“I'am a long term customer of Holiday Autos and over the years the companies process from booking to pick up to return has worked well. On the couple of occasions that I have cancelled a booking because I was unable to travel the refund was prompt.
Now with the corona virus crisis the company is finding that their ability to handle presumably a huge number of cancellations, inadequate. Yes there is bound to be a delay but from a maximum of 10 days to as much as 25 days is a stretch too much. Remember we're talking about business days in reality the time they claim is necessary is 35 days or five weeks. i myself cancelled on the 17th March firstly was told it would be 10 days and then received an email telling me it would now be 20 business days. When I phoned the company on the 19th day I was then told that I needed to allow a further 3 to 5 days for my card company to process the refund! This was not mentioned at all when the cancellation was first accepted by the company. Holiday Autos has brought much of the criticism on itself through not being upfront in the beginning.
Probably what the current situation is showing is those companies that are able to give better customer service and refund times than others. I had bookings with TGV from Paris to Nice and received a refund for my two return tickets from TGV within the week of my cancelling. Now given that TGV has a monopoly on the train services to the south of France you would think that they would be more likely to delay, for financial reasons, refunds. Holiday Autos need to give some thought to their own service provision because they do not have a monopoly on the provision of car hire. I for example will in future be booking direct with the hire car company and judge them on my experience. Certainly on the basis of the experience many many others seemed to have had with Holiday Autos, I won't be alone in making that decision. We should all give it a try at least once when we come to make our next booking. Think about it many thousands of bookings missing Holiday Autos out?”
