Post 248548 by KPB on 2009-08-10 13:04:34
Oh the joys of overseas motoring. I've just been on two overseas trips and both involved hire car problems. Firstly, we drove from Rome up to Tuscany (oooh how middle class does that sound?) in a Fiat Grande Punto diesel, which I think had spent its life in second gear around the eternal city and was falling to bits. Literally. Thanks to lovely Italian build quality a piece of wing mirror trip fell off and of course, Mr Muggins from Blighty will end up paying for the replacement. Thank god for excess reimbursment insurance. Secondly, we popped over to Vienna for a few days as a base for a cross-border skip into Hungary for a wedding. On the evening before the trip I checked the hire car (check out this gut emptying bad boy) only to find it had disappeared. Keeping calm, I rang Eurocar and said its "either been stolen or towed away" in between guffaws the service advisor said "there is no way anyone would steal a Lancia Musa, it'll have been towed". He was right. 2 hrs and a metro/taxi ride later, I shelled out the lovely total of £200 to get it back. Ouch. 2.3 times the rental cost. Turns out we had parked in a disabled space, which is a despicable thing to do I admit, but in our defence the only sign was 15ft up a building 10 meters up the road. The sign was about 12in by 3in, and just contained a house number and a small wheelchair emblem. I even had to sign a form declining my right to appeal before they would release the car (which I obviously needed to get to the wedding the next morning, else i'd have just told them to stuff it).