I had a pretty dire experience renting from LHR over the Christmas vacation. I was assigned a Peugeot 3008 on a (D) Skoda Octavia or Similar booking. The car in the spot was very dirty and had just under 17,000 miles on it (I thought they got rid of them at 15k?) so I went back inside to politely ask if I could take something from Gold Choice instead. I was given a variety of different excuses about why I couldn’t do that…
- Gold Choice isn't set up LHR yet.
- Gold Choice isn't actually a choice, it's just a benefit to add a second driver
- I can't take a car that's an automatic.
- I can't take a car that's got built in sat nav
- I can't take a different class to the car I'd booked.
After attempting to clarify all the above, I gave up and just asked to have a car that had been cleaned and was ideally a bit newer. They gave me a brand spanking new Kia Sportage and kept going on and on about how amazing an 'upgrade' this was. I don't consider a base model Kia Sportage an upgrade but whatever.
Unfortunately, the brand new Kia developed both a mechanical fault AND a puncture. Hertz CS were completely and utterly helpless and kept trying to put me through to LHR who in 6 calls over 20 mins each, simply never answered the phone. I had no way of returning the car as I was on a spacesaver wheel, over 400 miles away from LHR. I ended up just paying to have the tire patched myself. No biggy, but just a startling lack of service. I'll never rent from this location again.