When I called to complain about ALL of these issues, they told us we can only dispute charges at the end of our trip. So now here we are, we are back home and they are REFUSING to refund us the TWO days without a car, the second taxi ride (which was necessary due to their own incompetence), or the absurd cell phone bill we had due to all the international calls we had to make. The only thing they are agreeing to reimburse us for is the two bottles of AdBlue we purchased which totals about 30 Euro’s.

Car issues are unpredictable, but the way Europcar handled this issue is inexcusable. Overall, DO NOT USE EUROPCAR!!!