Sixt

Some of the staff were nice but some were rather obnoxious. I’ve rented from them and many other companies, and the overall experience was average. Drop off and pick up was simple.

The story of my rental at Sixt’s RAI Amsterdam rental center :
— non-​availability of make and model requested in reservation made 2 weeks in advance
— 90 minute wait to get car, with the woman who was ‘washing’ the car being unresponsive to customer support
— received car a clunker with 75K miles. what is this — ‘rent a wreck’?
— GPS that customer support couldn’t reconfigure from Dutch to English after diddling around at length
— we were given an ancient Garmin Nuvi that never successfully started up, leading to us using $ 50 of mobile data services for navigation
This was my worst car rental experience bar none. I give Sixt the benefit of doubt due to somewhat better (3-​star) experiences in Germany and Spain.

Used them to extend our Viking River cruise. Their locations was 2 blocks from were the ship docked and the vehicle exceeded expectations. We rented a 9 passenger van which was very clean and loaded with features. Return was a snap as well.

This started out a one star experience.
We arrived and were told that they had rented our car to someone else. They tried to get us to spend $ 200 to upgrade to a larger vehicle. I explained that it doesn’t work that way. The onus is on them to get us the same, similar or LARGER car. Then they tried to get us to go with a BMW 3-​Series (we had rented a 5 series or E Series Mercedes).
We waited about 90 minutes for them to bring in a suitable car from Schiphol and were pleasantly surprised. It was a larger Mercedes, an E 220.
What made the experience a positive one was the person who showed us how to operate the car. He explained everything in detail, and then asked us about our trip. Then he suggested areas to go including restaurants and attractions. He spent about 20 minutes with us.
I guess if we’d been in a hurry this would have been a negative, but it really helped to change our perception of our experience. I’m not sure we’ll use any of his suggestions, but it was a fantastic service, especially for a car rental company.

We rented from Sixt on the advice of a friend currently living in Germany, having no experience of our own with European car rental companies. We were flying into Amsterdam and connecting in Berlin with our son who was studying abroad at the time. It was easy to choose a car [a Mini Cooper, made by BMW] and make a reservation, listing all of the countries we planned to visit.
When taken to our car, it was a Hyundai, quite different from a Mini. We were told that BMW, Mercedes and another brand could not be driven into a few of the countries on our itinerary. Why this did not arise during the reservation process is beyond me. We were assured that this Hyundai was in the same class as the Mini. Didn’t seem so to us then or when we were accelerating and steering on the autobahn.
But that was minor compared to my real issue with Sixt.
The month after our return home, there appeared two charges from Sixt on our credit card bill. We believed one might be for the small amount of gas that the car needed to be topped off [advice if you do rent from Sixt: top the car off yourself!]. We had no idea the nature of the other charge, roughly $ 150. I asked American Express to investigate, as I do all unknown charges. They got no response from Sixt and so reversed the charges.
This got Sixt’s attention and they sent via email to me a request for the money. The bigger charge had been for a highway camera speeding ticket.
We offered to pay with a different credit card. Sixt said not possible.
I called AmEx and was told that with my permission, which I gave them, Sixt could put the charge through again. Sixt said not possible.
We offered 3 other ways to pay their bill. All were turned down.
At a standstill, Sixt turned the bill over to collections. While this collection company [Profaktura] did take off their fees after we detailed to them our failed attempts to pay Sixt ourselves, they were uncompromising on splitting the bank fee to wire them the funds [$ 35]. Wanting the ordeal to be over, I paid the fee and wired Profaktura the funds requested.
While these funds were available to them the day after i sent them, I did not hear from Profaktura for almost a week. Rather than the release of claim that I expected, I got a request for more money stating that I had not paid in full. It took me sending to them a scanned copy of what I received from my bank for Profaktura to send me the release.
All in all, this ordeal took hours of time over months to resolve. Sixt took no responsibility for their lack of communication in the first place and was completely unwilling to compromise or work with us towards finding a solution that would not cost us so much money to execute.
I will never rent from them again and would advise that you don’t either.

We rented a car with Sixt Amsterdam for a month. No problems with all of the standard stuff: courteous (albeit slow) staff and a nice car. Then we dinged the a door against a fuel pump and the troubles began…
1) «What do you think of Sixt’s customer service?» — «I think that would be a great idea…»
— Their phone service is open during business hours only and closed on weekends. They did not respond to the two messages we left off hours. During business hours, they require a touch-​tone phone — admittedly not a high bar, but we didn’t have access to one.
— Messages entered on their website and e-​mails (8 total) all went unanswered.
— Their personnel is courteous but clueless. We drove to a Sixt office to report the damage; they had us fill in a damage report, and sent us to another office — that had us complete a second damage report. When we returned the car, they had neither of the reports — and filled in a third damage report (the Return Checklist).
– Sixt’s customer support was almost impossible to access, and what we got was completely unhelpful.
2) Their damage department felt like a low-​level racket
— Sixt completed an «expert» report that included damages that were not on the car when we returned it, and were not on any of the damage reports that we or Sixt had filed (including the Return Checklist that you’d think would be authoritative) — a fact that the damage department completely ignored.
— On this report, the estimated repairs — because Sixt makes you pay based on an estimate by their «expert», not the actual repairs — were vastly inflated (cost multiplied by a factor of 7 or 8) and included repairs to parts that were not possibly affected by the damage that we caused or even by their new damages.
— They were amazingly unprofessional: As mentioned, they ignored their own Return Checklist and our damage reports; their communications were both slow (two-​week response time was standard) and included a letter written half in Dutch and half in «SMS-​English» in response to an e-​mail that we later discovered they hadn’t even read.
— They tried to coerce us into paying for the inflated costs first by giving us a «discount» (that they later retracted), then by threatening us with collections and a lawsuit.
– Their heavy-​handedness didn’t work, and after 2 ½ months we settled for a reasonable amount, but what a nightmare.
Sixt may be cheap, but the upfront savings just aren’t worth the risk. You’re better off going with a reputable car rental company.

Bad experience all over. First when we order a car we asked for an automatic in a note. When we came there were no automatic in our class at all, I’m not sure if they even have one, only at the hire rate, like SUV. We asked if we can have SUV, but becasue they did not have car for us for a discount — NO.
When I made my reservation I took all kind of insurances just in case; when we rented and took the car, nobody went with us to check it out, however when we came back they found a rear door dent, which we never even open. There were 2 people in a car and we only used front doors. Telling them that we have insurance just in case did not help. Their customer support department takes about 45 days after each of my e-​mails. When I called USA division and they said they will call me back, and never did. I got another e-​mail asking what we plan to do and they were not able to confirm that I even called USA reps, even when I gave them a name and a ref number, and asked me to use e-​mail for further communication.
Sounds like a total scam. Will never use them again.

I had a really bad experience while returning the car. They found a really small dent on one door of the car, made me fill up a damage report form and warned me that its going to be a costly affair for me. On pick up, they didn’t remind me to check for damages, no one escorted me down 2 levels to inspect the car and there was no staff down there to help me with the pickup. Even if I had inspected, I would have never spotted that dent since it was so small and there wasn’t enough light since the car was parked next to another one. That dent couldn’t happen unless I opened and banged the door really hard at something, but I know I didn’t. There was no paint chip, its clearly looks like a really old dent, but how can I prove anything, they have all the power and my account information. Their staff suggested me to go to a mechanic myself and get it fixed cheaply and they wont report anything, but I would not do it as a matter of principle since it was not my mistake.
Bottom-​line: Enjoy the cheap daily car rental fare and wait for a bill of an unspecified unlimited amount of damage charges levied for no reason.

Hier habe ich für mein Auto 280 Euro für 10 Tage bezaht. Super Angebot!