Holiday Autos Reviews 

Easy, fast, very convenient!

We hired a car to pick up from Preveza airport with Thrifty through Holiday Autos and prepaid in advance. We were delayed in customs and were 1.25 hours late to pick up our car. When we arrived at the desk the car had been given away to another customer. We tried to contact Holiday Autos but couldn’t get a reply, the chat service was via an automated bot which was no help at all. We have contacted Holiday Autos via their complaint service which they make incredibly difficult to access and have received only one reply to say it’s part of the terms and conditions that you need to ring if you’re delayed despite the fact that you can’t use your phone in passport control areas where we were delayed. I have tried to escalate this further but haven’t received a reply and there is no phone number or email address for them. We ended up having to get a car from a different desk on the day as Thrifty were very unhelpful also. I would not recommend using this company at all, they have refused to provide a refund for a service that wasn’t provided and have failed to reply to my follow up emails. Appalling customer service all round, would score zero if I was able to.

I had a very disappointing experience with Holiday Autos.

I paid around 80% of the booking in advance (about USD 300). When I arrived at the rental counter, I realized that in the rush of traveling I had forgotten to bring my physical driver’s licence. That was my mistake, and I fully accept responsibility for it.

However, I wasn’t asking anyone to break the rules. I was traveling with family and friends, and more than one of them had a valid driver’s licence. I simply asked if the booking could be amended so the car could legally be rented in the name of one of the licensed drivers who was present with me.

SIXT told me to contact Holiday Autos. Holiday Autos then said they could not change the driver’s name because it was less than 48 hours before pick-up. As a result, both companies refused to hand over the car and also refused to provide any refund.

This is what I struggle to understand. What is the purpose of customer service if it cannot help resolve a genuine situation like this? We weren’t asking for special treatment or trying to avoid the rules. We proposed a legal and reasonable solution by putting the booking in the name of another licensed driver who was standing right there at the counter.

Instead, we lost around USD 300, received no car, no refund, and had to rely on taxis for 2 days of our trip in Turkey as the other rental car companies had unrealistically inflated prices last minute and it didn’t make sense to hire another car and pay like 250 Euros per day(that’s what I got quoted by other companies upon enquiring when I arrived there)

While I acknowledge my mistake, I feel there was absolutely no effort from either company to find a practical solution. The experience left me feeling that once the payment was taken, there was no interest in helping the customer. Unfortunately, it felt more like a money trap than customer service.

I would strongly recommend that anyone booking through Holiday Autos carefully read every condition and think twice before paying in advance, because if something unexpected happens, don’t expect any flexibility or assistance.

Update in response to the company’s reply: Since I can’t reply directly to your response, I’m updating my review here. The issue isn’t your terms and conditions—it’s the complete lack of a practical solution. I was standing at the rental counter at the scheduled pick-up time. The original driver couldn’t present the licence, but another person in my group had a valid licence and was ready to take over. All that was needed was changing the driver on the booking. Instead, I was told your system doesn’t allow it. That’s your own system—designed, managed, and controlled by your company. It’s hard to accept that a customer loses the entire payment simply because your system doesn’t allow a basic change, even when everyone is present and a lawful solution exists. Customer service should solve genuine problems, not hide behind system limitations.

I have been always hired cars from this company l find them easy to deal with I will be rebooking with you againg 👍🏻
And price is good aswell
Regards
Patricia

I have to be honest. I really love this business. It is so simple to book a car at the best prices.

Easy to use app. No hidden charges. Detailed significantly aids decision making. Excellent options.

Easy to book good choice at the very best rates. Hopefully the car hire on holiday is as good as the booking experience.

Good and comprehensive information about the different alternatives. BUT a word of warning: I wanted to be charged in euro but was charged in US dollars because at some point during the booking, the information was wrong or very unclear.

Holiday Autos could be better. You can’t see if a car is manual or automatic until you have actually started to checkout the booking which is poor. The only other gripe which they need to heed is if you need to edit your booking the same day then you have to pay a rebooking fee of £65 when the hire care company would not charge you to rebook or make an easy amendment like changing the pickup time to an hour earlier so this is bad. So unless you are 150% sure of your booking wouldn’t do it without a cancellation option added as you could get badly caught.

We are extremely disappointed with how our case was handled.

We had booked a car for our family vacation in Crete, but unfortunately my driver's license was lost during our journey. We only needed to change the registered driver to another licensed family member, but what should have been a simple process became unnecessarily difficult. It honestly felt easier to achieve world peace than to change the driver.

Our entire vacation depended on having the car, and because the issue could not be resolved, it had a significant negative impact on our trip. This experience has left us very dissatisfied, and we are unlikely to use your services again.

Giving 1* as no option for 0*. Very disappointing experience with Holiday Autos. Our flight arrived on time, but we were delayed by the immigration process at Preveza Airport, which was beyond our control. When we reached the Thrifty desk, shared with Hertz, we were told our reservation had been marked as a no-show and our car had been given away. No consideration was given for the immigration delays at the airport.
To make matters worse, Holiday Autos' live chat and customer service were extremely poor. They offered little assistance, showed no understanding of the situation, and failed to provide a reasonable solution. The whole experience caused unnecessary stress and disruption at the start of our holiday. We have since escalated our complaint with them and have yet to receive any further response and they will not answer the question we have asked a couple of times, what time precisely was our car given away. We went on to rent a car from Europcar, their representative at their desk said not one of his customer’s had arrived on time, some were over 2 hours late that day due to the delays getting through.
I would not recommend Holiday Autos based on my experience. Absolutely terrible.

I always use Holiday Autos when booking car hire due to its very simple website and clear pricing.

Smooth and easy service. Vehicle in perfect condition both inside and out. Customer service brilliant.

Absolute nightmare. Waited over an hour in roasting temperatures. Had to pay an extra £500 to get decent insurance and a car that was not tiny( booked an suv and got the tiniest one ) Had to change cars twice . Do not book with holiday autos or Europcar!!!!!!!!

Great experience at pickup and drop off.
Price was excellent
Will be back

Good price, easy and stress free

My go-to hire car broker. Never has a problem over many years.

Easy to use and got great deal on car hire