We hired a Fiat Panda from First Car Rental (Active Car Rental) in Malta recently. I don't suppose that there is a great deal to choose between the "budget" companies, so I'm sure that my experience this week was not all that unusual. I collected the pre-booked vehicle from a small "downtown" office. The staff were very helpful and friendly, but the documentation took ages and then we had to walk around the block a time or two to even find the vehicle, as parking around there is impossible.

We then went over the car with the finest tooth-comb I've ever met and every tiny scratch or dent was marked on the booking out sheet, No bad thing in a way, but a bit tedious. I also had to pay €30 up front for half a tank full of fuel. Assuming that the Fiat Panda holds about 40 litres that would be about right, but, as normal, the instruction was to return the tank empty. Unnecessarily stressful and alien to our normal careful philosophy. As it happened, I guess there was at least a gallon in the tank when I took the car back, so the hire cost another €8 or so. A bit irritating, I suppose, but no big deal. The guage also indicated less than half a tank on checkout; I queried it, and was told that "it's the usual position". Again, a bit irritating, but no more.

We then found the next day that the air conditioning either wasn't fitted or wasn't working. As we only had the car for four days and the weather wasn't too hot, I couldn't face the thought of all the paperwork involved, so we lived with it.

When I took the car back, the same - very pleasant - young man checked it back in in the minutest detail. I've lived in Malta for years and I know about the driving and the traffic and had driven with extraordinary care and was pleased - if a little surprised - that we had had no incidents or near misses. The car was thus exactly as we'd found it, so the agent signed it off and I was quite relieved to go back to our hotel on the bus.

I wasn't very pleased, therefore, to get a phone call later to say that they had found deep scratches on the passenger's dashboard which looked as if they'd been done with a sharp knife and that we should be charged for the damage. Using, of course, the credit card we had had to register for the deposit when we checked out. I demanded that they bring the car to me so that I could photograph the "damage" to refute the claim and it was agreed that we could see it at the airport the next morning as we prepared to fly home.

You will have guessed that the car wasn't there when we reported to the airport office, so we had to fly home with the claim unresolved. If there were scratches there, they were there throughout our hire and could hardly have been significant or we should have noticed them. Or they were done after we left the car with the company. Either way it leave a sour taste in the mouth and now the thought of a battle with insurers and travel companies to ensure that the truth will out and that we shan't be charged,

There is a fine dividing line between sharp business practice and downright dishonesty and I think that Malta car hire companies are perilously close to the latter. It's surely better to have a satisfied customer who will come back rather than one who writes to Trip Advisor to complain. How nice it would have been, for example, to have found the petrol guage showing just over half full rather than just under. Shame. I probably won't bother hiring a car again and I certainly won't use that company.

One might think that once the car had been signed back in, any new damage would be the owner's problem. Not so in this case. We have had €350 removed from our account without permission as our "contribution" towards a new dashboard. I imagine it would have taken five minutes to repair the damage sufficiently at a cost of next to nothing, so it does look like a new version of an old scam. The annoying bit is that there's nothing we could have done to prevent that sum being removed from our Visa account. Or is there? Does anyone have any advice or comment? Thanks

Edited by Avant on 27/04/2013 at 18:39