cheap and cheerful

You definitely get what you pay for - they are cheap for a reason. After queuing for 90 minutes in the office, every other customer had problems of some kind all to do with inflexible and unrealistic policies. After my 90 minutes in the queue, 25 minutes to process the transaction, I then had to queue for a further 25 minutes while the car was cleaned. All in all, I spent 2.5 hours to collect a car. Never again!

Sneaky staff. Lures you to Buy their insurance.

Cancelled at counter as the counter staff was not really helpful. Suggested we either pay an additional GBP 50 for full insurance coverage or GBP 1400 will be blocked from card which she said would not be released based on past experience. Disastrous experience.

Our flight was late by 1 hour, and my sister took 1.5hr to get through passport control as they were very busy. I had called ahead to gold car to say we were at the airport whilst waiting for my sister (I went striaght through as I had my UK passport) to enquire where we catch the bus to get to the rental depot. When we arrive we were told the car had been sold on and this was part of the T&C's we were so upset and they said they only had 1 other car and we had to pay an additional 190 pounds to secure the vehicle as this was classed as an upgrade. All of this incident was made so much worse as my Father had passed the same morning and we had missed seeing him before he died, which compounded the situation.

Arrival wasn't great as from LHR T3, the details on whom to call from bus stop 21 are so small that you can easily miss them. Proper signage would go a long way. I waited around 15 minutes to be served, as the staff were very busy. When it came to payment, they lumped an unexpected 84 GBP payment on my car hire because my return ticket did not correspond to the date of car return. I rented the car for two days to visit family and then am continuing to work in the UK for a few months. The woman behind the counter said she would waive charges if I provided an original proof of address from within the UK in the last 3 months - yeah right! She would not accept a photograph or reverse the charges if I provided an original copy upon return. Really terrible and disappointing customer service. All in all, I was looking forward to my Goldcar experience but the "plus, plus" mentality where they sting you with baseless charges will mean that I never use them again.