We had a very bad experience with Sixt Ireland, which almost ruined our family vacation. We rented a car online, paid with a debit card, and all looked good—until we tried to pick up the car, where a month-long ordeal began. The guys at the local Sixt office in Dublin City Centre refused to hand us our reserved and already prepaid car. The reason was that we did not have a “real” (physical) credit card present—only a physical debit card and my usual Apple Pay (with which I pay for pretty much everything, everywhere). This has never been a problem anywhere else in my 40+ years. We tried to find a compromise (like paying a deposit, adding extra insurance, negotiating, etc.), but nothing could sway the two employees. At least we were promised a refund. And they lied to us—claiming that no other car rental company in Ireland would give us a car (more on that later!). Interestingly enough, it got worse from here. Much worse, in fact. We left completely deflated and angry, and my daughter was very upset. We were all angry—not only about not getting the reserved car and our holiday possibly being ruined—but also about how cold and heartless the Sixt employees treated us. I work with people all day professionally, and I would have presented my own personal credit card in such a situation to save a family from that kind of despair. Our holiday would have been completely ruined. We had bookings all across Ireland over the next 10 days and no option of getting there without a car. The only upside in this whole saga was that, despite their insistence that we wouldn’t be able to rent a car anywhere without a physical credit card, we did get a car just 15 minutes later from another rental company. They only required a deposit of €250, treated us like human beings, and our holiday was saved. But the story doesn’t end here—in fact, it got even more upsetting. After returning home, I noticed that we still hadn’t received a refund from Sixt. So I contacted their support. They insisted that I would not get a refund (contrary to what the local employees had said). Apparently, somewhere in the fine print, the credit card requirement was stated. Which is completely laughable—who reads 19 pages of fine print before booking? Especially for a prepaid car. We argued a bit. Things seemed to take a turn for the better (they didn’t!). They promised me a credit voucher for the full amount for a future rental, which I accepted. It wasn’t ideal—far from it, in fact—but I was so annoyed I settled for it. Fun thing is, they never followed through. Despite contacting them every 1–2 weeks for the voucher, they never replied. We just got ghosted, and I never heard back from them. They did not give us our prepaid car, they did not refund us our money. Just a very bad experience from start to finish.