As the numbers of individual non-package travelers have been growing over the past years the amount of customized travel services offered to individuals or small groups is also increasing. The trend is clearly beneficial to such transportation niche like car rent companies. Naturally, the uptrend is especially favorable for popular travel destinations such as Prague – a very common target for short breaks for many Europeans as well as for long haul travelers from Russia and Asian countries.
However as the business segment grows, there has been recorded an increase of unfair or dishonest business practices, misleading of clients or even fraudulent conduct. Such approach was recently reported by a well know specialized Czech tour operator Spa Resorts. The company often provides its clients – foreigners who come to the Czech Republic – with supplementary services such as car transfers or car rent.
Eva Bendova, Spa Resorts’ customer manager, described the case: “Because of specific requirements of our client we picked up a new supplier of car rent services – Travel and Car s r.o. Only later we found out that it was a very bad choice!”
The case could be called a typical one – a small unknown company offers an interesting range of services over the internet addressing foreign travelers. At the end of the day the provider does not supply the agreed services while returning the deposit is also a problem.
Eva Bendova recalled that in their case she was informed by Mrs. Hospodarska from Travel and Car that the car that was ordered and fully paid in advance had a small crash and could not be delivered to the client. Strong companies have a large car park where replacement could be made. “However it is not the case of the Prague based Travel and Car s r.o.,” emphasized Mrs. Bendova. “I doubt that they had the car that we agreed to rent at the moment, more probably they just wanted to get the deposit”. Experts pointed out that if it is confirmed, it would be classified as a clear fraud conduct of the Travel and Car s r.o. management.
Mrs. Bendova said that in their case it was a rather bad scenario. No service provided, no deposit paid back, just some uncertain promises given by Mr. Hospodarska from Travel and Car. “It is quite obvious either Travel and Car has serious financial problems or it was their intention to lure the deposit out within illegal context. If it is the case, we will pass the case trough to the Czech Police department,” she said.
Experts note, that in most cases cars are rented by foreigners who have very limited opportunity to sue some unfair provider of car rental services. In most cases such providers can thus easily get away with it. This however is not going to be the case of Travel and Car s r.o. , since our team will follow up the case.
Also we would like to ask any person or company who suffered from the practices of Travel and Car to contact Spa Resorts office at info@spa-resorts.cz for collective actions.