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This last holiday I made the mistake of booking our car hire through Easyjet and it was a disaster. Please don’t make the mistake we made, and clearly the mistake countless others have made before us, as I have now found a Goldcar Victims facebook group.

On booking our flights to Lanzarote, I was presented by Easyjet with the option of booking our car hire at the same time as our flights. I never usually do this. I’m not that organised, don’t know which car to book, it’s usually something I put off for another time, but sadly this time I took the ‘easy’ option and booked it at the same time. I really wish I hadn’t.

I was delighted with the price of the Goldcar car hire at only £65 for a week and what I should have realised is that if it sounds too good to be true then it always always is! The thing is that when we went to Bologna a few years ago the car hire was only that much do it didn’t seem ridiculous.

The first ‘problem’ we had is that you don’t get a separate receipt which meant that I didn’t print off anything apart from the boarding passes so we had a slight issue in the airpot trying to find out who our booking with us. Interestingly I had already given Goldcar our name, to see if they had our booking, and they had actually denied all knowledge of a booking.

Having found the booking reference we were relieved and went back to the Goldcar desk. The chap on the desk told us we needed to take out additional insurance. We explained that we didn’t.

I am used to trying to be persuaded into additional insurance but we now have Excess Insurance that we buy for the year. It costs around £50 and when you have it you are  NOT obliged to purchase the excess waiver policy sold at the rental desk. The insurance4carhire policy is designed to reimburse excess charges imposed by the car rental company, following damage or theft of the vehicle.

However what Goldcar said was that this wasn’t helpful. It meant we didn’t need to buy cover to cover the £1000 excess BUT that if we had even one tiny scratch on the car it would cost us £600. to repair it. It was actually put like that. Do you want to have to worry about one tiny scratch.

To say I was angry was an understatement. That right there is not acceptable business practice.

I have emailed and tweeted them. I am getting a LOT of automated replies which are driving me mad. I need to keep going as they keep trying to fob me off with automated replies, nothing actually dealing with the issue, of quoting one price and charging you 3x that when you get there. If you NEED the extra policy, and they say that you do, then that should be included in the price.

Most of all I’m angry because I always use a decent car hire firm and have never had problems. I feel well and truly scammed and it’s not a nice feeling at all.

I have had lots of people contact me on facebook and twitter who have had the same issue, so all I can say is please don’t use Goldcar unless you are very very clear on their insurance policy and you think it’s worth the risk.