I was persuaded by rachel1431's comprehensive review from 2005 to give Europa Goldcar at Palmaairport a try.
But as she suggested, I booked directly through their website (http://www.europa-rentacar.es/en) rather than using the broker Carjet.
Before booking ============
A couple of things made me hesitate before going ahead. First I'd never heard of them. Not surprising as they only seem to operate in Spain and the Balearic islands. However, their website says they have a fleet of 16,000 cars, renewed every six months. So evidently they're not exactly a small operation.
The other thing I wasn't initially happy about was their fuel policy. When you pick up the car they charge you for a full tank of fuel and you get no refund when you return the car, so you should try to leave the tank as empty as possible. I found a lot of comments on the internet grumbling about this policy. It grates for a lot of people that its seems unfair that you should be charged for fuel that you don't use. Holiday Autos use Hiper Rent in Palma airport and they have the same fuel policy.
However, I looked at this way. The cheapest
rate I found from the international car hire firms was around 160 euros for six days in October. Europa Goldcar were quoting 108. When you're hurrying back to the airport at the end of your holiday you're not going to risk letting the tank fall below about a quarter, especially in a car you're not familiar with and which might not have an accurate fuel gauge. Small cars tend to have tanks of around 40-45 litres. So you're bound to be giving the car back to them with 10-15 euros worth of fuel in it. So that takes the price to around 120 euros - still a lot less than the international firms.
As rachel1431 pointed out, they also offer you insurance for the wheels. Like her, I accepted this, as it's quite easy to damage wheels and hubcaps. A year after her trip the price had gone up from 10 to 15 euros. So the total was 135 euros - still less than the competition.
But the key issue that persuaded me to go ahead was the fact that they have no insurance excess for damage. If you hire from any of the international firms, you generally remain liable for the first 400-600 euros (the excess) even if you take all the insurance they offer. So the extra costs for unused fuel and for wheel insurance seemed like money well spent to have a car where you were not liable for any damage.
Finally, Goldcar are open 24 hours a day, unlike some of the other firms which charge you extra if you arrive after their normal closing times, which might be 10pm or earlier.
Picking up the car ==============
I took the advice in Rachel1431's review and took action to try to avoid the queues at the Goldcar office. I arranged for the rest of the family to collect the bags and I went on ahead with just my hand baggage.
I assumed the car hire offices would be somewhere in the main arrivals hall after leaving the baggage claim area and going through the customs area. In fact, Goldcar's office, ( and I think a number of other car hire offices) are located between the baggage hall and the arrivals meeting area and have desks facing both sides. This means they have a desk facing out over the baggage area and on the opposite side of the office they have a window facing out to the public area of the arrivals hall. In the case of Goldcar, when I arrived around 9pm on an October evening they had three staff on the baggage hall side of the office and only one at the single window that looks out over the public arrivals hall side. And having gone through the customs area I couldn't go back to get onto the side with three staff. As it turned out, I didn't have any problems. There was just one other person waiting ahead of me and I was served quite quickly. But I was slightly concerned by a notice saying that at busy times precedence would be given to arriving customers on the baggage hall side of the office. I hoped they weren't suddenly going to move all their staff to the other side to deal with the queue of half a dozen or so people that was building up on the baggage hall side.
There was just one minor glitch. I handed over the booking confirmation showing the price of 108 euros. The woman checked the booking on the system and began to print out the documents. (Unlike rachel1431, I hadn't paid anything in advance. I simply had a booking confirmed by Europa Goldcar by email in English.) She asked me if I wanted the wheel insurance cover and I agreed to that. She explained the fuel policy (all in excellent English) and said the charge would be 51 euros for the VW Polo I was getting. As I expected this was a little above the market rate for a tank which I think holds 45 litres. But the surge in petrol prices in mid-2006 meant that it probably hadn't been above the market rate earlier in the year, even though prices had by autumn fallen back to around one euro per litre. She then said the charge for the hire would be 123 euros. I pointed out that my email said 108 and she immediately apologised and said the system had got the wrong price and she would adjust it.
So that was all done after about five minutes of queuing and three or four minutes of printing out the car hire document.
Finding the car ============
Reading rachel1431's review I visualised myself arriving in the dark and struggling to find our car in an unwelcoming outdoor car park.
In fact, just opposite the airport terminal is a second building which I thought at first was a second terminal building. The two are linked by a brightly-lit moving walkway, so it's easy to get from one building to the other. It was only when we returned at the end of the week that I realised the second building might only be a multi-storey car park, though built in such a sympathetic style that you wouldn't guess that's what it was. We rode on the moving walkway across to the other building where Goldcar have another office. Here they give you the car key and tell you which bay the car is parked in. And that's it. Because there's no excess on the insurance they don't ask you to sign a form agreeing to a description of the car's condition.
And for the same reason, when you return the car, you just park it, walk along to the office and hand over the key. No paperwork is done. They don't even check whether you've actually brought the car back, though perhaps they can see it on a video camera or something.
In summary =========
The VW Polo we had was fine - a few months old, 15000 km but in good condition. All in all, a very pleasant experience. I wonder whether the fact that the fuel policy grates on anglo-saxon sensibilities is a cultural thing. Maybe the Spanish think this is a perfectly reasonable way of doing business. In New York it's considered perfectly normal to pay taxi drivers vastly more than the meter shows (it's quaintly called tipping) but people from Japan or Hong Kong where (I believe) taxi drivers don't expect tips might think this American practice was grossly unreasonable. Maybe these are all just cultural differences that we have to accept. When in Rome, do as the Romans do... (as they say.)
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Well done...you either have a natural bent for this or you've been herte b4...agree with Taz about deleting reference to other member...otherwise..Welcome to Ciao. T
tazzywazzy 20.11.2006 12:59
a good first review! I would however suggest taking out the reference to the other members review...not really good to name drop. other than that a really good review! x
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Advantages: Fantaastic website fantastic service - All together a pleasure Disadvantages: you may not get the car you book BUT will be as good if not better
rachel1431 27.07.2005 (27.07.2005)
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