Other Car Rental Programs/Partners (ie. Alamo, Enterprise, Sixt) - MANDATORY pre-paid fuel at Alamo LHR

Yesterday morning I rented a car for 5 days at Alamo LHR.

I'm only using it to drive around London very sparingly, so obviously I didn't want to buy the tank of petrol/gasoline up front. But the CSR said I didn't have a choice.

Is that right? I'm paying for GBP 50 of fuel and will probably be using GBP 20 worth, so it's not a huge deal, but annoying nonetheless.

It's not only London.... When renting in the US with a booking through a travel consolidator, I always have to pre-pay the gas, no matter if I use it or not...:mad:

AVIS is doing almost the same now in Germany (other places maybee, too). They put a full gas load on top of the rental, and only if you return on full they take it off.

Had this great experience when renting a LUXURY for two days in Berlin, had the second appointment canceled so only drove abou 100km.... Well, I was late for my flight at TXL and returned with app. 15 liters missing fuel and git the complete tank charged....:mad::mad::mad::mad:

They didn't even tell me that if I returned it full, the fuel would be taken off.

I rented Alamo from LHR about 3 weeks ago. When I got to the counter, they very forcefully told me that my paperwork was all set, and I only needed to sign. I looked carefully and noted the pre-pay on the gasoline, which is not what I wanted. My rental was for a week, and I was told, "we find that when people rent for more than 4 days, they want to prepay the gas." I said rather forcefully that I wanted to fill it myself, and I didn't want to prepay for the gas. She redid all the paperwork. Of course she made me put down a 70 pound deposit for gas, but when I returned the car, my total charges were actually about a pound less than the original email estimate.

I think anything about mandatory pre-paid fuel was incorrect,unless maybe if you didn't have a reservation.

Same thing happened to me in August at LGW. I was told it was a new policy
see http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=731636