A breakdown in communication

QMore than two years ago, in June 2019, we collected a rental car from Sixt at Bologna airport. The desk clerk pushed us to take extra insurance, which we did. Three days later, we found the doors wouldn’t open and the car wouldn’t start. The electrics had failed.

I was on the phone for five hours to various Sixt agents until assistance was offered. A breakdown truck arrived three hours later. The driver failed to start the car and towed it away. Sixt would not let us have a replacement car unless we travelled to Rome to collect it, so we took a taxi to our next destination and hired a car at our own expense. Sixt did refund our unused days.

Only now have we received a letter from Paigo, a German debt collection agency, saying we owe Sixt £277 for the tow charge. I have challenged this, but Sixt says roadside assistance requires separate cover and, as we didn’t sign up for it, we must pay. Can you help?

– Heather Williams

A

It is one thing to charge for roadside assistance if a car is damaged by the customer, but this was clearly an electrical fault. The rental company should foot the bill, especially as you had taken out its excess insurances and would have assumed that breakdown cover was included in that package.

You booked your car through online agent Holiday Autos, whose site is used by car rental firms to advertise the vehicles they have available. Currently, all Sixt rentals include breakdown cover in the basic rental cost. But was that the case back in 2019?

I asked Holiday Autos to investigate, but it came back to say it was having trouble connecting with Sixt. I tried

Sixt’s online chat facility instead. To my surprise, this turned out to be an efficient and very helpful service.

Mariam, based in an Egyptian call centre, asked for your booking reference and said she would talk to her superiors. Within 10 minutes, I had a resolution. It had been a “communication mistake with the suppliers”, she said, and Sixt had called off the debt collectors on Nov 17 (perhaps in response to my inquiry), but failed to tell you.

Browsing the Holiday Autos website, I saw how much hire costs have soared since 2019. Heather paid £453 for a sixday rental of a Fiat Tipo Estate in July 2019, excluding excess insurance; this summer, a similar rental will cost £647.

Sixt charged Heather £135 for excess insurance; Holiday Autos now offers a similar policy through Axa for £57, which also includes breakdown cover.

iExcess all areas: our reader signed up for extra insurance at the Sixt desk in Bologna airport, but roadside assistance was still not covered