by Andrew H Brown

Created on: December 30, 2008

Usually, when I fly to Belgium or Germany with Ryanair I rent a car from HERTZ.
As a customer of Ryanair you are entitled to preferential rates but I don't go down that road. I don't hire directly from Hertz either but use a consolidator's website.

They will quote prices for Alamo, Budget, Europcar and Hertz and they are generally around 10-15% less expensive than any other source.

So much for the booking advice, what I want to discuss here is my most recent experience with Hertz.

As anyone who has been paying attention will know, My wife and I travelled to Poland and Slovakia in May/June and we did so in a car hired from Hertz. Not all hire companies will allow you to travel to Eastern Europe in their vehicles and indeed Hertz won't allow you to go there with certain makes, for example: Volkswagon, Audi, BMW and Mercedes. The risk of theft is higher with these makes apparently.

We informed them of our travel plans and we were all set to go.

Or so we thought.

I have hired from them many times and have had no problems whatsoever. My only complaint previously was being billed twice. (When hiring through carhire4less, you pay them directly and are given a voucher. Any extra charges being payable directly to Hertz.) However this was resolved very quickly and with no fuss.

Anyway, back to this experience.

We had booked our car in the usual way around four weeks before our journey and promptly gave it not another thought. When we landed at Hahn we adopted our standard 'hit the ground running' procedure. Mrs P. waiting patiently at baggage reclaim to find out if our luggage is joining us, while I nash through to the car hire desk, do the paperwork and hopefully we are on our way in no time flat.

So, there I am, nonchalantly strolling up to the Hertz desk. I give them a big cheesy grin and say, "Hallo, Ich haben eine reservierung. Mein name ist Herr Proxam."

"Ah, Mr. Proxam, we have a problem."

Although he said this in English it actually translates to You have a problem.

"We don't have a car for you. You must go to Franfurt Main airport to pick up your car. It is because it is the Memorial Day holiday."

Now there are two things wrong with this scenario.

1/ Unless we boarded the wrong plane, we were in Germany, where MD is not a holiday, and were not the USA - where it is.

2/ This was May 23rd and MD was the 27th.

Not being one to complain, at least not in a foreign language, I waited for Mrs P to stagger through with our luggage before engaging the Hertz staff in a full and frank

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