Avoid at all cost...

Please do not mistake the crooks at Euro Car Rentals with Europcar. Euro Car Rentals also trade as Elite Car Hire and Affinity Car Rentals and operate out of an office a few kilometres out of the Christchurch airport.

I rented a BMW Z4 in early December. When taking the vehicle they were very casual with respect to the return time, stating just give us a call whenever on the last day of hire. We received a call an hour prior to the scheduled drop off, when I replied I would be 20 - 30 minutes late they immediately said they would be charging me an additional day. On the back of that we decided to keep the vehicle overnight since we we being charged anyway.

Given we had an early flight out on the Sunday morning I parked the vehicle in short term parking, left $20 in the glove box for parking and sent an email advising location of the car and keys. After no reply to several emails and phone messages I finally got hold of them only for them to tell me the vehicle had sustained considerable damage and I had been charged $5000 as per the rental agreement.

Needless to say I was irrate as I had taken extreme care of the vehicle and was confident I had not damaged it. After some angry words they simply hang up and refused to answer any future phone calls.

After sometime the eventually refunded some of the money but retained $1376.88 for purported repairs, most of which was relating to the down time of the vehicle charged at full rate. The owners have been previously charged with similar crimes.

I definitley did not damage the car and was scammed by these thieves. Do yourself a favour and avoid Euro Car Hire, Elite Car Hire and Affinity Car Rentals. I will be making formal complaints with the appropriate authorities and hope they are exposed as fraudulent once again.

Reviewed over 3 years ago and experienced in December 2012