Europcar is an unscrupulous, rip-off company Europcar insists every renter of a vehicle must pay for a clutch that burns out. Then Europcar, historically, charges the renter for the cost of having the car towed and even has charged renters for loss of rental income during the days the vehicle undergoes repairs. How does Europcar justify these practices? The company says its vehicles pass inspection each time before they are rented and therefore if a clutch burns out while they are being rented, the driver must be at fault. In fact, Europcar is a grossly unscrupulous company whose business model partly relies on generating profits by billing customers for damages they did not cause. To be profitable, the company also relies heavily on coercing customers into buying its expensive auto insurance and throwing up roadblocks to prevent customers from accessing car rental auto insurance provided at no cost by the majority of credit cards. From my home in Houston, Texas, I reserved a vehicle from Europcar in April 2024 for a trip that would take place in June 2024. Europcar advertised online that it would rent me, at the Dublin, Ireland, airport, a Hyundai Tucson SUV for 79 Euros for nine days. I added on my wife as an extra driver. The total cost, with taxes, rose to 209 Euros. I declined Europcar’s insurance - a practice I followed during previous trips to Europe - because my credit card provides rental car insurance. I couldn’t understand why the rental car price was so low, but I thought if Europcar wants to rent a car for that price, so be it. When I went to pick up the SUV June 16, everything was proceeding smoothly until Ahmed, the agent, asked me if I wanted to buy Europcar’s insurance. I told him I believed I had indicated online when I reserved the vehicle that I would use my credit card’s car rental insurance. The agent asked me to produce a letter from my credit card company written in the last 21 days saying I had car rental insurance. I replied that Europcar had not indicated I needed such a letter when I reserved the car. He begged to differ and showed in the last paragraph of legal boilerplate of the reservation agreement that I was required to produce such a letter. Hertz and Sixt had not required such a letter on previous excursions to Europe. He said if I wanted to rent the vehicle, I needed to buy Europcar’s insurance costing 540 Euros for nine days - more than double the cost of renting the vehicle. I uttered a few cuss words. The agent stormed off from his post, saying with finality that Europcar would not rent me a vehicle. What the agent hadn’t suggested was that I try calling my credit card company to request that it email me the required letter. That solution occurred to me, and I told the agent’s manager, Sean Donegal, that I would be calling my credit card company. He had been through this drill before, knew that I could obtain the letter through this method and told me to show it to him once it was sent. I showed him the letter once it was emailed. It was then 90 minutes past the time my wife and I should have been heading off to southwest Ireland in a rental car, and we were told we would be getting our rental vehicle shortly. But right before we were to be given keys, a clerk said Europcar was switching us into another vehicle. A new clerk drew up another rental car agreement. The Hyundai Tucson we were given had 121,905 kilometers on it. It was strafed with bird droppings. (When we later raised the engine hood, we found an engine filled with cobwebs. We checked the oil level. The oil was low, but not below the minimum level marker. But it was dirty, murky black.) My wife and I took photos of the vehicle and nicks in it. We thought we better just go with the vehicle. Shortly after we pulled out of Europcar lot, I thought I ccaught a slight smell of burnt rubber. I thought the smell was caused by other vehicles. About 50 miles from Dublin, we pulled into Junction 14 near N9 in Mayfield. When we returned to the vehicle, we couldn’t put it into reverse. I pushed the vehicle out. The car would hardly go into first gear and wouldn’t go into second. A man passing by in the parking lot said the clutch was burned out - he could tell by the smell. At about 1600 hours, we tried calling all Europcar’s numbers on the rental car agreement papers. No one picked up. We finally got through to AA roadside assistance, which Europcar contracts with. The AA dispatcher said Europcar never picks up when customers call seeking roadside assistance. She dispatched an AA mechanic, who arrived an hour later. He confirmed that the clutch was burned out. He repeatedly tried calling various Europcar numbers, but no one picked up. I got through to a Europcar office in Cork. He told me I had to call the Europcar office at Dublin Airport. No one picked up when I called that office. I sent an email to Europcar’s customer service address. About 30 minutes later, Lauren, who refused to give her last name, told me AA would have the vehicle towed to a mechanic designated by Europcar. I would be responsible for paying the cost of repairing the clutch if the mechanic said it burned out due to driver error. She said my wife and I needed to return to Dublin Airport to get another vehicle and that Europcar would not be paying the driver for the cost of a taxi or Uber. I told her I had a reservation for a hotel in Kenmare in southwest Ireland. She said Europcar would not be responsible for that cost or paying for a room for us near Dublin Airport. We paid 147 Euros for a Free Taxi to bring us back to the airport. The Europcar agent there told us all the company’s vehicles pass an inspection before they are rented. She said passage of inspection means that the clutch was working fine when we got in the vehicle, and that we burned it out through driver error. As a result, Europcar would be billing my credit card for the cost of fixing the clutch. I pointed out that I smelled rubber burning when we left Europcar. She said a driver can burn out a clutch driving 100 feet. She said clutches are touchy and can be burned out before the vehicle moves. I said I have driven standard shifts most of my life and that clutches are not that touchy. If you release them too quickly, the car may stall, but can be immediately restarted. If you let a clutch out a little slowly, the engine does not seize up, and the clutch does not burn up. The agent strongly disagreed, saying she drives all the vehicles on the lot nearly everyday, and many have finicky clutches. She asked whether we had pressed down or up when trying to put the clutch in reverse. I said we had tried pressing down. Since she had said she drives the vehicles on the lot nearly daily and learns their ways because so many have super-finicky clutches, I asked her whether one should press down on the Tucson’s stick shift or pull up on it when shifting into reverse. She refused to answer. I asked her again, and she said she would have figured that out when she got into the vehicle. She didn’t say whether she would burn out the clutch if she guessed wrong in pressing down or pulling up once on a clutch upon getting in the vehicle. I told her that Europcar should have given us written instructions on shifting if there were so many tricky, verboten moves one could make in the gear-shifting process on certain cars. The agent asked whether it was theoretically possible that driver error caused the clutch to burn out. I said that driver error was a theoretical possibility, but that there was ample evidence that driver error was not the cause - such as the slight smell of burning rubber when we picked up the car. I asked her whether it was theoretically possible that we were issued a vehicle whose clutch needed to be replaced or that Europcar’s agents were angry at me because I had gotten ticked when an agent said I had to pay 540 Euros to rent the vehicle and they decided to send me out in a dog of a vehicle. She said these were not even theoretical possibilities because the inspection found the vehicle was in tip-top shape. I told the agent I would not trust a mechanic who was an employee of Europcar or an outside mechanic to whom Europcar feeds regular business to do anything but inform Europcar that driver error caused the clutch to burn out. We were issued another Tucson, this time an automatic transmission about 2100 hours. We got a room at a costly hotel near the airport. The hotel kitchen had shut down, but the bar was still open. A few premade sandwiches remained unsold in a refrigerated case near the front of the establishment. We bought those and ate them with a couple Smithwicks. I didn’t have a clutch replaced on a Nissan Sentra I owned until I had logged 145,000 miles. I drove it another 97,000 miles before I sold the car at a modest price. I consider Europcar’s handling of this matter fraudulent. A short online search turned up evidence that Europcar has run the burned-out clutch scam on others: https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=57&t=403516 The Telegraph looked into the matter in a cursory way in 2012: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/advice/Car-hire-advice-case-of-the-burnt-out-clutch/ The unscrupulous practice appears to be alive and kicking.