BVRLA Reviews 145

Thanks to ECRCS/ BVRLA action I finally received a refund for an amount of nearly € 2000 which had been unduly charged by a napoli rental car company.
The car I rented in october 2021 had a mechanical failure and had to be towed back to the airport.
Though I had no responsibility in this failure, I had been debited on my credit card account and I could not obtain any answer or justification from the rental company.
I transmitted my claim to BVLRA in july 2022 , my last chance after several conciliation attempts .
They concluded in my favor in august 2022 and finally succeeded to force the rental company to issue a refund in november 2022.
I am obviously very grateful to BVLRA for their support and results

These people are a joke! They have no interest in making any decision other that in favour of their member Spaceships UK Ltd, who pay their wages in the first place. I wasted three weeks waiting for BVRLA to make a decision which was pre-determined against me right from the start and then they offered me no explanation for rejecting my complaint. (No wonder Spaceships were so keen to use them!) I am more angry at the Citizens Advice Bureau for having suggested this as a means of dispute resolution - they really ought to know better! It makes me wonder whose side CAB are really on when they offer the public ridiculous suggestions like using alternative dispute resolution bodies as a means of arbitration.

Rented a car from Alamo and crossed the Dartford crossing twice. Both crossings were paid for promptly well within the 24 hrs allowed. However in the hrs before we collected the vehicle a crossing was made and not paid for. Our first payment was allocated to that crossing and our second payment was allocated to our first. At the time of the unpaid crossing we were on a plane to the UK. Alamo charged us a 35 pound admin fee even though we were not at fault which was reluctantly refunded after many phone calls and letters. They passed the outstanding debt for the crossing to a collection agency and only after many months and many emails did they agree that we were not liable. All of this aggravation could have been resolved by Alamo just confirming to Dart Charge that were not responsible for the crossing that was not paid for.
Many e mails and phone calls to BVLRA who refused to assist at all. I dealt with Stephen Dix and Sallie Catchpole both of whom refused to take any action and eventually refused to respond at all. What is the point of this organisation?

Just read the response from BVRLA an absolutely pointless response!!!

Bvrla is corrupt ! They make their money on membership fees by hire companies ! How are they supposed to be impartial with their dispute resolution! Despite providing physical evidence that proofs my claim and contacting two members of their team to resolve a dispute I have with a hire company they still were biased on their decision without providing any logical explanation! Bvrla represents everything that is wrong with capitalism !

Total waste of time.
They spend more time responding to negative reviews than they ever will looking into the disgraceful behaviour of the hire firms who fund this organisation. How can they ever be independent when there wages depend on the vehicle hire firms.
The BVRLA are a sham with no interest in finding against effectively there employers.Reviews like mine actually help the BVRLA as less individuals will seek to complain. So a win win for the vehicle hire firms.
Watch how quick they respond to this genuine review. I’ve had a very helpful discussion with our local trading standards team about the BVRLA. If all those who feel aggrieved by there shambolic behaviour, please contact your local trading standards team they will certainly welcome the complaints.

It is just a complete waste of time. Transparently an exercise to distract from how bad the business practices of UK rental car companies are. Don’t bother with them if you can avoid it.
Update: Their response does not address a whole host of relevant issues. E.g., BVRLA made their judgment before even receiving the evidence they needed to justify the level of charges. They also accepted an invoice dated 30 September 2021 as the key piece of evidence -- the rental was in May 2022. I wonder if they even looked at the paperwork before making their judgment.

Super fast service! Highly recommended. Very very efficient.
I am delighted to have received a full refund from Hertz Uk. I had no chance dealing with them privately, they are liars and cheats so passed my complaint to BVRLA prior to taking Hertz Gatwick to the small claims court. Within a week of BVRLA stepping in, I received a full refund. Thank you Laura. Very very grateful! 👍👍

I would give zero stars if it was possible: I can only confirm the negative reviews: this trade association evidently blindly defends its members in the case of a dispute, no doubt because they receive membership fees from them.
How about really being honest and striving to raise standards, as stated on their website? That means raising standards for people who pay to rent vehicles and as such, are entitled to receive decent customer service. Without customers, the BVRLA and the car rental companies themselves would not exist!

Addition: it's very strange that instead of actually contacting me, the BVRLA has responded with yet another unilateral answer. How can a dispute be resolved if they are not prepared to listen? Evidence is available.

Laughable.

They will look after their members and rule in their favour no matter how embarrassingly blatant it is.

Better off just taking the company straight to court via the small claims process (Google it) it's very easy and straight forward.

They are are a waste of time if the company is a paid member they side the company.
They do not throughly investigate the complaint and work for the customer/publics best interest.
The whole process is a joke they just have guidelines they don’t investigate suspicious or fraudulent activity!
Therefore end up upholding the complaint with the company your complaining about and they send you a generic template message to close the complaint!!!

Only picked one star because it won’t let me pick none. This complaint are just as disgusting as Ubqeeo. Imagine lying and telling someone bare faced that you were letting someone use your account but don’t give no evidence it’s pathetic and now I have to take every single person to court just to show these disgusting companies that you will not get away with lying on me. Karma remember it goes to everyone.

Don't waste your time, pretty obvious they wont bite the hand that feeds them with upholding any complaints even when blatantly obvious it should be, luckily I did not suffer any financial losses but god help anyone who does and rely on this shower of s***e

Ignored all the facts - There is absolutely no point in contacting these guys. They are on the side of the Finance Company full stop. They are not independent, they are not going to rule against their members. They are a pointless waste of time. My case was complex, they took no time to conclude their response. I just would not bother

Contacted BVRLA to investigate VWFS about the unlawful cancellation of a VW lease agreement. From the first contact, BVRLA made it clear that they would take the word of the lease company over any evidence provided and refused to contact us by phone to discuss the case. Attempted to close the case on three occasions despite evidence contradicting what they'd been told by VWFS. Didn't respond to last email or my complaint about BVRLA. Since then, I have hired a Solicitor who has now made progress in over turning the decision.

A joke and possibly even a scam if they BVRLA is simply representing its members against complaints. My complaint to BVRLA consisted of around 8 points, and the response didn't even attempt to address 7 of them. Nor did it adequately address the 8th. I e-mailed back pointing this out and giving a second chance, the reply (from a different employee) was better but still did not address the bulk of my complaint. An ombudsman / complaints service is pointless if its knowledge of the underlying issues and attention to detail is so poor, which leads me to wonder whether indeed this is simply a scam whereby BVLRA is batting complaints away on its members' behalf while putting up a front of being an independent complaints mechanism. Who is policing the policeman? No one, it seems.

UPDATE: BVRLA’s reply to this review contains defamatory material alleging unlawful conduct on my part. Reinforces my review entirely.

Life threatening neglegense ignored by this discracefull excuse of a governing body
Even when a company breaches there code of practice they ignore and condone it
THEY CLEARLY ONLY WANT TO PROTECT THE COMPANY'S THAT PAY THEM
NOT THE PUBLIC
THE TYRE SPECIALIST CONDEMNED THE TYRE ILEGAL AND NOT MOT COMPLIANT
THE DEFINITION OF MOT FAIL IS
DANGEROUS REPAIR IMMEDIATELY. THEREFORE UNROADWORTHY UNSAFE
THEREFORE BREACHING THE BVRLA CODE OF PRACTICE
AND THAT IS WHY IT WAS AUTHORISED TO BE CHANGED

UNTIL YOU LEARN HOW TO THE JOB YOU ARE PAID FOR PROPERLY
AND ARE RETRAINED
YOU ARE DISMISSED AS UNFIT FOR PURPOSE
JUST LIKE THE CAR PROVIDED

I have bad experience with rental car company with charging me for very small damage in car, what i didn't do 255 pound, As BVRLA where we need to compline and they always say if this charge correct or not i contacted them,

It was bad experience first they said you are guilty and charge correct because i sign documents agree that car have damage, I mention that i didn't sign any documents, they send paper with fake sign not even close to mine and not match with my sign in other paper,

i show them how its not match and i asked them to notify the rental car company that customer saying didnt sign this and sign not match, they decline and said this not our job, they didn't give reference or any number for compline they said no reference use your name, they also said "This will be our final correspondence on the matter"

they are just cover of false charges done by rental car companies, they don't take any action and they don't want to record this cases, not only me claiming this, many people same my case leave there reviews here and in google.

really shame

I've noted here that a lot of people have had issues with their service, I will just provide my experience with BVRLA.

To keep it simple, I had a bogus damage claim from a car hire company that I was disputing for the better part of two months. You can find out who and read my (only other) review to see the story there if interested.

My fee was only small, but I felt like I was getting no where with getting the problem resolved until the hire company sent me a bill and threatened solicitors if not paid.

I wrote out my case, attached my proof to the submission and in three days I got a positive response from BVRLA that my case had been resolved in my favour. For me, this is exactly what I had hoped the service to be. It had been a stressful time trying to sort this issue with a big company seemed to act with impunity and it's nice to feel recognised and helped out.