Car Hire – the great rip off

Reproduced is a letter to a local newspaper complaining about their car hire experience in Mallorca. “My husband logged onto a car hire website and booked a car, the total cost was just over 140 UK Pounds and including 31 UK Pounds of insurance.
When we arrived a Palma airport we went to the car hire desk, The young lady got out our paperwork and then commenced telling us what we had to pay for. We did understand of course that we would have to pay for petrol but we were astounded when she told us it would be 115 euros. They don’t even have a car that takes that much petrol.
We were then told that we would have to pay a further 36 euros for me to drive and that the insurance with the car hire company was not good enough and that we would have to pay another 51 euros plus 36 euros more for late return of the car. That seems strange as we were picking the car up at midnight. Taking it all into account one week’s car hire would have cost us 141 UK Pounds plus a future 283 euros. I wonder how many other people have been caught like us. Needless to say we did not take the car, we took a taxi. Frankly I cannot understand why hire companies behave like this giving how difficult times are for people. “This isn’t the first time that tourist report being ripped off by car hire companies. Loads of complaints are received in this respect by the Mallorca estate agents from their clients. They compare deals in the Canaries and ther Mediterranean resorts.