Airport car rental review: avoid renting a car with Drivalia!
While airline reviews remain the main focus of this site, I sometimes like to share reviews of other related elements of the air travel experience, be it airport hotels or, as in this case, an airport car rental experience that didn’t go as expected.
Car rentals are, in fact, among those parts of the travel journey in which, when things go well, there is little to report, but when things go bad, the downside can be really massive. This is why it is so important to share the experience when you come across cases of malpractice and unprofessionalism.
Unfortunately, I came across one such situations recently, after renting a car with the company Drivalia at Barcelona Airport and, while the damage could be mitigated (in great part thanks to the good work of Booking.com) I decided to share it here as a warning to other travelers.
So, here is what happened.
I recently booked a car rental at Barcelona airport. It was for a relatively short outing early in the morning, so I opted for an evening pick up.
As I often do, I went to Booking.com, since they often have pretty competitive offers (I think they are partners with Rentalcars.com for car rentals, even if the whole booking process is completed on Booking’s interface) an easy booking process and pretty good customer support. This, as we shall soon see, proved to be a wise decision.
This is how I came across a few offers from Drivalia for small car rentals, which looked compelling on price. One thing gave me pause: the company's customer ratings looked pretty low. I should have paid more attention to that. The only other time I'd used Drivalia, I witnessed a woman at the counter angrily disputing a late-arrival surcharge. Apparently, she'd had trouble reaching the rental office, which isn't at the terminal and requires a shuttle. I wasn't privy to the details so I gave staff the benefit of doubt, but in hindsight I can only sympathize. Still, I didn't bother reading the reviews. I just needed a small car for a short stretch, it was getting late, and the offer looked good enough on paper. What could go wrong?
Well, quite a lot, actually.
As mentioned ealier, Drivalia’s car pick up is not located at the airport terminal. It is located in an industrial park a couple of miles away and they run a shuttle service that picks you up at the terminal and drops you at the pick up spot and back. It is not super convenient, but it’s a reasonable trade-off since this is, of course, part of the reason they can offer low prices.
My booking was set for 21.30, and I arrived to the shuttle pick up location at that time, give or take 5 minutes. The car rental shuttles do not have a set time to run, but they come usually every 15 to 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes if they are very busy. So, I stood there and waited…and waited some more… A handful of other car rental companies had their shuttles coming and going, some of them repeatedly. No Drivalia van was coming though. So after a good 20 minutes waiting, I decided to call the contact number provided in the booking reference.
No reply. I called again, same thing.
I looked for some other way to contact the office, but no other channel is apparently provided.
I waited for another 20 minutes, thinking maybe they are super busy at this time of the day, but again no shuttle arrived.
Then, as I start browsing to try to find another way to reach them out, I learned their office was closed from 22.00.
So, they had sold me a car rental for 21.30 and closed 30 minutes later without any shuttle passing and not even making the effort to send an email or call to warn me, even when they knew they had customers stranded. I guess their excuse is that they only sell the rental from their facilities and that the shuttle is a complimentary extra, but this is quite misleading in practical terms.
First, because it is not physically possible if you are arriving at the airport to go to the rental office on your own or by public transport (the office is on the far side of a large industrial area that it is not safe to walk at night) and the rental instructions give you to understand that you will be taken care of and taken to the rental office. If there is a hard time limit, you should either restrict the booking areas to the slots that can be realistically served or warn people of when does the last shuttle run.
Even if you don’t have the policy of proactively reaching out to customers that may get stranded, you could at least pick up the phone.
You may say, well, it was late, staff finished their job and went home and didn’t have a duty to do more. But next morning I called some 20 times during the “official” office hours when they say they are open for business and no one every replied. I even called their head office, but this led to a pre-recorded message that redirected me to the local rental office where no one answered the phone.
I get the idea that a low-cost operator may not provide sterling customer service and that they may even make it difficult for people to reach out to them to filter some workload out, but this seems like a deliberate way to push aside any customer queries. In fact, that left me wondering whether this phone number is real or they just have it to fulfill some legal requirement.
The impossible challenge of trying to reach Drivalia’s customer service in a couple of pics:
So, since the car rental lapses after a few hours, that meant my rental was now technically a “no-show” and it was no longer valid even if I returned in the morning. What’s more, I now had to find alternative transport, not just from the airport to the city, but also for the rest of my journey.
This created a number of problems, the first one is that obviously car rental rates had gone up in the meantime. Obvioulsy if I had known that Drivalia is such a bad car rental company I would have paid a bit more to rent with someone more professional, but it was now too late for that, since most car rental companies require some time buffer to confirm the reservation.
I went back inside the terminal where, by this time (it was already close to 23.00) only two or three operators had their booths open and all had long lines of people waiting to pick up their cars. I finally got to speak with one of the staff at one of the major car rental brands who gave me a rather pricey quote for the only car they had left. Performing a back of the envelope cost-benefit calculation, I opted for dropping the car rental idea and proceed to fully reorganize my plans.
Now, the positive part: the next day I reached out to Booking.com customer service and I came across an example of how a professional customer service should be like. They replied immediately, said they will look into the case and offered booking alternatives in the meantime at the same price as originally booked (I had made alternative arrangements by then, but thanks!).
I also sent, of course, a written complaint to Drivalia customer service email address, which was conveniently buried in their site of course! I guess only there because they are legally required to have it, because several months later, no one has replied, even after several follow ups.
I was just starting to file an official complaint with the Consumer Protection Agency of Catalonia (which is the government organ with jurisdiction in this case) when I heard back from Booking.com, which sent an apology plus confirmation that I would get a full reimbursement.
So, I guess this is case closed, but only because I did book through a competent intermediary which cares about its customers and its reputation. Also, in my case, the consequences, even assuming the worst case scenario, could be contained: I did waste quite a lot of my time, but it happend on familiar ground, I was not in a hurry, the amount of the booking was small (and I recovered it), and my plans were only slightly affected. I can only think how different would this have been if it had happened in an unfamiliar airport, loaded with baggage or with a more time-pressed schedule!
What is surprising is that a reputable company like Booking.com continues to do business with this car rental operator, given the reviews available not just on its own site but also on other review platforms (btw, some other people reached out to me to share similar experiences after I posted about the whole Drivalia saga on X!) a reputable company like Booking.com continues to do business with this operator. In fact, if you search car rentals at Barcelona airport, Drivalia often comes on the top, because they offer low prices. I wold strongly recommend not falling for it!
I certainly won’t be booking a car with Drivalia ever again if I can avoid it. Besides the chances of something going wrong, I think it’s unlikely you will get any response.
