I have rented with Sixt before and have always been happy until now.

At the end of May I needed to rent a car for only one day in FRA. I went online and via rentalcars.com booked a car from Sixt. The car I reserved was a mid-size with unlimited miles for 52,50 Euros with taxes and all 74,97 Euros. On day of arrival in FRA all went well and I was in my car and on my way in short time. The next day on my back to the airport I had a hard time finding a gas station and was getting nervous about maybe running late I turned the car in with a 1/4 tank of gas.

I checked my American Express bill a few days later and was shocked to find Sixt had charged me $528.31!!! I thought it had to be a mistake and sent an email to Sixt and they in turn asked for me to send them a reservation number. Yesterday I received a email stating,"We have corrected your invoice according to the drop off date 30th May today. The new invoice amount is 306,67 Euro." "Dear Mrs. ******, I will be happy to investigate the bill item ?Petrol, inc. filling? for you also. Please send me a copy of your fuel receipt, quoting your bill number and marking it for my attention, either to the fax number below or as an e-mail attachment."



I am dumbfounded by that response. They want to charge me over 230 Euros for 3/4 a tank of gas?

I am very sorry that you are unhappy with the invoice charges.

If you would be kind enough to forward your details to [email protected] I will be happy to take a look at this for you.

I am responsible for Customer Service in the U.K.

I will be more than happy to send you the info. I'm a flight attendant with US Airways and have rented many cars over the years but this is a first. Thank you for your offer of help.

I just forwarded the email from Sixt and my itinerary from Rentalcars.com.

I have forwarded a copy of the invoice to you with an explanation of the charges. The majority of the additional cost is due to refuelling. We charge a higher price for fuel to encourage our customers to refuel the vehicles prior to return and to cover our additional costs for providing this service.

I do empathise with you over the additional charges and should you remain unhappy with any items charged I will be glad to review the invoice with you again.

230 EUR for 3/4 tank of gas?!

For those in the U.S.: Estimating a fuel tank of approximately 12 gallons (small European cars and all), this would work out to a gas charge of $30 per gallon.

I know gas is expensive in Europe, but this is highway robbery.

In all my years in the industry, I have NEVER seen so much charged for gas.

A small premium is acceptable to encourage customers to fill their own tanks and to pay for the employee time to fill the tank and the infrastructure to deal with refueling, but 230 Euros? I would not be able to sleep at night doing that! Sixt should be ashamed of themselves. Any ideas I ever had of using my comped Sixt Plat status just went completely out the window.

Gary, do the right thing and fix that bill. Then, call up your Germany division and demand they drop the price of fuel to a reasonable level. Given the high price of fuel in Europe, I would define a "reasonable level" as anything below a 50% premium (so about 262 Euro cents per litre or $12 per U.S. gallon)--still abominable (the fuel would cost approximately 90 EUR or $108) but at least not murder and pillage.

I have no dog in this fight, but I could not just sit here and say nothing. Even as an industry insider used to customers with frivolous complaints about valid charges and outright lying to get out of charges they clearly owe, I am absolutely blown away at the gall of this company to take such advantage of their customers.

Hi Jackal,

Thanks for your comments, as you can see I am more than happy to look into this customer's query, and I am indeed currently in dialogue with this customer to resolve. Whilst I am not going to disclose the finer details, I would like to clarify that the fuel charge accounts for some of the difference in the customers quote and invoice but not all. The charge was not 230 euros for the fuel, I agree with you of course that is astronomical.

I had booked a Sixt car for Mo-i-Rana, Northern Norway for this weekend. With Sixt Platinum card in hand, with LH SEN discount, I got a rate of NOK 1365 including basic CDW. Then on another day, decided to try booking through SAS website and got a shock. Without entering Sixt Platinum card info, I received a rate of NOK 1300 for same car, dates, location.

I did email Gary (FT Sixt lurker) with the above issue and he did reply to me that one must check the various sites, and compare with / without Platinum card to see what is better. But really, what is the point in comparing? I mean, the Platinum card is supposed to give me a discount off the best rate. But Sixt is advising me that no, that is not the case. I have to look at all options!

So I cancelled both my reservations and booked the 'undiscounted' but cheaper rate using my friend's name as she is the main driver. Plus additional CDW the rate came to NOK 1632 for the 2 days.

We arrived at Mo-i-Rana this morning and called the Sixt location for instructions on how to get there. The agent in charge didn't have any info on our car. In fact he said that it was IMPOSSIBLE to rent a car like this on the Sixt website. He insisted that the website was wrong in just reserving a car as he says that the website must tell us the customer to call the Sixt location in Mo-i-Rana directly. So even though we have booked and confirmed, the location did not receive the information.

With confirmed reservation booking number, we tell him as it is. He 'finds' the information and says that he does not have a minivan available. Er, we told him that we have an economy car booked. But apparently he only got some email telling him that we want a minivan without any other information attached. Which again he says is not possible for us to book through the Sixt website.

After much calling back and forth, and thank goodness my friend is Norwegian so she's doing all the talking . Anyway, the representative (guy on phone) arrives at out hotel with car (which he says was just returned to the location that day) but couldn't figure out how much to charge us as he has no info. We presented him with the confirmation details.

Anyway, it is farce really. I called the US reservation number on the website, and the call gets routed to the UK to a guy who said he can't help me if I have a confirmation and the location in Norway doesn't. But he will transfer the call to the rep in Norway. So I get transfered through while my friend is talking to the same guy on the other line. The hotline Norwegian number listed on the website doesn't work.

I've never booked with Sixt. And I thought I'd give them a try. Really, after this... never again!