Sicily By Car Auto Europa Left customer stranded at airport with useless car keys Turin Italy

With pre-paid car hire, we arrived on a flight at Turin, went to the Sicily By Car desk and completed the paperwork and got the car keys. The guy at the desk told us that the car was easy to find, just across the road from the terminal!

It wasn't easy to find at all. After a few minutes we did find it... totally blocked in by other cars belonging to the same company. We went straight back to the car hire desk to find the shutters down and nobody there. It was 11pm.

After wasting time trying the phone numbers that they gave us, we eventually got a bus to a hotel and spent the first night of our ski holiday in Turin instead of in the mountains. We went back to the airport at 8am the next morning and got the reluctant lady to come and look at the car as soon as she had opened up the office.

We eventually were on our way an hour later (and had a great time skiing - though we lost half a day of our ski holiday).

We were told at the desk that complaints were only dealt with by email, so we emailed their office at the first opportunity. We have repeated that email several times but we get no response. We have contacted the Turin office again and they tell us "be patient". Sorry - we are not patient. You messed up anyou should be putting it right.  We lost half a day of our holiday, and had extra expense of the hotel and bus.

After 2 weeks of no response, we now have European Consumer Centre pursuing the case.