I must say, this is such a lovely little company. It's very different from the big car rental companys.
For starters you start of by going on a 10 min ride on a lovely little shuttle bus. This is a great way to start your holiday, I mean who would want the rental company to be located at the actual airport? No, this is a much better way of doing things. The scenic routes on Mallorca is just great, but you're not taking the scenic route, nope, this is a stretch on the highway before exiting and finding you're way down some shady industrial area.
Once there you get dumped outside a small building with lots of check in counters inside. This part actually went quite smooth, right up until the lovely little lady behind the counter tried her very best to sell you all the insurances you can think of. At this point I would recommend you to contact a lawyer who can help you navigate through this jungle that the check-in lady takes you on. Anyway, you probably already have your insurance sorted out so you're good to go, but the little check-in lady will more than likely have you think otherwise, that youre insurance isn't sufficient and that you really should buy her insurance too. I mean, who wouldn't want to pay twice for insurance? It's stuff like this that makes me all warm and cozy.
Once you have macheted your way out of Insurance Jungle, you get handed the keys to your, actually, almost new Peugeot. The little check-in lady do tell you at the last minute that this particular vehicle has some damages on it, but they are registered. That's a good thing, the bad thing is that I have to drive around in a beat up car with scratches on the side of the, pretty much, entire passenger side door and rear passenger door. But who cares about that anyway? Oh, I almost forgot and this one is an important one, the little check-in lady is very clear on that you are obliged to take photos of the car before driving off, this is a great way of documenting any damage on your lovely, all ready, scratched car. Although I'm not a hundred percent sure that Wiber is aware of this, even though it is a sun drenched island, the sun do set even on Mallorca, which makes documenting car paint, quite tricky. But hey, I'm up for a challenge, I started off by making my way around the car, filming the entire thing. Followed by photographing every square cm of the car, or so I thought I did, but we'll get back to that later on. One thing to remember is that Wiber will charge you for any scratch or ding larger than 2cm, keep that in mind. So after this Hollywood moment with cameras in bad lighting in a parking lot, we were off to the hotel. Now keep in mind that I am a car guy, or at least if you ask my wife and people who knows me. This makes me prone to take care of the car in driving and really cautious when, let's say, park the car, I usually try to find a parking spot at the end of parking lot, where I can only have another car on one side of my car, this will minimise the risk of some random car door accidentally swing open in to my fresh and crisp car paint, except from if it would happen on the passenger side, with those nasty dents and scratches that the car came with from lovely Wiber. Actually I think you could have rammed it with a Sherman tank at full blast, and you wouldn't have seen any difference. Not sure about that off course, but it seems likely.
Driving this car for a week did make me have to reevaluate my thoughts on French cars, this was actually a lovely little car, perfect for Mallorcas small streets and winding roads.
So after taken good care of this little red car for a week, it was time to return it to Wiber at the Airport drop off, which isn't located at the airport.
Once there a lovely man, too bad I can't remember his name, met us at the parking lot with a big and friendly smile on his face and broke out his little detective kit, if you stayed completely silent, you could almost hear the Theme song from C.S.I playing, and went over the car with the finest of all combs. He really should concider a career change, I think his exemplary skills could be put to better work somewhere else rather than wasting it on a little car rental company.
Anyway, it took him literally seconds to find a tiny scratch on the rear bumper, seconds! This was not a good thing he proclaimed, one thing that was good though was that I could show the young gentleman my movie photage. He wasn't all convinced when I showed him the movie but after taking a screenshot and then blowing it up a bit, even he after some muttering, agreed that the damage was already there when we picked up the car that dark evening a week ago.
I think, but I'm not sure, this made him even more ambitious with his hawk eyes, after several turns around the car, without finding any faults, he did what any sane person would do, he focused his attention to where the front bumper turns under the car, and there it was, a paint chip!
I once again brought out my trusty surveillance photage and was just about to show Mr. Detective that this also was there when we got the car. But sadly I hadn't filmed all the way down, almost under the bumper, where this little scratch could be seen, even though larger than 2cm, I'd say it was as large as humongous 3cm by 0.5cm, so Mr. Detective is not wrong in any way.
Since I couldn't present any evidence proving my innocence, I happily followed my newfound friend to his little computer where he explained that this little scratch would cost me 140€ and would be deducted from the 700€ deposit I payed up front when picking up the car.
With a big smile on my face I hopped on the cute little shuttle bus and off to the airport we went.