A sting in the tail
We booked a car for a month with Autorent Mauritius. We picked the vehicle up at the airport, noted existing damage (which was considerable, including a wing mirror held on with sticking plaster) paid all required charges and drove it around the island without mishap. We returned the car at the time specified, with over and above the correct amount of fuel, and were stunned to be asked to pay a fee for ‘interior cleaning’.
I questioned this and was shown on the document given to me at the pick up location (though there was no such clause on my original rental voucher) the curious stipulation “If the vehicle interior is found dirty (sand, dirt, mud) upon collection, a cleaning fee of Rs500 is applicable”.
As I usually do when returning a hire car, I had gone to some trouble with a brush and dustpan to clean the interior. I thought I did a reasonable job. It certainly wasn’t “dirty”, though being on holiday, I didn’t have access to an aspirator. I assumed, naturally, that Autorent Mauritius would have the equipment to thoroughly clean the interior (and exterior, which showed signs of a month’s use) before the vehicle would be rented out again.
It seems ridiculous to expect a car to be used in Mauritius and not get traces of sand (and mud, in wet weather) into the footwells and elsewhere. I must have hired more than twenty cars in a number of countries (most with sandy beaches) over the years and never come across this sort of footling penalty before. I said as much, but was pointedly referred to the offending clause and told that the car couldn’t be officially returned until the fee was paid. The 500 rupees asked for amounted to less than 1.5% of the total cost for the month, but it was the principle rather than the amount that bothered me. As I had a plane to catch, I paid, but the incident left a sour taste in my mouth.
I also felt slightly aggrieved that my wife and I were not offered a lift from the car return spot in Section D of the airport parking area to the terminal building. My wife is disabled so in semi darkness I had to push her wheelchair the wrong way down unlit roads with one hand while wheeling a suitcase behind me with the other, our other suitcase plus cabin bag piled onto her lap. As I went, I found myself wondering if that was what “meet and greet” meant.
But it was a minor issue compared to the egregious ‘interior cleaning penalty charge’!
That said, besides the cleaning charge and the dangerous wheelchair at night business, the car hire experience was okay, overall. So this is not really a negative review but a complaint about an utterly pointless extra expense that spoiled everything.
December 15, 2023
Unprompted review