Europcar Stevenage

Appalling service. I was visiting my daughter from my home in France. Specifically booked Europcar as they offered a delivery and collection service. On the booking form I entered my resident address in France and my daughter's address for delivery/collection. The booking was confirmed and my credit card charged the full cost. 24hrs before delivery was due I received a further confirmation email. About an hour later I received a message on my mobile phone to say that they would not deliver as the delivery address was not my permanent address. By this time I am on a train crossing France so not easy to make alternative arrangements. Numerous phone calls to Europcar reservations (useless, they claim my contract is with the branch although all the documents state Europcar UK) and the branch (equally useless, they keep quoting an obscure set of terms and conditions only available on the internet and not included with the terms and conditions attached to the reservation). Given no option I agreed to collect the car from the Europcar office. Here it gets worse. I am denied a car on the grounds that my driving licence (a clean UK licence) has a different address from my home in France. Woman in the office claims this is in T&C's but these just require proof of my home address (which I have provided). When this is pointed out she just reverts to a flat refusal to honour the booking.

I rented a car from a local company in Letchworth. Very helpful, no problems but they did say they hear of a lot of problems with Europcar.

Where shall I start, how about avoid at all cost.
You can check my profile, i'm not one for leaving bad comments but these guys are really not good communicators. Their customer service is really bad!
I have hired from Europcar a lot in the past and had good service. I decided to pay extra to have the car delivered to my home and picked up from my home.
The delivered it on time, but then left it on my front lawn for 2.5 days. So when they failed to pick it up I called them and they said someone was on their way. The next day when my kids get home from school, the car is still there. So I call the local branch in Stevenage who tell me they are really busy but someone is coming over. The next day the car is still there, my partner who has a bad back can't park in my house. So what do I do, I call Europcar again, now talking to head office who tell me they will pick it up the next day.
By this time I'm kinda fuming, I have car parked outside my house for another night, I can't move it as I'm no longer insured to drive it. I am now a Europcar Parking facility. I call the Stevenage branch and tell them how angry I am. Not once have they ever called me, I always have to call them.
So when they do pick up the car while I am at work, they leave a note that they have picked it up and there is some damage the front rim. This is completely untrue there was no damage. It's Europcar Stevenage's way of trying to stop me writing this complaint.
Well I am writing it because this is the truth.

The service is friendly but the cars could do with a clean.

Appalling. A women rang me the day before my booking to inform me I could not have the van at the times I had booked for online weeks ago. She was completely unapologetic and accused me of ignoring warnings/popups on the website, which was nonsense. She could not explain why I was only being told they could not honour the booking the day before it was due, only that was when she looked through 'her' vans.
There is clearly no link or validation with the bookings made online and the branch, rendering the confirmation emails useless. A totally unacceptable way to run a business. They were clearly used to unhappy customers - miserable customer service and incompetence go hand in hand.

Good service from desk

Competitive....

Discriminated against for being in the millitary - avoid