Turisprime 

This review is of an experienced customer and driver that have made around 52th bookings worldwide *malta, canary islands, United Kingdom, Portugal, Greece, South Africa, and many other places*

Third reservation with this rental car company. The third time I returned a car the young lady noticed 2 small dents the size of a pinky nail in the passenger rear door which they stated it wasn't there before. The vehicle was already collected damaged. A Peugeot 208 with damages on the bumper, (rear and front), on the doors and scratches all over the bodywork and when i went to return the vehicle the young lady have noticed 2 small dents and argued it wasn't there before.

Since that i was unaware of this small dent i argued that the inspection at the pick up wasn't corrected carried out and these dents should ve been reflected on the check out and despite spending some time inspecting the vehicle i may have missed this out but it was my word. There were other small dents in the vehicle which were not reflected on the pick up papper to but they have understated it with the only aim to overcharge abusively.

I have booked so many vehicles in the past with so many car hire companies but this has definitely let me down as they promote cheap rentals on off peak but then if you dont take their insurance they end up finding all diferent excuses to overcharge you. Yes overcharge when a fix would not even cost 20€.

A week rental that cost me 7.85£ end up costing + 467.40€. They have charged me for a replacement door and it does not even justify such a charge.
One Fact I have noticed with this company is they promote cars cheap and will hand you a damaged car at the pick up and then they will resort to a strategy of finding scratches here and there and will make you pay for repairs. The click baite strategy!

Dont book with this company . It it's to avoid.A big NO NO.

Their entire business model is to make money by giving you a car which is in a terrible condition and when there are problems with the car, charge you for damages or service provided by them. Our car broke down even after the company sent a technician to check the car the previous day. The cars would look squeaking clean from the outside and inside, but once you start driving them you will realise how horrible they are. When you return the car, the staff members would behave so rudely and torture you till you pay the amount that they charge.

Absolutely unbelievable. My flight was half an hour late. There was no answer to the phone number I was given. I got a taxi to the company and found they where closed. Have had to get taxi to a hotel for the night. It has cost me 60 EUR. Absolutely disgusting. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY

so bad experience. The service was so bad, told me y card is not working but if iam booking the insurance and extra cost I can book a car. I ask my bank at the same time he was using my card and they told me that there was no Asking for the deposit. So they telling you book the extra cost or you can't rent a car. Without a car they are not calling the shuttle back to the airport so you have to call a taxi back.

I rented with the Lisbon office for 3 weeks. You need to meet them at the meeting point and then take a shuttle. There was no hassle, I had my own insurance so declined theirs and said no to the toll device. I also booked through a third party website. The only issue I had was they gave me a car with no antenna and hubcaps, which I probably could have complained about, but wasn't bothered and for the price, I didn't expect that much.

I've seen a LOT of negative complaints so here is a list to make sure everything goes smoothly:
- If you don't take their insurance
+ check to make sure they accept your credit card
+ Check with your bank that you have enough money available on
it (sometimes their is a max amount per month, which you can request to increase)
+ If you are travelling abroad, make sure your card is open,
sometimes the banks will prevent payment in another country.
You have to inform the bank so there aren't any "strange" activities popping up that will be,
automatically rejected.
- Take pictures/videos of scratches and the car in general and make sure everything is written down. Take a picture of the overall damage report, because often it's only marked on their copy.
- Take pictures/videos when you return the car, so they have no opportunity to say anything afterwards.

CDW is already included in rentals in Europe, you have no obligation to take the excess.

Make sure you read the small print.

The worst company ever.
They hide the real prices to seems they are cheap in the market and when you go to collect the car they threat you with a lot of things they are not cover up by the initial price and AXA insurance for example and we will need to pay for sure around €180 extra to have their own insurance otherwise in employees words "you are not cover up of anything, even in motorway if you stop due to a problem we can't go to take you ".

Most of rent a cars don't recognise AXA INSURANCE because is a refund which means even if you have damages in the car or you need assistance on road you always need to pay your bills first with your credit card and after fight with AXA to give you the money back.

The service is awful and is made to don't be clear.

Yesterday I went to pick a car from Porto and besides the price first agreed in the booking they asking me another €171.00 for fuel tank deposit. I ask the employee André Oliveira Porto why is that detail is not given in the initial contract and if he can show me in the booking papers he informed me about that but he couldn't give me a valid reason. And without payment of deposit no car!

I ask as well why €171.00 and not other amount and he couldn't show me any table with prices for any car group and deposit seems everything just a way to still your money in front of your eyes, he just said you are taking one of the best cars! Well Renault Grand Senic one of best cars? If you rent a Mercedes-Benz, BMW or Audi how much you pay €400/€500???

Another issue to proof how bad faith the people are was, When he knew I didn't have my credit card with founds enough to rent the car without pay any extra fee but my partner has them, he refused as well change the main driver from the contract and basically we had to pay the extra fee €186.00 to be able to take the car.

I didn't know you can't change the main driver from the contract with rent a car, interesting.

Please take your conclusion and feel free to choose which people to trust.

Two things I learnt,
Turisprime or AXA insurance not again in my life.

THE WORST CAR RENTAL EXPERIENCE EVER!!!. Our car was fine until the fuel line came loose, late at night, on a Spanish freeway. We paid extra to be covered by insurance in order to leave Portugal and drive in Spain. The emergency call number that was given to us by Turisprime had a little problem: nobody was there to answer the phone. After waiting on the side of the freeway for an hour we ended up paying $165 for a tow. Later, I paid a mechanic to solve the fuel line problem and I even paid to have the motor cleaned to get rid of the fuel odor inside the car. The next day we called Turisprime and we were told that we would be reimbursed. I took plenty of photos to prove our case, kept phone records, receipts etc. and when we went to turn the car in at the end of our trip, the Turisprime representatives told us that they could not help us and that we needed to contact the corporate office in Porto and speak to Alexandra Mendes. I spent the good part of a day writing a lengthy email, scanning documents, positioning and writing captions on photos and then sending the email to Ms. Mendes asking for reimbursement. When we heard nothing from her for a week we called and were told we needed to contact the Lisbon office. After several attempts we reached someone in Lisbon who told us we needed to contact the Porto office and specifically Ms. Mendes. We finally reached Ms. Mendes who told us she would review our email and get back to us. Several more calls were made, all in vain to reach Ms. Mendes. It became evident what type of rental car company Turisprime was, and that they were going to do nothing for us. Our advice: STAY AWAY FROM TURISPRIME!!!!!!! THEY ARE DISHONEST AND EVENTUALLY WILL BE FOUND OUT REGARDING THEIR FRAUDULENT OPERATION!!!! We do feel for their staff who were all very friendly though. We highly recommend you go with a major international car rental organization like Avis or Enterprise. They may be more costly to start, but at least you are assured some recourse if you can't find satisfaction in Europe and need to return to the US.

I have been renting cars all over the world and never saw a company acting in such bad faith as Turisprime.

Let me tell you about the experience I had with them.

I rented a car with Turisprime via a 3rd party company based on their terms and conditions.

Unfortunately, at the rental station the scenario was totally different.

Firstly, they wanted to secure an excess much higher than what was stated in the T&Cs.
Because that higher amount was not covered by the limit of my credit card (I tried and it was declined) I handed over an embossed debit card which they promptly refused to accept it for the excess.
It is important to mention the embossed cards are listed as an option under the T&Cs and I have been using them every time I booked a car with this 3rd party company.

At the time, the only option I was given was to to pay an insurance with them in a way that the excess was no longer required. As I had bought an insurance with a 3r party insurer this would be an unnecessary insurance.

Nevertheless, I decided to pay for the insurance (with the embossed card) and did not use my credit card at all.

Not to my surprise, the very same thing happened to the customer that was in front of me.

In the top of this, I spent a total of 50 minutes to get all sorted.

A week later I decided to write them a letter of complaint to ask for the refund of the extra insurance.
Surprisingly, whilst re-reading the contract I noticed that they have used my credit card details (which at the time was declined)!

Turisprime replied to my complaint basically saying the extra charges were related to the fuel and they mentioned an option that was never given at the station.
In regards to the credit card policy, they argued that the usage of my credit card was agreed by me because I signed the contract.

Not to my surprise, a few days later a charge to my credit card has been made by Turisprime.

I will never rent from them again and hope no one else does.

They robt us telling the insurance was 7 euro s each day at the end of my holidays we needed to pay 240 euro s of insurance for only 8 days 7x8 = 56 euros it should be we payd 240 they are a scam !!

Turisprime is the worst car rental company I have ever used. They made us wait 1h at Lisbon airport. Their employee picked us up in a white van and dangerously drove us to their main office. He was laughing with his mate that he dropped off in the middle of a roundabout before we arrived at the industrial estate in the middle of nowhere where we had to pick up the car. We were hearded into the check-in office of their industrial building like cattle. This is when their true colours shone through. The employee behind the desk told us that the fully comprehensive insurance we had bought via rentalcars.com was not valid for their cars. I called the website customer service number and they confirmed that this was correct. He then told us we had to pay a ridiculous amount for the zero excess insurance. They bullied us into buying the fully comprehensive insurance and we then noticed that they were doing the same to other customers next to us. They also didn’t have the car model that we had ordered specifically as it fits our surfboard and they forced us to take another car which isn’t as spacious inside so we had to squeeze in with the board. On top of that they also threatened to charge us 123EUR as a cleaning fee if they found any traces of sand in the car whatsoever. We definitely felt scammed and stressed on the first day of our holiday. They take full advantage of the fact that you are foreign and that you are no longer in the airport and have no other options in the middle of nowhere. Please avoid this company. It’s not worth the headache and stress. We ended up with paying way more for a small car with a small engine and awful customer service. AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE

Same experience as most. Small scratches on hub caps. Probably the same scratches as everyone else. These tiny scratches are netting this company significant profits. Despicable People!!!

Make sure you take pictures of Hub Caps before you leave building!

Big SCAM!!!

A cautionary tale about using the hire car company Turisprime at Lisbon Airport.
Whilst I appreciate the staff are only doing their job and were helpful and friendly the company policy leaves a lot to be desired and I would advise anybody seeing this companies name come up on any car rental comparison web site to avoid them at all costs otherwise you will end up paying hundreds of Euros more than the original cost of hiring the car.
We used a company called Vehicle Rent for our trip to Portugal and duly reserved a car through Turisprime. We also paid for additional insurance when we booked the car on Vehicle Rents web site.
When we arrived to collect the car, we were informed the additional insurance we had purchased was not valid and had to take out insurance with Turisprime. The staff informed us that even if we incurred a small mark on the car a minimum charge would be €200. We were also asked to leave €110 deposit to cover fuel. I refused and explained that I would return the car full as indicated in the booking documents I had with me. After a bit of back office chat the staff member relented and waived this extra deposit.
It appears that the additional insurance charges and fuel charges are a scam to get more money from the renter and the staff use scare tactics to achieve this. We were not the only people to have this experience as everyone we spoke to when we collected and returned the car had the same complaint. If you want to avoid the hassle, then avoid Turisprime at all costs

I got a good car for a low fare, booked via rentalcars.com. The car worked well, and I was happy with it. I had also pre-booked a full insurance with rentalcars.com, and therefore declined the offer of Turisprime's agent of purchasing their insurance. The agent then said he had to block €1660 from my credit card as collateral. €110 of this was in case I didn't return the car with a full tank, which I thought was excessive. Still, I accepted.

Upon returning the car, one of their employees discovered an 8-10mm scratch on one of the wheels. It seemed rehearsed, as she then called for her colleague, a Ms. Claudia Fernandes Teles, who came into the room and very aggressively told us that we had returned the car damaged, and we would have to pay for it. I challenged her mildly by saying I cannot understand how I could have made that scratch. She replied by saying "We know our cars very well, and that scratch wasn't there before you had the car".

Reluctantly, I accepted to pay their claim for €186,50. A clear rip-off, but I now understood why they block that high amount on your credit card before giving you the car. It's part of their business model, it seems, seeing just how many other cases of the exact same treatment other reviews show.

I paid what I was being charged, and asked for explanations by Ms. Fernandes Teles what the documents meant. I do not speak Portuguese, and needed to know what they said in order to file my insurance claim. She continued with her aggressive tone. At one point I asked her if that tone was necessary, seeing as I had already accepted and paid the charge, and thereby taken responsibility for the damage. My pregnant wife said that we are guests in your country, and deserve better treatment than we were given. Ms. Fernandes Teles promptly replied "You are not guests in my country. Because you are trying to fool me." A shocking thing to say by someone in a service profession. I have sent my complaint about their customer service directly to Turisprime. But I can only add my voice to those many others who are warning people of ever using Turisprime. Just stay away! Pay the higher fare to rent a car somewhere else, and get treated like a valuable client instead of being bullied.

TurisPrime’s agent claimed that in Portugal diesel fuel is so much cheaper than petrol so I would make a saving by changing to a diesel car (within the same category). Despite paying the equivalent of 185 EUR for the change, I would still save money, she argued. I was stupid enough to believe her.
The reality is that my savings on fuel was around 20-25 EUR, while the extra rent for the car was 185 EUR. So for me it has been a loss, that seems unfair. TurisPrime’s only response that I voluntarily signed for the extra fee.

WORSE EVER, DONT RENT A CAR WITH TURISPRIME...
Worse experience ever. Rented a car for 5days.
When we came to Turisprime after a shuttle ride for 10min, the nightmare started. The guy who was at the counter was so ARROGANT, and gave us 2 options.
1 - insurance for 125€ & a deposit for 100€...
2 - No Insurance and we where forced to put 2200€ as a deposit... and if we did so there where a risk that some money disappeared, and it was not the bank fault & not Turisprime, it just happens, was his exact word.
When we told him it is no way we can put 2200€ as deposit and try to get him to explain he got angry and told us that all who is renting a car with them can pay so much, if we did not do anything we could not get our car... after we paid the insurance to get our car could you see him laughing and pointing at us... DONT RENT A CAR HERE, STAY AS FAR FROM THIS PLACE AS POSSIBLE, THEY ONLY WANTS ONE THING AND THAT IS TO DRAN YOU FOR SO MUCH MONEY AS POSSIBLE.....

To echo the below reviews, the service here was fairly appalling. Waited 25mins for a transfer bus, only to arrive & queue for a further 1.5 hours. Card wouldn’t authorise properly until the third attempt. Don’t waste your time - we did.

This rental car company found an insignificant, hardly perceptible scratch in my tyre rim and charged us $180 for a new rim. In addition when i said i will take the rim with me, since i was essentially buyung it, they refused. This was clearly a con. I asked other Portuguese around and they told me this was higjly unusual. Andy Schcolnik

in 20 year of renting cars in Asia, Amercas and Europe never had an experience as with Turisprime. Both when collecting in Lisbon and returning in Faro the experience was at a level that raised blood pressure. Claiming my credit card did not work or could block the 1600 own risk when I did not take extra services in assurance / second driver / toll services, delaying my holiday with 1.5 hours, telling me to leave without a car, saying I am at the wrong return address (when their contract had that address on it, a driver yelling and cursing at me in a full bus that I should go home and never visit Portugal again, just visit Germany ;-).
My first ever review because it is unbelievable this company can exist and is not out of business. Worst ever! I should have believed other reviews

Be very careful renting from Turisprime. I got a good deal on the rental through Auto Europe and the car was nice. However, they really pushed the Insurance hard. My home insurance and credit card covers accidents so I declined. When I returned the vehicle they found two minor scratches on the wheels and charged me 615 Euros! I told the rep that this sounds like a scam and he said "I don't care if its a scam".! I wish I could post the pictures so you could see what cost me $704. My credit card insurance covered me (except for the 115 Euros VAT). He also told me about 25% of cars come back damaged. Turisprime doesn't make money on the rental, they make money on the back end for damages!

In all of my (many) years of hiring cars, this is the only time where I've felt out of control.

I booked via Argus and paid a small deposit, with the balance of E50 due at the desk. We were collected from the airport after a short wait by a pretty pleasant representative who drove the 10 minutes to the depot. This is where the problems began.

The guy behind the desk checked his system for our booking and after trying (and failing) to sell his additional insurance, toll transponder, satnav etc, he told us the price was E170 for the car only. When I tried to show him the contract document, he refused to look at it and reiterated the price was E170.

I rang Argus who asked me to pass the phone to the guy in order to sort the issue, HE REFUSED TO TALK TO THEM.

I've never been angrier than I was at this point.

I was left with little choice to pay the extra amount as it was a Sunday afternoon on an industrial estate in the middle of nowhere and I didn't have many other options.

The car had many areas of damage of which only a few were notified on the handover sheet and I spent a good 15/20 minutes pointing out every area of damage. Luckily I work in the motor trade in the U.K. and am experienced in vehicle inspection.

Do not use this company regardless of how cheap they appear - you will regret it (as I did).