28 July 2018

NiRAJ Car rental Romania (Cluj): avoid!

This month we rented a car for 2 weeks at the NiRAJ (NIRAJ PRODCOM SRL) car rental office at Cluj airport in Roumania, all expenses included (except fuel).


When we returned the car the office employee refused to liberate the €300 warranty unless we payed €20 for murdarie excesiva. I took pictures of the car (below) for all areas the employee were, according to the employee excessively dirty, so you can judge how dirty this car really is...

WARNING: NiRAJ is one of those fraudulent car rental companies that as a rule try to extort extra charges when you bring back the car. Do not fall into the same trap as we did! They play on the fact that
  • they have a guarantee blocked
  • you are in a hurry to catch your plane
  • you do not understand Romanian (all contracts and conditins are in Romanian only in an international airport!)
  • you are caught unaware while they are prepared and know all tricks of the trade
Not surprisingly they are not a member of the European Car Rental Conciliation Service: you cannot even present your case to a council organised by the car rental industry.

Some elements of the ensuing discussion:
  • We offered to clean the spots which he taught were not OK, but the employee said we needed to take the car to a car wash.  
  • When I said that a serious rental company accepts that a car is not entirely clean after two weeks of usage, the employee said NiRAJ is not like other car rental companies (sic).
  • The employee said this was not normal dirt from using the car in the city. When we rented the car, there was no restriction at all we should only use the car in Cluj city. Why would you even rent a car for such usage?
  • After inspection we mutually agreed there were no new damages (there were already quite some damages when we rented the car). If we would not pay for excessive mud, the employee threatened to check again after car cleaning (without us being present), and substract every scratch he could find from our guarantee.
Because we did not want to take extra risks, we payed those cheaters the  €20 extra fee.  I hope this  warning will save you all from getting your money stolen by those guys.

Here are the pictures of the car. You can try to find the excessive mud we had to pay for (click to enlarge):