Hertz Barcelona airport where we dropped off was, unfortunately, the worst rental drop-off experience we've ever had. We had a tire puncture and it destroyed a day of our rental trying to get someone in English to respond and fix it. We were told to bring it to the airport to exchange it because the technician said the tire couldn't be guaranteed not to leak and would be unsafe. We drove it right back and the attendant told us we needed to go into the airport to talk about an exchange. In the meantime, they charged 200 euros for the tire plus ADMIN CHARGE plus LOSS OF USE fee (not a fair price, but understandable as we had declined insurance) and then CHARGED 200 EUROS MORE for a "cleaning fee" because we had a couple of empty bottles and some crumbs in the car which NO ONE TOLD ME TO CLEAN (especially as, at the time, we thought we might be returning to that same car. It was very upsetting and no one at the desk cared. We had to pitch a fit to talk to the manager, who let us return to the car to clean it (a 2 minute operation of throwing empty bottle into the trash and shaking out the floor mats. I told the attendant in no uncertain terms that the courteous thing would have been to say "unless you take these bottles, etc. out, I will have to charge you." SO dishonest--I felt like they simply thought they could take advantage of an American whose Spanish isn't great. It ruined a lot of the day sitting in the airport office waiting for them to properly handle. In the end, I told them simply to refund me rather than getting me a new car because I preferred metro to seeing how they would take advantage of me the next time I returned a replacement car. I'm still waiting for the refund on the used portion of the rental. The Barcelona Hertz office gives the company (which I have otherwise found to be the TOP-rated rental in the US for service) a bad name!
