Originally Posted by
doctoravios
I agree, this can be tricky but most credit card companies recognise the situaton that car hire customers are in (being asked to sign for the rental agreement without having a copy of the final settlement) and will pursue a claim and are, indeed, jointly liable with the retailer/provider and must respond to a claim you make (and I find it is usually easier to deal with the credit card company than the actual retailer in these cirumstances). The key is whether you were informed of the final price at the time you signed the form. If you weren't, then it would be reasonable to assume you were signing based on the price of the original offer.
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I'm just not sure how good German credit cards are with this and the whole chargeback thing. Suppose I should use my UK ones, but with the Miles & More credit card I have full insurance. In my situation, othe station manager offered me $500 refund on the (I think it was, or thereabouts) $990 bill, I decided to accept it and suck up the rest. The rental itself was about $300 or so, so that meant I was still out of pocket in the region of $150-190. These things gobble a huge amount of time to resolve, so I felt that doing it this way was worth more to me than the value of the extra hours I would have spent on it.
I've had years of problem free rentals with Avis and others. Why has it suddenly become so bad? I've done less rentals in the last 2-3 years, so perhaps it has deteriorated during this time. I thought the rental companies were already regulated.
Second another poster, avoid Goldcar like the plague: utterly dreadful. By the way, wasn't Alex Cruz the manager of Goldcar at one point?