Whenever I hire a car in Paris I use Hertz, mainly because they usually offer unlimited kilometres and you can pay a little extra so you don’t have any insurance excess, which I like because I almost always end up denting or scratching the car.

I was about to book my hire car for my current trip and at the last minute thought it might be a good idea to read the terms and conditions of the rental, something I never do. Lucky I did because it turns out you cannot take any Hertz hire cars into Eastern Europe. Seeing as I was going to Hungary, Czech Republic and maybe Poland, this was a bit of a problem.

I checked Europcar and a couple of other places and they don’t allow you to take cars there either. I guess they figure the risk of theft is too great in those ‘dodgy’ countries so you can’t go there. Those damn thieving Eastern Europeans!

In the end I found that Sixt will let you take their hire cars east but not any German cars. I guess no one wants to steal Peugeots or Renaults!

I originally planned to book the BMW 3 series but seeing that was out I booked the Peugeot 407 automatic. I figured we would be doing a lot of driving and as there are four of us, I wanted to be comfortable. I booked and payed over the phone to be sure I got the right car and it was fine to go to all the countries I was interested in.

When we arrived at Sixt in Paris, the first thing she says is that I need to pay. I had already paid and had seen the transaction on my credit card so I knew it had gone through, even though I hadn’t received any confirmation as promised. After about 10 minutes of her refusing to give me the car because I ‘hadn’t paid’ she finally said it was ok. She didn’t admit I had paid or that she had made a mistake she just said it was fine now. I love it when people refuse to even acknowledge they are wrong, let alone apologise for their mistake.

Next problem with Sixt, they didn’t have the car I ordered. After all the trouble I had gone to, to make sure I could travel east, they said it wasn’t possible with that class of car because of the risk of theft. They never should have let me book it so why did they? Because they don’t know what they’re doing. In the end they offered me a Renault Scenic manual, nothing like I ordered or wanted.

I was pretty annoyed and in the end they agreed to refund me my money without charging a cancellation fee but then that would ruin all my travel plans. So I took this smaller car which was a manual instead of an automatic and which barely has enough room for all our luggage. It also doesn’t have heated seats or assisted parking and all the other little features I like.

Another problem, they didn’t refund the extra money I paid. For the car I expected, I paid 1700 euros but for the car I got it should have been less than 1000. They said they’d give it to me when I return the car. So that’s like a 700 euro loan I’ve given them.

Last problem, I read on the internet and double checked with the sales woman when I rang that there wasn’t to be any excess with the package I got but suddenly that wasn’t the case and there is 1000 euros excess.

Sixt sucks.

Update: Gary from Sixt customer service in the UK contacted me and has sorted out all the problems with the excess and has arranged for a refund for the difference between the car I ordered and the car I got. Kudos to him.