Autolinx

...offer me anything. I spotted Autolinx in a local telephone directory and was initially very pleased with my discovery. Sadly, after the actual rental, I would not be likely to re-use or recommend Autolinx to any prospective renters.

WHO ARE AUTOLINX?

Autolinx is a car rental “portal”, which operates nationally via a National call centre. Identifying the head office of the company is a difficult task, but ...
...had not previously heard of Autolinx – the fact that their web site is still under construction suggests the company’s relative youth.

HOW DOES AUTOLINX WORK?

Autolinx operates a central reservations call centre that handles calls from customers who are interested in renting a vehicle. The call centre captures the details of your required rental, and then refers this against a database of regional suppliers ... more

I’ve never been very keen on hiring cars. The whole process is often expensive, fraught with risks and generally quite stressful. I have previously encountered very poor service from Hertz, and very good service from Enterprise, but I recently wanted to hire an executive car, and neither of these companies was able to offer me anything. I spotted Autolinx in a local telephone directory and was initially very pleased with my discovery. Sadly, after the actual rental, I would not be likely to re-use or recommend Autolinx to any prospective renters.

WHO ARE AUTOLINX?

Autolinx is a car rental “portal”, which operates nationally via a National call centre. Identifying the head office of the company is a difficult task, but credit card transactions are debited to a car rental agency called Alpha Rentals, in Farnborough. Prior to my recent rental experience, I had not previously heard of Autolinx – the fact that their web site is still under construction suggests the company’s relative youth.

HOW DOES AUTOLINX WORK?

Autolinx operates a central reservations call centre that handles calls from customers who are interested in renting a vehicle. The call centre captures the details of your required rental, and then refers this against a database of regional suppliers to see if a local dealership can fulfil your request. The advantage of this approach, of course, is that the bookings can be recorded centrally and then accessed by the dealerships, who can concentrate on delivering and collecting vehicles, without having to handle vast numbers of customer contacts. This works fine in principle – when I first contacted the call centre, the advisor to whom I spoke was efficient and helpful, recorded all my details quickly and accurately and then proceeded to arrange the rental.

Where the process subsequently falls down is when you need to make another contact to amend or confirm any of the details of your original booking. If you contact the main call centre, they will simply refer you to the dealer who will be fulfilling your request for a rental. It is then up to you to contact the dealer direct and make the amendment or cancellation, as applicable. This is, of course, a rather inefficient process, because the customer is required to make a number of calls – when ideally, the whole transaction should be facilitated by the main call centre. It is therefore very simple for the call centre to simply transfer problems to someone else – and the dealerships still have to handle customers.

WHAT DO YOU GET FOR YOUR MONEY?

Autolinx advertises an extensive range of vehicles for hire. As well as the most popular models of family or small cars, they also hire 7/8 seater vehicles, vans, minibuses, estate cars and luxury cars – which is, of course, what originally attracted me to them. Whilst they do advertise particular models, availability is realistically dependant on the stock carried by your local dealership. I’m not sure to what lengths the dealers will go to secure particular vehicles, but when making your reservation, you would be best advised to focus on a particular class, rather than a particular model. The rental rates quoted include insurance, unlimited mileage and an excess protection premium. The company also delivers and collects the vehicle free of charge. Compared to other major rental companies, this is an impressive offer, considering that more often than not, you pay more money for unlimited mileage and excess protection and collection is generally made available to corporate customers only.

The greater surprise, therefore, is the comparative cheapness of the rental rates quoted. Autolinx does not publish a standard tariff, so I’m afraid I can only quote the rental charges for the vehicle that I rented. I was offered a Mercedes SLK 230 Kompressor for a seven-day rental of £395 – including VAT. This is a very cheap deal indeed on a car of this class – I would expect to be charged double this with one of the major rental companies. My disbelief at this rate was so acute that I found myself continually confirming the price with both the main reservations team and the dealership.

ADMINISTRATION

One of the first problems that I encountered with Autolinx occurred during the delivery. I was quoted a delivery time of 09:30 on the Monday morning. An Autolinx representative arrived promptly at this time – but the vehicle didn’t arrive for some 30 or 40 minutes after this, owing to “traffic”. It later transpired that both vehicles had left the depot together, but the second vehicle had pulled into a petrol station for reasons unknown. The lateness was not a major issue for me as such, as I was not working to a deadline, but I was rather irritated that the paperwork had arrived – and the car hadn’t.

The initial paperwork was completed whilst we waited for the vehicle to arrive. Although I was given a copy of my credit card receipt to confirm deduction of the rental fee, I was not given a copy of the main rental document, which I had signed and which was to include details of any damage to the vehicle. I have always been used to receiving a duplicate copy of everything that I have signed, and was slightly nervous of this approach. I was asked to sign a number of blank credit card counterfoils – one to cover potential recovery of the deposit (which was £500) and for additional petrol costs that might have been incurred. In principle, this is not a bad idea, as the counterfoils are simply returned or destroyed when the vehicle is collected. Nonetheless, I wasn’t so keen on the idea of a blank counterfoil with my signature on it, hovering around the office.

When the Mercedes actually arrived, it took the two employees a further 15 – 20 minutes to finalise the inventory and sort out the paperwork, and by this time, I think they could tell I was rather displeased. The whole process was far too lengthy as far as I was concerned.

THE SERVICE

It is worth considering that the service I received from the dealership is not strictly applicable to Autolinx. The call centre advisors were all efficient and courteous – but then most of the work was deferred to the dealership.

The men who delivered the Mercedes were quite rude. The first guy just walked into my hallway without even being invited in, which rather threw me. Having decided to deposit himself in my office, hen then proceeded to take ages fiddling around with the paperwork, all the time being just about as courteous as he had to. He certainly wasn't in keeping with the executive car I was waiting for.

After this, all my contact with the branch was handled over the telephone and I’m pleased to say that the service was much more professional - especially given the problems I faced....

THE VEHICLES

When my original booking had been placed, all the details of the car (make, model, and cost) were confirmed back to me, except for one – age. It transpired that age was a very relevant detail in this rental. The Mercedes that was delivered was an R-registered vehicle and had accumulated significant mileage. Needless to say, the condition of the vehicle quickly supported this. The bodywork had superficial damage to both the front and the rear, where it had been involved in an accident. The doors and paint work were peppered with dents and scratches and the interior was old, worn and quite dirty. An attempt to clean the vehicle had been made, but the age of the vehicle meant that this was pretty much a fruitless task.

Mechanically, the car appeared perfectly sound, and at this stage, £395 for the week seemed OK – this was still a nice car, after all, and the electric roof certainly appealed to me, with the hot weather. After taking the car out for a bit of a drive, it transpired that mechanically, the vehicle was not completely up to scratch. The brakes squealed horrendously, and worse still, the air conditioning and internal cooling system was completely inoperational. With the windows closed and the roof up on the motorway, the cabin temperature was horrendous – stiflingly hot.

I therefore contacted the dealership, to advise of the problems. To give credit where it is due, they showed genuine concern and offered to replace the vehicle. The only possible replacement in the class was an X-registered BMW 323ci due to come back later that day. They agreed to exchange the two vehicles the following morning, and I kept the Mercedes until the following morning. To be fair, they did also agree to a refund if I preferred (although the area manager had to authorise this).

When the BMW actually arrived, the bodywork was in a similar condition to that of the Mercedes. The interior was cleaner – but not much, and the car generally had a very tired look. The air conditioning appeared to be working, but a quick test drive identified that it was not – and more worryingly, there appeared to be a problem with the front suspension. The near side front suspension was making a knocking noise and it sounded to me like the front arm needed replacing. Once again, I contacted the dealership and explained the problems. In lieu of my commitments, and a lack of replacement vehicles, I decided to keep the car and drove it uneventfully for the rest of the hire – although the front wheel did sound as though it would fall off at any second.

SUMMARY

I felt that Autolinx had misled me into thinking that I would be renting a brand new vehicle. Whilst they never stated this explicitly, most car rental companies maintain a new fleet of cars and the age of the vehicles was obviously the main reason for the lower rates. The vehicles’ age would not necessarily have caused a problem, if they had been regularly serviced, but the cars were battered, worn and seemingly unloved. The experience did rather take the shine off having a luxury car for the week. Autolinx would certainly need to do something about their fleet of vehicles – I wouldn’t be sure that the second car would have passed its MOT and if I had had more time, I would possibly have checked this out. I am happy to accept a company that offers discounted rentals, using older vehicles, but this is no excuse for compromising on basic standards.

Not recommended
 

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