General Chat

Well as my first choice had to cancel, i asked my neighbour if he would drive the removal van for me and thankfully he agreed.

I had booked it in advance so on the Fri 28th may, we set off in the morning at 9am to collect the van. Once we were in the"office", all the lady asked for was to see "C"s driving licence then got him to sign the form.

A so called "supervisor" came outside to show us the van and walked round the van with a clipboard noting the dents! Well what a laugh. The van was 2009 and had more dents and scratches then the old car i had before. He showed us the fuel gauge and said to replace what we use. The guage was just below 1/4 tank!!

Anyway i paid for 4 days at £60, so £240 in total. C drove it back to my house and then left me and daughter to start loading up.
We opened the back and inside was....well it was filthy. It took me an hour to sweep it clean enough for us to use and even then, we put down some old sheets on the floor.

Clearly, this van hadnt been cleaned in months.

So Monday morning came, all packed up and off we set. We reached the garage about 6 miles from the house so pulled in there to top up with fuel to save time on the way back. As the van slowed to pull in, I noticed only one brake light was working. C got out and I told him so he was aware although nothing we could about it at the time. he opened the flap to fill with fuel and noticed no fuel cap!!! Oh my we said, surely thats illegal??

Anyway stuck £15.00 in the tank and onwards to new home.

3 hours later C drove it back to the hire firm. I said say nothing as i will deal with the complaints i had.

I duly fired off a letter setting out the cleanliness, the joker with the clip board, one brake light, no fuel cap and that hardly any of the details on the form had been completed.

I demanded a refund of half ie £120 for the inconvenience of the cleaning and the general state of the van. If C had been stopped for the brake light, he would have been fined and 3 points on his licence.

Well 3 weeks went by and then a letter came back from the hire company. It was not very polite and said, we should have tel immediately about the brake light and they would have rectified it if we had returned the van. Yeah right with a whole van of furniture etc. they claimed it must have just gone!!

As for me having to clean it, said it was an oversight as all vans are thoroughly cleaned..yeah of course they are.

End of the saga is they offered me 10 % of any future hire and really made no apologies at all.

Customer service has gone down the toilet thesedays. What happened to giving a great service so your customers will want to come back and also tell their friends how good your company is?

Heres hoping, i wont have to use them again to move home....not that im planning on moving again anytime soon lol

Florence in the hebrides

Fobbed off comes to mind :-(

Name and shame online....they deserve bad publicity.

Memo to self ................

next time we rent a car or a van, WE will take photos of its state when we got it, inside and outside!


This is really a horror story!!

Yes well, if & when there is a next time, hindsight is a wonderful thing. I would ask to see the interior. get them to show me all working lights, indicators etc, check fuel cap.

As this company have been here for over 20 years and are well known,. I didnt think I would have to be so thorough before i hired it.

But then again, people here drive"tractors" etc that have probably never had an MOT, their trailers have no number plates and tyres that are well past their best. Its rural life where noone bothers you and only 1 police station now in the town centre.

Trouble is when you make a complaint even if its justified, they always make you feel like you shouldnt have complained and just got on with it! in other words "locals" dont complain, just the incomers!! The fact Ive lived here for 29 years doesnt make me local!

Florence in the hebrides

There's making do and there's taking the you know what...they must have known what state it was in before they rented it to you. If nothing else if that's all they had left to rent to you they could have offered a discount.

If you had been stopped by the police it would probably be the driver who got points etc rather than the company sending out an unroadworthy vehicle.