Europcar - Hidden clauses, unclear selling practices and abuse on cost of reparation

i wanted to share my very bad experience with Europcar with as many people as possible, considering the lack of attention to client they have demonstrated with my issue.

1. Claim regards your sellling process and unclear insurance practices.
When I rented the car, I firstly received an email where absolutely no constraint was indicated related to the potential usage of the mandatory basic insurance as indicated below and in the message enclose. As you can see, there is absolutely no limitation indicated regarding the insurance neither any legal mention to be consulted

Later I was indicated at the Europcar desk (when I took the car) that in case of accident with another car, to proove that I am not responsible, I would have to supply a police report.
For the avoidance of any doubt, no police report was indicated as required in case of accident from my responsibility or any damage due to a non-identified third party. And most of all, it was never indicated any limitations regarding the fact that the insurance was requiring any police report to be activated. And that in case of absence of police report, all the reparations will be at my charge
For this simple reason, by law, you are not allowed to charge more than the amount indicated in the message above ie 1000AED (franchise) even though you may have a clause in a small line of one the various and long documents you may have sent to me at some stage of the process.



2. Claim regards the value of the reparation.
As you can clearly see in the picture, the impact / chip on the glass is really small and clearly not deep.
It means that a basic reparation with a small patch would work. In absolutely no case the chip was deep contrary to what the person in charge in Dubai declared. To make this kind of reparation, the cost should be approximately 50€ and is generally covered for free by any insurance. It means that the estimation of the reparation (634€) is totally abusive

To make it clear, this person declared that the chip was deep and asked me to touch the glass inside to feel that the fact was broken on both side. I made the test and it was absolutely not the case.
Due to the fact that we were in hurry to catch our plane, your employee is taking advantage of the situation to make abusive declaration of sinister counting on the fact that the client do not have time to call the police to solve the issue. It is properly inadmissible to have such kind of practices. I encourage you to pay attention to the behavior of your employee which is lying in front of your clients.
For this reason, in case Europcar is not insured for this kind of repair (which would be surprising to me), I may only consider to be charged for a fair price of the reparation ie approx. 50€



3. Claim regards an abusive collection process.
In spite of my strong disagreement when I gave back the car, your employee forced me to give a pre authorization on my credit card (American Express) to cover the cost of glass repair. He clearly stated that the value will first be communicated to me and I would receive an invoice to justify the amount. In spite of my demand, your employee refused several times to make me any kind of invoice declaring that he could not confirm the value of the reparation.
I discovered yesterday that Europcar charged me 2572.5AED ie 634€. And still no invoice was sent to me until today. This is clearly an non-compliant process from your part.
By law, you are not allowed to charge your client without any consent and invoice from your client. Consequently I ask you to immediately block this process.


4. Impossible to contact for a claim.
I tried to contact Europcar to manage a smooth agreement and share my bad experience. But by process it is not possible to talk. I received a very funny message telling me that they have studied my case because the quality and the customer satisfaction is of most importance for them. But they informed me that they have evaluated their practice as fair enough and thus they do not plan to do anything... but they even forgot to send the bills proving the reparation.

After all those events, I really think this billing is a fake one and that they really took advantage of the situation.