Points positifs : The staff at pickup were friendly, however at drop off, after vacuuming and cleaning the inside of the car prior to returning it to Sixt, I was informed that there would be "an at least 100 euro" valeting fee due to the car having some pet hair in it. We had on two occasions had our dog in the trunk of the car with a blanket under her during the rental. I had removed almost all of it with our home vacuum. When I was made aware of the additional fee the staff refused to let me take the car to one of the many local car washes to remove the remaining hair because the car had already been returned and "besides the windows are dirty too." This, I didn't understand. Rental cars are there to be used and they are cleaned at return as part of their maintenance. I could see I was going nowhere with the staff at returns but thought surely customer service would be of some help.
I tried calling customer service at that time, but despite it only being 4:50 PM (supposed to close at 5) the customer service office was already closed. I sent an email to Stephen, in customer service, when I returned home but did not get a response back for 5 days from the time of the rental return. Despite the photos I had provided he informed me that they would be going ahead with the valeting fee.
I can't help but feel that this is a racket to add extra charges on to rentals. A practice that Irish car rental agencies are known for. https://www.irishcentral.com/news/irish-car-rental-scam-airports.
In addition to this added 100 euro+ valet fee, there were several other fees added onto our reservation which I don't understand, including a 35 euro "CDW liability admin fee." Which, from my understanding is a fee that renters have to pay them so that they can decline the collision damage waiver that our credit card company provides. I don't know how it is legal to charge a fee for a service that the rental agency is NOT providing.
I prepaid for the car using Kayak. In the receipt I received from Kayak it says that taxes were covered in this fee, but an additional 15% VAT tax was added onto the rental.
Also, at rental, Sixt says that they will cover the costs of toll fees that are accrued while driving, but what they don't tell you is that they charge an extra 20% for every toll that you go through. The M50 toll is 3.10 when paid directly on etoll.ie, but Sixt charges 3.60 for each toll use.
All in all, this was a profoundly unpleasant experience.
Points négatifs : Be very wary when renting cars in Ireland. Sixt scammed me this time but, I have been scammed by other agencies in the past including finding "damage," to the car that was preexisting. I now know to always take photos and video of cars in good lighting before leaving the rental agency to document any preexisting damage that may be there. There is a reason that Ireland, Jamaica and Israel are the only three countries in the world that most US credit card companies do not cover for CDW.
