David Shackcloth

Outstanding. A modern bank with up to date ideas for easy use by customers. App is EXCELLENT. Highly recommended

What a car rental company should be. Auckland town office issued the car promptly (HEY other renters - it should never take more than FIVE minutes to issue a car, not the eg 15+ minutes Europcar city centre take).
Excellent new Toyota (EZI is a subsidiary), knowledgeable & helpful info. Good price
Highly recommended

Skyscanner is GREAT - we use it for dozens of flights a year. BUT they need to be aware / take action about truly AWFUL agents that they recommend for the tickets. Case in point GO TO GATE. Skyscanner lists these people as a reliable supply, giving several stars & reassuring services.

NOT IN MY EXPERIENCE!!!

The ONLY way any customer would give even * for these people is if they never have to contact them after booking! It's near impossible to get CS.
1 Customer "NO Service" ONLY has NO-REPLY emails. 2 They DO NOT give you a phone number in your destination country. Useless when we've arrived on the other side of the world.
3 The "chat service" guy was polite but had no clue.
4 Unlike others, GTG DO NOT have ANY dedicated contact lines for Business / First Class passengers.
5 So when you do try to phone about your €5000 ticket - at roaming charges of ££ a minute - you sit on the line TWENTY-PLUS mins in the queue with everyone else's $100 query.
6 When you finally are connected, they listen & promise to sort out your issue (I merely wanted to change the date of a flight) then NOTHING HAPPENS.
7 The airline had already told me "No Problem, probably No Charge on your €5000 class BUT your agent has to ask us".
8 FIVE times over 3 days I called CRAP TO GATE. EACH time I had to give them the same info. ONLY when I started asking for Manager's names and being assertive instead of polite did I finally get this simple change made. Many hours & £ wasted!
9 and the kicker then was that GTG (not the airline) charged me ONE THOUSAND EUROS! for the date change.
10 now I look on the Net and I see MANY MANY similar tirades about GTG.

Skyscanner should ONLY include agents whose:
1 advertised services they have checked EXIST
2 that the agent does not have a record of serious complaints from serious people.

Of course, skyscanner works on commission. Well, guess what, don't expect ANY of our people to use you again unless & until you take action against mis-representing agents. That's tens of thousands in tickets a year you're losing. Thank you

Great product, fair price, clear website, fast delivery. Recommended

IT'S SOOO ANNOYING! You enter a precise search term, and all Amazhit give you are pages of paid ("sponsored") items - most of which bear no relation to what you asked for. PLEASE PLEASE let's have another company instead of Amazhit who give a s* about the customer & are happy getting the commission from normal sellers.

OUTSTANDING! My new favourite car rental agency! I'm retired and travel a lot. Enterprise Edinburgh gave a better service at every level.
The website was clear and offered good cars at reasonable prices (in this instance the low one way fee was a deciding factor).

Your "damage template" (card indicating what minor marks would not constitute damage) is an excellent idea, removing any uncertainty. (as I treat rental cars as I would my own, this wasn't needed in my case).

Your personnel were professional and went out of their way to be helpful; in particular Nadia & Flora in Leith, Abbie in Corstophine & Monica in Birkenhead deserve your praise.

Sure we had to wait a while in Corstophine for the car to be prepared, but that wasn't a problem.

The car, a Citroën C4, was excellent and behaved impeccably (though its design means the rear view mirror has a VERY poor field of view - it should use a rear-mounted camera displaying on the mirror whilst driving, rather than a plain mirror; and the wing mirrors aren't great either.)

Be sure I will rent from them again, and recommend them to my other globe-trotting retired friends.

Highly recommended. Very good service. He inexpensively, quickly & professionally replaced the display on my "waterproof" ASUS phone (WARNING: this very expensive phone was not even SPLASHPROOF! My trousers got soaked in a thunderstorm, the phone got DAMP in the pocket - DEAD!)

Super company, great cars, very efficient service, very good prices!! I use them every time I am in Sydney or Perth

Really excellent service!!
they still had an allocation of tickets available for the Yi Peng festival when other sellers had already run out.
highly recommended

I bought a Neff hob at a MASSIVE saving. Advertised as "Grade 1" (ie new, unused, box had just been opened then returned by original purchaser), I was cautious about whether it would be in this condition. YES it was!
Delighted with my purchase.
Fast delivery, excellent service, I'll by from Appliances Direct again.

Very good resource; comprehensive, easy to use & thorough. I recommend it & will use again

The chalet hotel is superbly located, being only 100 metres from a ski in-ski out piste & 5 minutes walk from the centre of 1850.
The staff are very professional & the hotel runs smoothly; nothing is too much trouble for them. Food & wine are very good.
The rooms are well-equipped & showers have lots of hot water.
Boot & ski room is well-equipped and well organised.
Ski Total is one of the more professional operators & it shows.

But . . . Negative points:
- bedrooms are tiny, barely large enough to walk around the bed. But it's a ski holiday, so you can live with that.

- more serious is that the dining room & bar lounge are both far too small for the number of guests/bedrooms. Not all adult guests can be seated in the dining room for the adult dinner - tables had to be put in place in the lounge each evening for up to 15 guests. And the rest were packed in the dining room like sardines. The kitchen & staff struggle to feed the numbers, especially at breakfast. Long waits can occur for replenishment of buffet items & coffee pots.
Nor can all adult guests sit/fit into the bar lounge eg for the daily pre-dinner aperitif/hors d'oeuvres: in part because space which should have seats has to be left empty to fit tables for dinner.

- this over-crowding (& the high noise level) is made worse by clinging parents who bring their kids/infants into the ADULT dinner session, instead of to the CHILDREN'S dinner sesion. Ski Total is WRONG to allow this.

- in the bedrooms mattresses & bed bases are old and very soft; we put our mattress direct on the floor & then it was ok.

- ski total is WRONG to recommend the ESF, which is over-expensive; notorious for instructors cutting lessons short; & for instructors being of very variable quality; & for giving bad advice. For example, beginners in classes at Level 1 & below at 1850 DO NOT need Courchevel area ski passes (as per the ESF); only the Courchevel MINI-PASS. typically costing you €111 instead of €250 !!!

- reception should have more information: eg ski bus timetables, ski pass prices, Aquamotion brochures. Plus they should know about the local free car parking areas (for self-drive guests) & simple local knowledge (such as which day the travelling market comes to town). I knew these, first-timers wouldn't.



BUT the location is great, as are the staff. And squeezing in 15 extra adults into the chalet means a LOT higher revenue for Ski Total over a season. So that's how it is.

TIP: look at Chalet Cascades 1650 instead - big rooms, spacious dining room, located opposite main lifts & right next to ski bus stop for 1850.

Be warned about the following risks with using Rentalcars.com.

1: misleading / inaccurate pricing information if you collect the car from one town but drop it off at another.
Some car hire companies charge extra for this ("one-way fee"), others don't. If they do charge, it can be SUBSTANTIAL, so it's important to have correct information.

RENTALCARS.COM detailed pricing page for your proposed booking DOES NOT give correct information. The part of the quote page listing extras payable locally includes (for example) the cost for an extra driver, for child seats, for additional insurance, etc, etc so you reasonably assume ALL applicable costs to be listed. BUT no, it does NOT include "one-way fee " cost OR ANY WARNING THAT ONE MAY APPLY!

Hertz Mexico added nearly ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS to our recent rental contract as a "one-way" fee!

I wrote Rentalcars.com pointing out their page/site needs to say if a one-way fee applies and the amount. But Rentalcars.com have made no reply on this point nor corrected their site.



2: category abuses. The way in which Rentalcars.com site lists and pictures the cars makes it appear you are choosing and renting a particular car. You are NOT. You are only renting a car in a particular CATEGORY/GROUP. The rental company will allocate you any car they like in that group. The small print does say this.

So be warned that you may well not get that advertised eg BMW that tempted you to spend more than you normally would.

Worse, it has been known that a company advertises a desirable car at a price cheaper than the competition (the competition list it in a higher group). So you book the nice car, only to be substituted an ordinary car "in the same group" when you arrive.
(This is a general risk, not afaik a rentalcars one).



3: Rentalcars say "the car hire company will require a deposit amount of X".
NOT TRUE. Many car hire companies require an electronic authorisation on your credit card for an UNLIMITED AMOUNT and/or a signed credit card slip with the AMOUNT LEFT BLANK.

They can - and WILL - then charge any amount they choose up to (typically) FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS. And because of special agreements between renters and credit card companies you CANNOT tell your card company not to pay ANY amounts they debit.

(The idea is to protect renters: eg so they can charge you for speeding etc fines that are received after the end of the hire; or to pay for a new car if you damage/destroy the car in a way that voided the insurance. 
But renters abuse this - without telling us Hertz debited an extra $2000+ for extra days at SIX times the rate printed in the contract!)


I hire cars several times a year, sometimes for months. In future I will deal direct with local rental companies (NOT HERTZ) rather than with Rentalcars.com.