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AutoUnion in Istanbul - Totally Nightmare
AutoUnion in Istanbul. What a horrible experience. Firstly, they changed the pickup instructions at the last minute so when we arrived in Istanbul there was nobody waiting at the designated location and we had to make numerous phone calls to their office to get proper directions. Secondly, for some reason they could not get my Mastercard to work properly for the security deposit - it worked everywhere else I went in Turkey - so I had to use another card that charges me higher fees for international transactions. Thirdly, when we returned the car they inspected it and told us everything was good. We had read reviews about people being ripped off over toll fees so we asked to see the transactions but were told it would take 7 days for them to come through. The next day all the big trouble started. They contacted me to say they had found some damage to one of the rear taillights and said I had to pay for it to be repaired. I asked how much and they said 200 Euros plus 26,5 Euros for the tolls. In a second message they said that my deposit was 150 Euros so they would charge me a further 76,5 Euros. I disputed the cost of the part as it seems very high for a light. I also asked for photographic evidence. They sent before and after photos but there wass no way to verify when the before photos were taken as they did not contain the metadata from the camera. They then switched and started using Turkish Lira for the costs. I put faith in their currency conversion and did not notice that they had increased the price by 33%. It wasn't until I was reviewing my credit card statements that I saw what they had done. Now they are saying that they made a mistake in the calculations and are also blaming a faulty keyboard and, in short, are refusing to honour the price they initially told me. I even had a heated conversation with one of their representatives on the phone where he tried to equate it to an item in a shop with 2 price tags on it. He said that I was dishonest if I expected to pay the lower price. At the end of the day, AutoUnion are the dishonest ones. They may admit their mistakes but are totally unwilling to take responsibility for them and live up to their consequences. This company may appear to be cheaper than some of the bigger names in the car rental market but when you factor in their tricky, dishonest practices they turn out to be more expensive and are defintely not worth the stress.