A warning to all who rent from Sixt in Europe:

We rented in Munich in June on a pleasure trip. Upon return, we were first charged for fuel even though we had filled the tank just before returning the car to the MUC airport. When brought to the attention of the staff, (with refueling receipt in hand ) the charge was reluctantly removed, with no explainations and no real apology. ( We had to take a lot of extra time to go to the counter inside the terminal to get this rectified.)
Then our credit card bill arrived this week, with an extra charge of Euro 18 added to the Sixt bill. The answer to my e mail inquiring about this charge yielded a reply that it was for "extra cleaning" required after the car's return.
(I can assure you that the car was as clean as it had been when we picked it up when we returned it. In fact, we rarely drove the car during our stay.)

I guess Sixt will stoop to any measure to get a few extra bucks out of it's customers, especially when they think being on the other side of the pond we have little recourse.

Am curious to know if anyone else has had this problem with them? And any ideas as to how to proceed from here? My company has a corporate agreement with Sixt and gives them a lot of European business. I doubt they will be pleased to here about this...

first, what does your rental agreement say about the possibility of an additional cleaning charge or any charge after drop-off?

second, dispute it with the credit card company. for such a small fee, even if they don't get Sixt to back down, they just might eat it to keep you a happy customer.

nobody else had such an experience which is the reason why it hardly sounds believable

Sorry to contradict you, but as a regular card carrying Sixt customer (should I say "Future-ex-regular...") I have had and still have exactly the same kind of problems: Cars which are not filled although the gauge flirts with F, amounts added without reason, etc... Nothing that a strong rebuttal letter with copy to my company attorney will not correct, but it is aggravating. On top of this, long waits at the CDG counter, totally incompetent station manager, lack of cars, different categories from those reserved, cars invariably dirty and increasingly damaged without it being mentioned, especially for those who do not buy the insurance.

Finally, if you add to this that the "Customer Service" for all of France and Switzerland at Bale-Mulhouse airport is a joke, full of inept insolent and lazy girls who look upon themselves as what "stewardesses" were in the 1950's, you get the picture. Letters with problems from 2 years ago go unanswered, promises of a "Comp" remain... promises, that company is sinking fast.

It is true that the service differs from country to country and from station to station, so you could deduce to avoid Sixt except for Germany. The OP�s description in MUC is -for me as a frequent renter- a highly unlikely situation and an exceptional case: I�ve never had, especially with all major airport stations in Germany, similar experiences.

I've rented from Sixt a couple of times in Europe.. and I've been happy so far..
Thrifty is the one that ticked me off...

Certainly there is a difference between sixt in germany and the other countries (not even going to start whats happening at sixt in rome), but in germany all the things mentioned above are very unlikely.

In contrast to europcar and hertz. I had 4 rentals at hertz this year, every single time I had to complain so that in the end the final amount was reduced. They even told me once that they dont have a c class (which I booked) and actually wanted to call me that they cannot give me a car. appearantly they found a focus cmax for 1e less. they actually expected me to be happy.
I certainly had problems with sixt, but not this kind...

What kind of problems did you have lately - the usual "They dont honour the Plat Status and give bad cars?"
or more serious ones ??

Sounds like there are at least a couple of loyal Sixt fans here that would rather not believe this incident has happened to me, but the fact is, it did.
And it did happen in Germany, contrary to expectations otherwise.

An e-mail asking for a description of the cleaning fee and what actually needed to be done to the car has as yet gone unanswered. (We just by luck have a couple of pix taken the day of return, showing the car to be "clean", so we'll see what response they bring...)

I only mentioned that your incident was definitely an exception, so I would think twice, to avoid Sixt in the future due to the (nearly overall) great service, cars (and rates if your credit card covers the CDW).

The only situation I can remember was an offered (!) additional charge of 15 EUR at STR because of my premature arrival in the Sixt station at 11.20 a.m., having a weekend-reservation, which starts regularly at noon.

Had a coffee instead, came back at 11.45 and got a MB CLS for my LDAR reservation. Who cares, thanks.

Never had any problems like this ridiculous one ever.

I agree, this situation IS ridiculous !! Ridiculous to try to charge a customer for gas when the tank has just been filled; ridiculous to charge the customer a bogus "cleaning fee" when the car was returned clean, ( and to do it several weeks after the rental has ended, not at the time of return-)
And then to not reply to an inquiry as to what the cleaning charge was for---
also ridiculous!!
Whether we rent from Sixt again will be determined by how they handle this situation from here on in. It is too bad that this experience has tainted our feeling about doing business with them, because up until this fiasco we were very happy with both the car and the service.

In my experience last December in renting a car in Europe (South of France) I found that it was much cheaper to rent through an specialized agency than direct. And, if you do rent through the agency, they may go to bat for you if there is a problem--not that I had one.

There are several such agencies which rent through out Europe. The one I used was rentalcargroup.com

Hi mclain,

I'm a very regular renter with Sixt in Germany as well - I can fully understand what happenend to you as I experience this with at least 20% of my rentals:

I do get letters for damages I even found in the "Schadenskarte" on the back of the green insurance sheet.
I do get charged for fuel even if I filled the car five minutes and 100m away from drop-down.
I do sometimes get charged for extra cleaning, although their standard amount for that is 40 Euros.
They regularily "forget" our 40% discount when billing.
This even happens at stations where they know me and where I have around 30 rentals p.a..

With this cleaning issue: everytime they do this extra cleaning it is their procedure to make photos in order to have proof if the customers reports to customer service - if they cannot show you the photos customer service in Rostock ( [email protected] ) will remove this amount from your bill.

I recommend that everytime when you did not feel comfortable with your rental at Sixt to report to customer service - their quality management does work as I sometimes get a call back from the station where I experienced the difficulty and get told that they would prefer to be approached right away instead of complaining to customer service

My 2 cents,

Felix

As I am casually checking my credit card statement today, I find a 80 euros charge separate from my last rental and 4 days later. No warning, no authorization, no reason given, and the only feasible one is to repair a minor damage which I noticed and reported in writing as I was taking the car. I am of course disputing the charge, the beauty being that nobody at Sixt can give me the slightest explanation about the reason for the charge.

And you call this almost flawless service ?

Add to this the permanent short filling of the tank, just enough to reach the F gauge and resulting in a 10 liter (3 Gal.) topping when I rent a car for the weekend and drive only 20 miles... you get the picture. To make it short I call it highway robbery on a regular basis.

Thanks, everyone, for your input and advice.

Still no response from Sixt, which only seems to strengthen my arguement that this is a scam. Will let you know what happens in the long run.

Sorry to hear that others are also having problems with Sixt, but at least it indicates that I'm not being singled out!