Using a booking engine to find a car rental for my UK holiday this year, I made a 20% non-refundable payment to a company called Argus Car Hire (Argus). Argus is an agent which has a number of suppliers, one of which is Green Motion (GM).

Argus emailed a voucher which I provided to GM on arrival at Manchester Airport to hire the car. The voucher outlines the rental conditions and balance of the cost of hire.

GM said its practice was to take a £750.00 "Security Deposit" from the credit card in addition to the hire cost. I was not aware of this at the time of making my booking with Argus. I felt I was unable to refuse to make this payment (I would not have been given the car or if I did refuse would then have lost my initial 20%). I reluctantly paid the hire cost plus £750.00.

I returned the car on 13 August 2010, out of hours (pre-arranged/agreed). I had to leave the car key with anaother customer waiting for GM to open as it did not have a key drop off box.

On 14 August 2010 I emailed GM explaining my efforts to hand over the keys referencing the customer's name and number who I left the key with.

Later on that day I received a telephone call from GM who said I would receive my deposit back less certain deductions namely; fuel (it claimed on the telephone that the fuel tank was empty) and a "valet charge".

The deduction was £112.65.

I argued that the fuel tank was not short (GM later changed its "empty" claim to "19 litres short") as I had topped up the fuel tank twice at the airport and provided receipts to prove this. My obligation was to return the car with a quarter full tank. I checked the manufacturer's specification and a quarter tank would have been no more than 14 litres!

With the valet charge, GM said the car was returned in an "unacceptable condition". It made no attempt to support this allegation, failed to provide a check-in report to me, faield to provide photgraphic evidence (as it said it would in our phone call) and failed to attempt to split the cost between what it considered to be a normal valet charge and the extra over cost due to the "unacceptable condition".

It took four months to get the entire deposit back with the help of my credit card company.

In December 2010 I contacted Argus about this situation and its response was as follows:

"Unfortunately, as per our terms and conditions, all customer queries and claims must be recieved within 30 days of the rental return date and as such we are unable to process your issue."

I would not recommend either company. Argus due to not knowing which supplier you might get upon making your booking and GM due to the account given above.