sneaky upgrades

Wife rents car form Europcar at London Heathrow. Gets told they upgraded her (hybrid EV vehicle). Agent Diane, very efficient, has all the documents ready and the positions marked with a cross where to sign. Wife happy drives away. 3 days later the middle console screen dies, wife can't see whether driving on E-mobility or petrol engine. Digs out the contract to find contact number to report the fault. While searching the contract, she realizes they made her sign for the applicable costs of the upgrade. Returns car to Glasgow with the request to get another vehicle, as the "upgraded one" was defective, in the class she originally booked for. Agent tells her not possible, all payment transaction already done, but lady at Heathrow should have explained that to her. Result, car hire is now more than double the original booking (552£ extra for two weeks) with time loss for the defective car to be returned in Glasgow, but still having to pay more. Launched a case (***1), nagged, spoke to Europcar here via messenger. All we're getting is excuses, delay and more excuses. Europcar is regarded as a professional car hiring company, but I have an issue with the following: - selling clients upgrades to their original bookings WITHOUT explaining properly the financial implication and have them sign "prepared" documents. This borders on ********* behavior. - When reporting the issue, despite regularly follow ups and providing contact number where they can get in touch with my wife and all other relevant details, Europcar conducts a delaying strategy knowing the car hire contract is over in a couple of days. I really had enough and will not use or recommend Europcar again. Shame on you, Europcar. If you want, share far and wide, so other people do not fall into the same trap. I wouldn't be surprised if they running a campaign promising their agents an incentive for costs eligible upgrades. Having that said, this is my own conclusion/assumption from the experience we have had.

Later I got a call from a friend to whom the same happened this year in August in Melbourne with, guess, Europcar. He was even aware of the price for the upgrade, given to him by the person behind the counter. Despite the prepared crosses for signatures as usual, he then undertook to read everything before signing and found out that the upgrade price was 10x higher than given verbally per day of rental. So we do have a repetition of what happened to us, interesting.