Europcar refusing to access credit card insurance
 

Hello, my wife has just been advised by a Europcar location at an airport in the UK that they will not accept the credit card insurance benefit provided by Chase Sapphire Reserve because she is not a US or Canadian citizen. Even though we are legal residents in the US, Europcar has its own terms that restrict the benefit to US or Canadian citizens. Bizarre really because Chase are perfectly happy to provide the benefit.

Does anyone know whether this is common amongst other car rental companies? It would be useful to know in order to avoid those companies when making reservations.

For anyone interested, the exact Europcar wording is:

If you are using your credit card to provide waiver cover then the following rules apply:
You MUST
be a US or Canadian citizen with a credit card issued in your country of residence
be present at the time of booking
be named as the contracting party on the Rental Agreement and
be the person signing the Rental Agreement

:confused:

Are you saying that Europcar will refuse to rent the vehicle unless your wife purchases LDW from them?

It is not common practice. Europcar is one of the most unscrupulous companies out there. They have been the subject of a criminal fraud inquiry in the UK. To answer your question, it is definitely NOT common. I would suggest you rent at a more reputable company that has terms and conditions that are fairer. We advise our customers to avoid Europcar where possible.

That is correct. I have just rebooked her with Alamo.

Thanks. That's extremely interesting.

Incidentally, I'm one of your customers and this was booked through Priceline via an Autoslash enquiry. I don't remember seeing anything recommending me to stay away from Europcar?

Notwithstanding that, I am a big fan of Autoslash!

Sorry to hear that. Click here to see an example quote from us. There's a reason we rate Europcar with 1.5 stars (only Payless is lower at 1 star). :(

Ok. I hadn't checked the ratings in the past. Thanks for pointing it out.

For reference, here is a copy of the form she was asked to sign. If it had been me, I'd probably have signed it anyway. She is far to honest though and told them she was not a citizen or either Canada or the US. At that point they told her that her only option with Europcar was to pay $32 per day in insurance.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...2d4ea1becb.jpg

By way of followup I've had feedback from Europcar Customer Service in the UK and separately from their Twitter team that the reservations desk in Birmingham airport were wrong. There is absolutely no need to insist that the renter be a citizen as residency is sufficient. No one has yet explained or answered why we were presented with the document that states citizenship is required but they have advised that their terms and conditions (9.2.2) makes it clear that citizenship is not required. The twitter team said something similar although they referred me to section 8.2 of their terms and conditions document.

I hope they retrain the jobsworth at the airport who wasn't prepared to investigate it further at the time. We received a full refund of the prepaid Europcar reservation and rented elsewhere.