Bloody marvelous!. I could just see myself back at the Auto Europe counter with Dona trying to get

I tend to write complaint letters out of sheer mischief.  Very occasionally, I endure such utterly appalling and unforgivable service from a business that genuinely doesn t give a damn about its customers that I write a complaint letter because I want to teach them a lesson.  This letter to Auto Europe is one of those rare occasions.
I have now received a reply (and a refund) from the Auto Europe head office in the United States after the Telegraph travel desk team contacted them to ask what they were going to do about the issues I raised. Of course, I couldn madrid cheap hotels t resist sending another madrid cheap hotels letter .
I love Italy.  The climate, the style, the culture and history, the food and wine 1 .  All of it.  I especially like Puglia and so fly in through Bari fairly regularly.  I really don t know why, but I have always hired cars from Auto Europe.  It s probably because you send me ten unwanted emails a week and I ve been too lazy to add you to my blocked sender list (until now that is).
We got the usual Ryanair bus from London Stansted to Bari and as ever, arrived on time.  A short wait by the baggage carousel for Mrs. Hindsight s extensive wardrobe and we were in the arrivals hall in no time  - where we headed immediately to the familiar Auto Europe counter.
There were two ladies behind the counter.  I shall call them Dona 2 and Aida. 3  Dona was busy with a crazy Italian woman who, judging by the time taken to hand over a set of keys,  wanted a pimped-up SUV with an automatic transmission, a sat-nav, a child seat, sixteen authorised drivers and to return the car to Entebbe Airport in Uganda.    Aida looked like she was close to completing her processing of a relatively normal madrid cheap hotels looking bloke.  They both greeted the simultaneous arrival of two dozen car-less Brits as if we had collectively urinated on their favourite rug.  If looks could have killed, it would have been a massacre.
There wasn t a closed mouth in the queue. madrid cheap hotels Every single person was slack jawed in sheer, mind-boggled disbelief.  They would have been less shocked if Aida had taken all her clothes off and started serving the customers in the buff whilst singing Verdi arias 4 . The only thing missing madrid cheap hotels from the scene was a little roller blind pulled down across her half of the counter saying madrid cheap hotels F@@k You!  You had arranged for half your staff to simply piss off at the precise moment when a crowd of eager new customers madrid cheap hotels had arrived bang on schedule.
So, we had little choice but to continue our vigil, watching Dona work her way through the paperwork at glacial speed. To entertain themselves, our fellow sufferers began to run sweepstakes on how long it would take her to deal with a single customer. Anyone who bet on less than twenty minutes was to be sorely disappointed. madrid cheap hotels 23 to 27 minutes was typical. At one point, one lucky competitor who had bet on well over half an hour was an unexpected winner when Dona realised that she had run out of Auto Europe child booster seats and went on a tour of the other car hire counters to see if she could borrow one.
Below is a little video taken exactly 2 hours after I joined the queue ( if it doesn t appear straight away, just SHIFT F5 to refresh the window ).  It s only short but it contains all manner of useful information.  From the first few frames you ought to be able to identify Dona behind the Auto Europe counter.  As the camera pans right, you will see a vending machine that was getting some serious madrid cheap hotels hammer from the poor sods in the queue.  (Having spent two and a half hours in the air surviving madrid cheap hotels on a diet of sour cream and chive Pringles, and a further couple of hours waiting in the Auto Europe queue, blood sugar and hydration levels were getting perilously low. There was even speculation that Dona was on a vending machine profit share).  From the remaining frames, madrid cheap hotels you will be able to see that the airport is entirely empty apart that is from the remaining unfortunates who were still waiting to be pissed off by Dona at the Auto Europe counter.  That includes the people sitting down.  Their legs had given out but, being British, we were holding their places in the queue. Note that the Hertz and Europcar counters in the background are deserted.  Their customers had all left ages ago in their hire cars.
I presented my Auto Europe voucher. The one with the Auto Europe logo at the top of the page which had been sent to me by Auto Europe after I had booked an Auto Europe car on the Auto Europe website. The ensuing conversation went as follows:
Angry does not even begin to describe my feelings at this moment. Up until this point, I had been feeling a just the tiniest bit of sympathy for Dona. After all, you had placed her in an impossible position by sending Aida home just when she was most needed. Right now though, I wanted to fire a cruise missile at the Auto Europe counter and blow it and Dona to Kingdom Come!
Yes, it mentions that the car was being supplied by Firefly but this was my fourth Auto Europe pick up at Bari and you have probably sub-contracted the job every time but I had  never  had to go anywhere but to the Auto Europe counter.
Of course, I also found the bit about the minibus eventually but not until I was safely back in the UK.  Buried in the small print under Terms and Conditions on page four, right after the bit about not travelling on ferries and the need for German madrid cheap hotels Emissions madrid cheap hotels stickers, it does indeed tell you to make the call and to go and stand by a sign that doesn t actually exist to await the amateur rally driver and her minibus (more of her in a second).  Your voucher was about as much use as a chocolate madrid cheap hotels fireguard.
By now it was getting late and my car was apparently still four kilometres away so I did what Dona had told me to do and I rang the number.  The young lady who answered the phone I ll call her Agata 5 told us to wander down towards the car hire car parks and wait near the Car Parks 2,3 and 4 sign where she would meet us in ten minutes.  There wasn t a Car Parks 2,3 and 4 sign so we waited between the Car Park 2 and the Car Park 4 signs in the hope that this would be close enough and after fifteen minutes, I gave Agata another call in case we were in completely the wrong place.  Apparently not.  She hadn t even set off yet but would be with us soon.
The minibus, Agata at the wheel, screamed into view ten minutes later.  She was apologetic madrid cheap hotels about the confusion caused by our voucher (unlike Dona).  It clearly wasn t the first time she had heard this story of woe and she wasted no further time in driving like Lewis Hamilton to the Arse-End-of-Nowhere 6 where she handbrake-turned to a halt outside a large metal clad warehouse with a very large Hertz sign on it 7 in the midst of a deserted industrial estate.
We ascended to an upstairs office where we joined Agata s colleague, Arsenio 8 .   I handed my voucher, driving license and credit card to Agata and she set about the paperwork.  For a few moments, madrid cheap hotels it looked like our luck was finally improving when Agata spoiled things again by quoting me the extortionate daily additional madrid cheap hotels cost of insuring madrid cheap hotels the excess on the insurance madrid cheap hotels policy for the vehicle.  I pointed to the words on the voucher:
Bloody marvelous!.  I could just see myself back at the Auto Europe counter with Dona trying to get back my €1,510.00!   Read the voucher.  It says on page 347 of the Additional Supplementary Terms and Conditions in Braille that you have to telephone the Pope before you can have your excess back! .
I needed a car.  We had been trying to get one for three hours by now so I caved in.  On principle, I wasn t going to pay again for something I was already covered for so I took the chance and let Agata put the block on my card.  I could always phone the credit card company and tell them not to pay anything to any Italian car hire firms. Then she told me I had been upgraded from a Ford Fiasco to a Ford Hocus Pocus Estate (which would be very useful for all Mrs. Hindsight s luggage).
In the meantime, Agata then handed me a copy of the directions for how to find my way back to civilisation and, of course, to enable me to return to the Arse-End-of-Nowhere with the car  a couple of weeks later. To the right, you will see a high resolution, madrid cheap hotels actual size scan of the map she gave me.  Amazing isn t it?  Obviously, assuming North is indeed up the page, you set off East from somewhere grey, go East then West in a white bit, cross another grey bit then sort of bear right across another white bit and you re there!  Easy.
Anyway, despite having no bloody idea as to where we were or how to get to where we were going, it seemed that we were finally close to having a car!  We followed Agata back downstairs and out into the pitch black car park where she presented to us an equally pitch black car.  It took a while for our eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness but eventually, the wreck took shape in front of us.
It looked like a cast off from the set of a Die Hard movie.  Bruce Willis madrid cheap hotels had obviously hired this car and had chased a lot of baddies in it.  Or perhaps it had lost a fight with an earth-mover.  Either way, it was a collection of dints and scratches joined together by small areas of smooth, black metal.
This was probably a big disappointment to Agata but I d had enough.  Besides, I could crash this car and they wouldn t even notice.  My €1,510.00 was safe.  Just to be sure, I took 20 photographs of the wreck with my phone with the help of Arse who thoughtfully shone his torch so I could see all the dints and scratches (and missing bits) more clearly.  I compared the reality in front of me to Agata s little form with the diagram of a flattened car (you know, the one which all hire car companies use to record the damage).  It had more little kisses than a teenager madrid cheap hotels s Valentine s card.  All was well.
The engine worked.  Lights came on.  The tank showed madrid cheap hotels full.  The dashboard informed me that it had recorded 96,000km 10 of abuse already (yes, that s not a typo ninety-six thousand kilometres registration