NET RESULTS:A consumer centre based in Dublin can assist in complaints and disputes resolution, writes KARLIN LILLINGTON

VISITING FAMILY in San Francisco recently, I was kicking myself for not having remembered to book a car well in advance. The prices online for a week’s rental from all the major car rental websites were close to $500 (€359), considerably more than a car would have cost if I had remembered to do the booking two months earlier.

So I was delighted when I stumbled across a UK car rental broker site, atlaschoice.com, offering a car for a week from one of the major rental companies for about half that price.

I did a bit of googling to make sure the company was legitimate and then booked a car.

That’s when the hassle started. By the day before the car pick-up, I still didn’t have the confirmation e-mail and information I would need to take to the car rental centre to pick up the vehicle, apparently because I had mistyped my e-mail address.

The company however provided help and support only during extended UK office hours. In California, we were running eight hours behind, making it hard to try and get a customer service problem resolved.

Fearful that I might not have a car at all, I did what I should have done in the first place – checked the prices for a car going through Irish rental car broker Novacarhire.com. I have used it before with excellent service and excellent rates.

Their price on the car was almost a third less again than the UK company. Could I cancel the UK contract? At just about the same time I finally sorted the e-mail problem with Atlas and received detail of my car rental agreement.

To my surprise I noticed that I seem to have paid for two “extras”– one being an advance fee that would waive any extra charges if I chose to cancel the rental.

Which seemed handy now, except that I had never deliberately chosen to buy this. Going back to check the UK company’s website, I realised that it auto-checks the two items – so unless you uncheck them, you are charged for the services.

At least I could now cancel without penalty, though – or maybe not. Before doing so, I read the small print, to find that although Atlas was happy to take my booking online, it would not apparently accept a cancellation online.

Cancellations had to be “in writing” and would not begin until the letter was received in the post; customers had to send back the vouchers they received to pick up their car.

Now this was ludicrous. Mailing a cancellation would take a week and, if Atlas was happy to create contract with me via its website, why could I not cancel that contract online as well?

Plus, the “vouchers” are simply document attachments for the customer to print out, so what would it matter whether they were returned or not? Rather than end up with no car and a protracted wrangle to get my money back, I used my vouchers. Later, I contacted the European Consumer Centre in Dublin to file a complaint concerning cross- border trading.

The consumer centre provides a free service. It will assist in complaints and can help in dispute resolution with a company. It will also advise consumers before they buy goods or services.

The centre agreed that this approach to car rental was worth filing a complaint about, although it noted that at this time in the EU, only airlines are forbidden from pre-checking boxes for charges on their websites.

The centre believes this should apply more widely, though, and agreed that a contract requiring a postal cancellation was particularly questionable from an online service company.

Apparently issues around car hire companies are a major area of complaint across the EU, a situation highlighted in the centre’s recent fifth anniversary overview report on its work.

“Car hire companies are particularly problematical in terms of the contracts they offer consumers,” says Ann Neville, office manager of the Irish office. So much so that Europe is seeking a single standard contract and the establishment of a dispute resolution centre.

Overall, the centre dealt with more than 60,000 cases last year, of which about 35,000 were complaints and the rest were requests for information.

Complaints have grown by 55 per cent since 2005 and the majority of complaints – 55.9 per cent – relate to e-commerce. Those cases have nearly doubled since 2006.

Airlines also hog the ECC’s complaint league tables – highlighted perhaps by the fact that only airlines are specifically banned from pre-checking boxes of charges on websites.

Delivery problems are also a key issue (almost 6,000 complaints), second only to unhappiness with products or services (more than 7,000 complaints), and have been every year the centre has produced a report, Neville says. In third place come contract terms, at more than 4,000 complaints in 2009.

The Republic accounts for just 2 per cent of complaints – not surprisingly given our size – but significantly, this is double the number of complaints a year ago.

Neville points to a growing problem with the digital e-market for downloadable goods such as software or music. “Essentially, the legislation is lagging behind the market,” she notes.

As for my own complaint, the centre, which employs a number of lawyers, logged my problem after calling me back to gather the details. It recommended I also file a complaint with the trading standards body in the country in which the car hire broker operates, which I will do.

For more information on the ECC, see: http://www.eccireland.ie/