Peugeot Europe Car Leasing

Excellent service and experience! – We leased a car from 'UK and Europe Travel' in May 2019, based in Melbourne, I believe. The deal with leasing is that you need to use the car for at least three consecutive weeks, and can have a pick of Peugeot, Citreon, or Renault (It's a French car promo deal). We got a brand new Pergeot 2008 for our trip from Geneva to Zurich to Lake Como… Read more

across to Trieste in Italy and down through Croatia, coming back via the overnight ferry to Ancona (Italy) and back to Geneva. The trip took 5 weeks. When planning it, we went back and forth with Tracey from UK and Europe Travel over a number of issues, including which make and model of car to take, costs, availability, etc. All the cars come with full insurance and roadside assistance. Luckily we needed neither of those, so can't comment on how effective they were. The only thing I'd say negative about the Peugeot 2008 is that it didn't have hand rails above the passenger seat. This was a big negative going around the winding roads of Italy and Croatia... and something that Peugeot should fix in the next model. Apart from that, the 2008 was a perfect size for our two big cases, and about four smaller cases for two people. It was good to drive and easy to park. My only other negative was that the phone number and address for the car return wasn't clear, and had it not been for the helpful people in general car hire on the French side of the Geneva airport, we may have mised our return flight to Melbourne!

PEUGEOT EUROPE, EUROLEASE. Dreadful service with the "sting" of arrogance – In 2017 my wife and I signed with Peugeot EuroLease to lease a Peugeot vehicle for approx 4 weeks to tour Europe, the arrangement worked well to the point we were "raving fans" of the service and the product. This was our first experience with this organisation. All went well with the collection of the vehicle in Rome but unfortunately the 2nd… Read more

last day of our trip we had a minor mishap which required spares which were not available at a dealer and, due to flight arrangement "Peugeot Assist" got involved and arranged for a hire car to get us from Basel to Frankfurt - superb service.

Wanting to spend time particularly in Eastern Europe and revisit some of our previous destinations, we signed up for another Peugeot vehicle in 2018, using the same procedure. What a mistake that was - it has left a very bad taste in our mouths.

This time the collection point was in Frankfurt. Here our troublers started.

The pick up time as arranged some weeks prior, was a Sunday at 9-15am; when we arrived nobody was present at the depot. The collection location was almost impossible to find (even with the aid of a local cab drivers GPS - no signage apparent at all from the street.

Our cab driver realising our plight kindly found a hotel approx 10 minutes drive from the collection point, we checked in and were anticipating we'd lose a day from our schedule - this would have involved a considerable loss of deposits for accommodation which had been made - yes we had travel insurance too.

With the assistance of the hotel receptionist she was able to phone the collection location a couple of hours after we left, to find the place was occupied with a Peugeot Representative. We were picked up from the hotel by the representative but there was no apology from him.

Peugeot in their contract say the car will be NEW, (See attached document) our car had 74 Klms on the odometer (quickly changed by the Peugeot Representative to show 4 KLMs) - clearly the car we were given had been used by some other party for maybe a few days as "a run around vehicle" This is an outright Breach of the Contract which we signed with Peugeot EuroLease.

The car was dirty with pebbles on the floor on both sides in the front, the local representative basically gave us the keys after we signed some documents and said.... "There's your car" i.e. get out of my hair.

There was no English language manual with the car as we found after quite some Klms, so we learnt the intricacies by trial and error of the car, not as stated in the Peugeot contract.................."You will be given about 10-15 minutes training with the car". Since returning to N.Z we have been told by Peugeot N.Z an English manual can be downloaded to a smartphone.

Once on the road we found we could not lock the car - we called Peugeot Assist to try and work out why this should be the case. At this stage we were in Austria, with no international dialing code to call France. Finally, we found that if my wife took the spare key and walked 15-20 meters away from the car, it would lock!

The Representative at Peugeot EuroLease in France could not be more off-handed if she tried with a comment ..."That sometimes happens"... No solution whatsoever was offered.

The external rear view mirrors failed about half way through our travels - Peugeot Assist people said ....."You are mobile find a dealer in the GPS and have them fixed"........... We bought a roll of tape and taped them in position!

Our car was fitted with Goodyear tyres whilst a well known brand generally, that's not the case in Eastern Europe; we pinched a tyre on a kerb, making a small split the sidewall, this necessitated purchasing 2 new tyres - to their credit Peugeot have made restitution for this cost.............albeit very slowly.

We travelled just on 5600 Kmls in the 34 days we had the car and arranged the drop off in Milan.

To achieve a drop off on a specific day and time - Peugeot requirement (we made a 2 hour tolerance) - loading the address given of the drop off location into the GPS and followed the instructions from Switzerland.

We arrived at the given address to find the location, whilst having a Citroen (part of the Peugeot family of vehicles) sign above the door, the building was occupied by a fabric warehousing business.

An English speaking employee told us Citroen had moved out some weeks before! We showed him the address and he explained the other location on our Peugeot sheet (supplied by Peugeot) was approx 50 klms away and in Friday afternoon traffic it would be about a 2 hour drive.

Not being familiar with suburban Milan unbeknown to us there were 2 addresses on the Peugeot documentation.

Once finally arriving at the drop off point (in reality we found it by asking a local) there was no signage and were greeted by one of the most arrogant, rude individuals we have ever met.

He snatched the keys from us, and told to go upstairs to the office (again no signage or branding, for all we knew the location could have been a vehicle rebirthing location for criminals!) A sheet of paper was thrust under my nose and I was told to sign it.......no explanation being given.

There was in bold type in Italian with very small type in English............I asked what the Italian writing said and was told ....."Just sign it!".......... An argument ensued and somewhere during the argument it was revealed the document I was told to sign was a receipt for the vehicle.

Peugeot stack all the cards their way in their multi-page contract with two standards i.e. one which they expect; in turn do not grant the customer with the same standard.

In reality they could not care less about the customer. This arrangement is basically good, but has been spoilt by arrogant, inefficient and a don't care attitude by both those "at the shop front" and "on the end of the telephone line!" We understand Peugeot have management problems with a factory closure which may account for some of our issues.

Would we use Peugeot EuroLease again? Not for several years after they have straightened out their problems and inefficiencies.