After I present my thesis I will be off to Spain with my parents and Oziel, so I tried to book a car for a week in Alicante. After pricing the various options at Avis, Europcar and Hertz, Hertz came out on top for best value for money with a VW Polo for €165.

When I went to book the car it would only let me enter an address in Spain. After no luck changing this I went back to the front page and found in the corner you could set your country of residency.

When changing my residency to Sweden [but keeping everything else the same], the price jumped to €330. There was no way I was going to pay double just for living in Sweden …

So I changed my country of residency to Australia. While this was a little better at €250, I now knew there was a better deal and was feeling less than satisfied.

Oziel called Hertz Alicante to find out what was going on, and how we could get the “real” price. They had no idea that the prices changed, but insisted we use the website.

Hertz effectively said adios to our business at this point, and now we have a Ford Festiva from Centauro for €140.

I am sure Hertz must be braking some EU trade law. But ultimately it was easier to go elsewhere than take them up on it.