petcarefun.info

September 28th, 2009 by KittyKitty

Since when did car hire firms change their rules about pets in vehicles? I’ve just returned a hire car that my colleagues and I had used to get home from Heathrow, filthy with dog hair and smell.

Don’t get me wrong. I really love animals but I don’t like having their fur all over my business suits. My familiy has a small menagerie of a cat, dog, several fish and even a wild hedgehog in the garden. My family and I love animals. But when I tried to book a hire car for my family, dog and cat I was told that only certain vehicles were suitable and these weren’t available.

On further investigation I ultimately found a car hire firm that did accept pets but only in certain vehicles (estates) and the animals had to be secured behind the back seat. We were happy with this situation and understood completely.

You can probably understand how dissappointed I was by the hire car supplied by a well known car hire supplier at Heathrow. My colleagues and I had returned from Frankfurt late in the evening having pre-booked our hire car before we left Germany. We collected the details and keys from the desk and headed for the parking lot. When we opened the car door it smelled like Crufts dog show on a warm day. Not nice.

We were about to go back to the desk but one of our party was impatient to get home so we hopped into the stinky car and off we went. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized my suit was covered in what appeared to be white dog hairs.

Whoever had used that car immediately prior to us had clearly allowed a dog to roam freely on the seats and upholstery. When I got in touch with the car hire firm they apologised and told me that they don’t allow dogs or cats in their normal saloon cars so someone had broken their rules. Someone had clearly broken their rules and they hadn’t managed to get the car valeted before we took it away. The result was an expensive bill for having four business suits professionally cleaned.

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In future we’ll be driving to the airport and using airport parking services rather than rely on smelly hire cars. Top tip: Always make certain that you have adequate travel insurance before you go anywhere.