Centauro Rent a Car
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Disgraceful-well oiled scam after vehicle broke down on side of highway
Booking PR24126916 Disgraceful. Our car broke down on the side of the highway in madeira 2 days into our rental. After providing a replacement which worked fine, upon return at the end of our holiday, we were charged the full excess amount and presented with an invoice simply stating "driver negligence" as the cause. To this day we still do not know what the cause was. The amount of the tow+"damages" was, conveniently, the full excess amount (€1700+). Everybody spoke perfect English up until the point of us returning the vehicle (the morning of our flight back to the UK 7am), when the employee telling us we had to pay and had to sign a document so we could claim for our insurance, conveniently again, only spoke broken english (despite other employees we had previously dealt with who spoke perfect English being present). After repeatedly asking what they were asking us to sign, he still could not explain, other than to say "need for insurance". Stupidly, we signed as we felt pressured; we did not know what we were signing. They were extremely coercive- putting our bags in the airport taxi before presenting us with the invoice/ standing us in the middle of the garage in front of other customers etc. Incredibly rude and disgusting treatment of well paying customers. We asked if they could provide invoices/garage report as required as standard by our 3rd part insurer; they said we simply had to contact customer service and they would provide and that they didn't have said documents at the branch. Lo and behold, customer service has, to this day, repeatedly refused to provide said documents. Our insurer has also attempted to obtain said documents and they claimed under GDPR law they could not liaise with them. The irony! We are fully prepared to take legal action if needed, starting with a credit card charge back. Seems like a very well run scam which they are very experienced in pulling on unsuspecting customers. Distgusting, avoid. Edit: As you can see, centauro have replied to this review saying they will be able to resolve if we contact customer service- I have literally stated in my review that customer service has repeatedly failed to provide documents and evidence relating to our rental and charges billed to us. What a complete joke of a company. This should prove to anyone considering using them, to avoid.