Now that we have left the Bosnian…
Now that we have left the Bosnian border I am comfortable sharing this, because this place uses mafia style tactics. Despite their small volume, they beat their Goldcar style colleagues in Spain, Croatia, Italy and Greece by a mile.
Many of the reviews here must be fake or outdated, or perhaps only foreigners experience this. My impression is that the owner genuinely believes he is in the right, because this way of doing business is so ingrained in him that he justifies it to himself.
According to himself, he has been in business in Mostar for 21 years. He rents out dirty cars with broken odometers and check engine lights on, imposes random fees and resorts to pointless aggression. It is the classic scam of a huge excess used to push insurance costs on you afterwards, only worse.
At pick up it took more than an hour just to get confirmation of the car itself, while he kept talking.
We booked the car on a confirmation stating that he does charge 17% VAT on card payments. Tax fraud?
According to himself, and according to the sign behind him, he used to be a “Budget by Avis” agent. He plays on the fact that Citycar is one of the only agencies that will let you take a car into Albania.
After charging us for a small mark on a plastic bumper that was clearly already due for replacement, he threatened to call the police several times and had a few intimidating friends turn up at his shop. In his own words: “I try to push insurance and you say no.”
Maybe it is because I am Danish and not used to people trying to pull a fast one. But he, and many of the other “cash only, we regulate this public parking” operators in the Balkans, need to raise their standards if they want tourists to keep coming. Scamming people is not the way. Do not go here.