Goldcar PortugalReviews 

Booked and paid for car hire in advance. I received email cancelling the booking whilst at Heathrow airport about to board for Bologna. Reason - Goldcar offices now closing at 4.30pm when we due to land Bologna at 5.30pm. Despite me having "Key and Go" which means I collect key from automated machine. Caused me significant inconvenience to arrange alternative onward travel. To add insult.... refund can take up to 15 days and they had the ordasity to ask me to review their company. Goldcar don't not care !!

I recently rented a car from Goldcar in Lisbon and had a very frustrating experience. When I made the booking, it clearly stated that no security deposit was required. However, when we arrived at the airport to pick up the car, we were suddenly told that we had to pay a €269 security deposit and that they would not release the keys without it.

We were completely unprepared for this unexpected charge, both financially and practically. It felt misleading and left us in a difficult position right at the start of our trip. The staff simply repeated that there was nothing they could do.

Overall, this experience was extremely disappointing, and I will never use Goldcar again. I would strongly advise others to double-check the fine print or choose a more transparent rental company.

Additionally, the staff were very rude when we got the the key kiosk, all 3 of them on their phones which were very unapproachable.

We recently booked a car with GoldCarHire for our trip to Madeira. The website looked very professional, and we opted for the Full Cover package, which promised key-drop collection from the airport machine and an easy pick-up process. Unfortunately, our experience fell short of what was advertised.
Upon arrival at the airport, we were about 20 minutes early, so we went to the customer help desk. The representative who served us was extremely rude and unhelpful. We were told we could not collect the car until our 1 p.m. booking slot and that we had to use the machine — with no further explanation or assistance.
When we used the machine at 1 p.m., the key fob malfunctioned and did not provide us with a key for the car. We then had to queue again at customer service, where we were treated rudely once more. After eventually obtaining the key, we walked a considerable distance to the car area and finally located the vehicle.
Unfortunately, the problems didn’t end there. As soon as we began driving, we realised that the gearbox was in poor condition — reverse gear was complicated to engage, and the car felt poorly maintained overall.
We are highly disappointed. We paid a premium price, expecting a smooth and reliable service. Still, from start to finish, the experience fell short of even the most basic standards of customer care and vehicle quality. Having now read other reviews, it appears we are not alone in this experience. We will not be using GoldCar Rental again and would advise others to think carefully before doing so.

If it looks too good to be true, it will be!
Paid £40 online and sorted my own insurance waiver as I do yearly!
It was either pay over 1900€ at the desk in Faro with no guarantee I’d get any back or pay for their insurance at 174€ for 5 days.
I got a taxi instead and customer services won’t give a refund!
Gold my A***e . Steer clear and go for one of the better hire companies.
Atrocious attitude

A very bad experience renting a car at Goldcar Faro. We had a early check-out, so the car wasn't inspected by a person but we had to drop the car key in a deposit box.

When home, they sent an e-mail with photos of a so called 'new damage'. Upfront, I made a video of the car, so I answered to Goldcar with proof that the damage was allready there when we received the car. Allthough the proof is clear, they just don't accept it and charged me €108,37 for damage which we didn't cause, and for which I have proof that it was allready there!

Never again with Goldcar.

They tried everything to sell additional insurance. They gave me a car with loads of damage. I then recieved a damage bill of €1500. I sent photos showing the damage beforehand. They dropped the charge to €177 for a damaged door lock because the lock wasn't in any photo. Absolute gangster operation. Just read the reviews

DO NOT book with Goldcar. Heavy sell on additional insurance which if you refuse to take they then request hefty deposit.
ALWAYS take photos of car on pick up if you have booked. 1 month after returning car and back to UK I was emailed with photos of 'damage' I had caused and a bill for nearly £300. I was able to send my photos back and show this damage was pre-existing. They came back within an hour and claimed 'email had been sent in error'. Nonsense! If I hadn't taken the photos and been able to prove it wasn't be, I think they would have pursued the claim. SCAMMERS.

Service may look good and cheap at first, but it WILL end up expensive. Look for any other alternative, even if it's more expensive. You can’t trust them, and you won't be able to get a decent reply when you need.
I got a car completely scratched on the right side, the attendant showed me it was all marked already on that side and the check wouldn’t be rigorous, and after returning the car, they want to charge me more than 100 euros for a small scratch that I didn’t do, and they couldn’t even prove it was from the car I rented - they just send a generic photo of a scratch. If you are thinking of renting a car with them, don’t do it!
To make things even worse, talking to them on the phone, you can only contact a generic phone asking for me to prove the scratch was already there before (from a side that was all scratched already). By email is no different. It’s a scam place that will get your money in any way!

A terrible car rental company. Please do yourself a favour and avoid at all costs (there are so many other rental options in Faro, do your homework and pick the more trustworthy ones, even if they cost a bit more).

The reason for this low scoring review is mainly due to them trying to give us a smaller car than we booked. We booked a Nissan Qashqai or Similar, as we needed a vehicle that would fit 3 adults and a small child, plus luggage. The 'similar' car we got was an Opel Mokka, which is smaller than a Nissan Qashqai. We couldn't even fit two suitcases in the boot.

I went back in to ask for a different car. The person serving me was relatively decent, but she said she could not help me with another car, but said if we wanted a bigger boot, we would need to upgrade. We saw a Qashqai in the car park, and she said that we needed to upgrade for that! This left us no choice but to splash out an extra £93 we had not budgeted for on an upgrade to a Ford Kuga (apparently the Qashqai was even more expensive!!)....

Truly disappointed that we were subjected to this, and I have been in touch with Expedia, the site we booked through, and they have been useless to us as well and neither party are accepting responsibly. So we, the customer, have to take the sting.

I also need to add that the staff here were VERY rude to a customer being served to my right. I don't know the full details of what was wrong with his booking, but to have the staff berating him like a child was unbelievable. This company does not deserve business from anyone.

Having used Goldcar on many occasions without any problems my good run has come to an end.

I picked up the car a white Toyota Corolla with 79k kms on the clock and 35 crosses where they agreed existing damage.
I joked the only panel without damage was the roof!

Dissapointingly they charged me for Toll transponder, please be aware the A22 is toll free at present.

On returning the car the young girl checked the car off against her sheet and then advised me there was new damage to the rear bumper lower reflector, digging out my original paperwork I showed her the area was clearly marked with an X which in my eyes showed areas of pre existing damage!
No amount of discussion would presuade her it was existing damage, the manager refused to get off her ample backside and kept calling the damage a broken headlight.
With a flight to catch my time is more important than the 104 euro charge, moving forward.

Lesson learnt

We hired a group DD car (Picasso/C-Max, which was meant to be the key n go service (which is just as well it wasn't given what they did), and gave us the key to a group B car (Skoda Fabia). We tried to complain and explain that this was not correct , and we wouldn't have even been able to get our luggage in, but the rude member of staff shrugged and alluded to not speaking very good English. We unfortunately had to get a little louder to make ourselves heard until a other member of staff stepped in, and because I had an actual print out of the car reservation, she saw the group car we had PAID for. Only for the fact we were eventually heard did I give a 2 star rating instead of 1. The difference in price is over £13 per day between the 2 groups.

The car was dirty, it smelled inside and immediately had a check oil warning light on. The airport at this point was jammed, and we just wanted to get out of there.

Not the best impression for the start of an eagerly anticipated holiday, and had this been our first time to Majorca, we'd seriously consider whether we would go back.

I would recommend giving Gold Car a wide berth and go with Hertz instead.

Now, three months after my car rental, I still haven't received my deposit back. It is becoming a legal issue as Goldcar stonewalls requests. Fingers crossed it will work out, but this headache and 1000+ euros in jeopardy is just not worth it to rent here again.

If I could give zero stars I would. Avoid this car rental company. We were told we could only add an additional driver if we also purchased extra full cover insurance - costing hundreds of euros. We’ve never encountered that rule anywhere else. Seems like a scam to take more money when you’re stuck. We ended up walking away from our prepaid booking and using a different company altogether, as that was cheaper than what they were trying to make us pay! Definitely preying on tired travellers with made up rules and costs that don’t make sense or exist with any other company. The bad reviews are true. Avoid avoid avoid!

I had to pay up front for a full tank of fuel and toll charges. Okay, I can understand that but 4 weeks after returning the car full of fuel and without using a toll road I am yet to receive a refund. When I returned the car I was told everything was okay by the young man who served me and was told I would receive the refund within 5 days. I emailed customer service with no reply.

2nd time using Goldcar in Portugal. Travelling in the Algarve over 20 years. Last year we left the car back and there was minor damage under the car (specifically the tyre) I thought strange, as we did not review under the car and tyres when collecting. It wasn't a massive cost so I let it go, although was sceptical that we made the damage. I can see from other reviews here, that this seems to be common practise - advise damage to an obscure part of the car that you would not think of checking, then charge extortionate rates.

I was quoted a decent price this year and thought I will give them another try. We collected the car at night, the person reviewing the car spent no more than 8 minutes on the car but we were confident we had highlighted the damage. The car was nice but it was badly damaged. I will admit I didn't review the sheet he gave us with a fine tooth comb (something I regret now!)

My husband took ill when there, so we barely drove the car. On leaving the car back, we were advised that a fog light had been smashed and there was damage to the rear bumper. We did not see this damage when we had it, we felt very strange, it would have taken quite a bit of force to cause this damage and we know we did not have any accident etc. Car was parked in a safe garage. They charged me £126.00 but I did not receive an invoice, I had to email them.

This is when I got quite angry, on the invoice it stated the damage and charge to the fog light but also added damage that was not noted on THEIR return sheet! They had also charged us for damage to a luggage rack - which we did not have, over €300 might I add and another €200 for damage to part of the car where it was not stated we had damaged on return. I highlighted this and strangely I am yet to hear from them. Total scam, will not use them again, I hired via carrental.co.uk I will also be informing them of this dreadful service and all I can describe as fraud! Do not use, the are ripping innocent people off. I have insurance as I took 'worry free' but this might not be the case for others. I think it is shameful, we know we did not cause the damage and the fact they have sent me an invoice for damage that wasn't even noted on their sheet on return says it all really...

Watch out for these scammer!
When you prove them you are in the right, they end your call everytime again.
Also, whenever you want all the legal information, you need to call every day for 2 weeks straight to finally have someone who follows the law.

Scam company, be warned, don’t rent here.

If you’re thinking of renting from this company take a note of the reviews. I’ve been going to the Algarve for over 23 years and in my opinion these are by far the worst car hire company at Faro. Upon renting the car we identified 20 plus scratches dents etc. Gold Car initially said there were 13. I didn’t take there extortionate insurance but luckily for me I had arranged cover in advance in the uk.
There was no-one around to check my car in upon my return so I was encouraged to leave the keys in a drop box. Then a month later I’ve now been informed there was a scratch on a wheel, that wasn’t there when I collected it which will cost me £200.

Clearly despite taking loads of pictures on collection I cannot prove or disprove when this damage occurred and agree with others that this company is just looking to entice customers with low prices and then use sharp practice to charge you more after your return.

Luckily I have insurance but I will never use them again and must warn others to avoid them. There are lots of other companies at Faro and one would use them.

Our experience was with Goldcar in Porto. We had to pay extra charges once arrived there. We got a car that was not fully tanked. I told a guy about it (it was easy to see on the car dashboard). He replied that the car had a problem and was not marking the fuel level properly and that we should only tale a picture of it and we should be fine. Of course, it was a lie, because we brought the car back FULLY tanked. We preferred to do it this way, so they wouldn’t charge us more. But they found something else…17 days after having returned the car, they sent me an email that they found a damage on the car and they would charge me 300EUR. They had already freed the 2.000EUR they had blocked on my card, but still had access to it… They sent me a picture where there was absolutely no damaged to be seen. I complained because after 17 days, many people could have driven the car. I blocked my credit card because I didn’t feel confident about the story. Two days ago (the story started mid-August) they tried to take the 300EUR, but it has failed as my card is still blocked. How on Earth do they still have access to my credit card when they pretend they’ve unblocked everything? It’s a shame to behave like this.

The car got a flat tyre a few days into the9 day hire and when I went to change it I discovered there was no spare tyre. 

I eventually managed to phone the Gold Car desk who had to arrange and cab for myself and my wife back to the airport car hire desk, and a pick up truck to collet the car. 

This is crazy, all this time and effort because the do not have spare tyres, but that wasn't all, then came the extra charges!!! 

I was then told that I would have to pay for 2 (yes two) new tyres as the desk clerk said it is illegal to not change both tyres in Portugal, which I have since found out to be untrue! This cost me 128 euro.

Then after I returned the car and flew home I found I was charged a further 160 euros, for which I have had no email or receipt to say what that covers. I'm assuming it is the taxi and pick up truck, but no receipt or email. 

All because they didn't have a spare tyre. 

Classic scam: Goldcar offers you a cheap rental, but if you refuse their insurance, they’ll find ‘damage’ you can barely see—like a tiny mark under the sill you’d never spot. The guy checking it over is oddly thorough (so I thought ‘here we go’. He was running his hands everywhere, and then suddenly there it is: €250 ‘damage’ charge for something invisible. Sharp prices, sharp practices—watch out.