Spaceships Rentals (UK & Europe)
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Never again!
I hired a camper for 30 days to go to Austria in. I phoned Spaceships the next morning after collecting it to report that the handbrake was not functioning properly and would not hold the vehicle on a steep gradient, and later that day as I was on my way past Strasbourg the rear brakes seized up completely. I then had to make a 10 hour train journey to get to my destination. Spaceships refused to accept responsibility for providing me with a faulty vehicle. It transpires that the rear discs as well as the pads had to be replaced, yet they claim that the vehicle had been thoroughly checked beforehand. I was offered a refund for 17 days of the 30 days I had paid for, although I only had use of the vehicle for 28 hours. In the end I did not get any refund because I had to pay for the vehicle to be repatriated from France back to the UK - the cost of which wiped out any recompense I might otherwise have received. *Spaceships has responded to this review (which I tried to keep as short as possible without going into details or any personal commentary). Firstly, they are still claiming that the vehicle was not faulty. And I still claim that it was faulty when I got it - the handbrake was already ineffective when I arrived at the Channel Tunnel when the handbrake would not hold the vehicle on the ramp. Or did the handbrake develop a fault in the 100 miles of mostly motorway driving between London and Folkestone? As for their claim that their roadside recovery covered the cost of my train journey, well I got no support from anybody to make the train journey to Austria (I had to find my own way from where I was to the nearest big town which happened to be Strasbourg), and to date I still have not received a penny from the roadside assistance company as reimbursement for the costs of reaching my destination by train, nor for any of the travel costs I incurred in order to get back to the UK. Yes, I did discuss with Spaceships the possibility of me returning to Strasbourg to collect the vehicle after it had been repaired and continue with what remained of my 'holiday'. I did say at the time in phone conversations with Spaceships that it was 'possible' and 'feasible' that I might make the long journey back from Villach to Strasbourg - a 10 hour train journey arriving late in the day and having to find somewhere to stay overnight, and then a further long journey by taxi from Strasbourg to pick up the vehicle from the repairers (according to Spaceship's reckoning the taxi fare there was £86.90). And on further consideration of the long and arduous journey involved I decided it was unreasonable to expect me to do it for the sake of another ten days of a 'holiday' that had already been ruined. Obviously I must have aroused the impression with Spaceships that I was fool enough to undertake such a journey. So the repairs to the vehicle were expensive - am I to be blamed for that as well? If the brakes had been fit for their purpose in the first place none of this would have happened. Spaceships want to give the impression that they treated me fairly. I paid £1572 for hiring the vehicle from them, plus £260 for the Channel Tunnel crossing (optimistically I had paid for a return crossing), in exchange for 28 hours use of the vehicle - at the end of which I was left stranded (nobody gave me any assistance to continue my journey) and having to find a taxi before I could make my way onward to Austria where I was due to attend a funeral two days later. Yes, I did make a complaint to the BVRLA about this - and please take a look at the Trustpilot reviews of this so-called 'independent body' where you will read that the BVRLA usually finds in favour of the rental companies - who are paying their wages in the first place! (As arbitrators I consider them to be totally laughable.) I stand by what I wrote in my original article. It was a concise statement of the bald facts without any accompanying commentary about how angry I feel about my journey to Europe being ruined by other people's negligence. I might just as well have gone by train in the first place and saved myself all this bother!