Europcar and the Mercedes-Benz account (#E26)
At the very beginning of this year, I had to rent a car for a week (*expensive cough*). So after a bit of consideration of pricing, locations, availability and rental models/conditions, I went with Europcar.
Not complaints here, worked out wonderfully. I opted for a “CCAE” vehicle, which in Europcar speak is a Cupra Born, VW ID3, Citroen DS3 or similar – a small-ish electric car that is suitable for medium distances of like 150 to 250km, so no luxury cruiser, but also not a city vehicle. A former colleague had a Born but I never rode with him, and the Europcar station in question had one listed.
When I showed up to pick up the car, I was told that the Born has just returned. And while it was clean, it only had like 25% SoC (which is, or maybe was, one of the perks of renting from Europcar – dropoff with low SoC was included in the rental fee, so no car-like penalty surcharges of like 4€ per liter when the tank isn’t topped up). And since they don’t have a HPC nearby, but instead charge their cars at 22kW AC – which the Born cannot do as it is limited to 11kW – they offered a free upgrade to their only other electric car, a Mercedes EQA 300 (“JDAC” class).
Well, sure. That one was topped up, and while I wasn’t really interested in testing a Mercedes, I went for it. Total price paid for 10 whole days and 322km: 236.01€ including drop-off at 28% SoC, which could have been up to another 50€ and a lot of wasted time if they didn’t have the low-SoC policy. Fantastic pricing, absolute bargain, would do again (not with a Mercedes, though…) – thanks a lot Europcar!
That’s of course not the end of the story. Back when I had the EQA, I, of course, tried everything. After all, that car is 10 years ahead of mine and from a German premium manufacturer, so it should offer quite a few similar features, right? Well yeah nah, but at least it can do software updates OTA, which, rental car!, nobody ever does. And since my Tesla died during a software update, that’s what I needed to do. For that, and lots of other subpar software offerings, one needs a Mercedes-Benz account and an app (out of three apps that all do similar things, get your shit together, MB!).
And that requires app installation and connecting the car via a QR code. Once that’s done (difficult UX…), the car is linked to my personal account.
Aaand that is where things get interesting – because Europcar apparently has no idea that this even exists, and Mercedes probably doesn’t have a rental car mode that can be enabled for their large fleet customers.
So after I brought the car back – I still got notifications. Things like “THE CAR ISN’T LOCKED” (yeah arsehole, if you can tell me that, why don’t you lock yourself?), “THE CAR IS STILL ON” (shut it off, idiot, why do you even have a power button?) or “STATE OF CHARGE IS BELOW 50%, CHARGE MAYBE?” (nah, stfu you moron). While that is entertaining and horrifying in terms of abuse at the same time (locking out people of their car, unlocking the car to strangers, stopping charges, draining the battery on purpose, changing music or honking, GPS tracking, etc.), it also gets old pretty quickly, so I just removed the app. Done.
Two weeks ago, I got a mail. From Mercedes. Telling me that the car with VIN abc-see-below has been removed from my account.
I’m flabbergasted. So you guys are telling me that it took the both of you 148 DAYS to revoke my full access to a rental car?
ARE
YOU
MENTAL?
