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I went skiing in Italy with my girlfriend and my best friend.
My girlfriend and I organised to pick up a car from Locauto at Pisa airport, pick my best friend up from hit flat on the Italian coast, then drive up to the ski resort.
We got to the resort without any problems - Darth Vadar's voice guiding us from the satnav.
After a few days skiing, we decended from the mountains and noticed a foul smell from the air conditioning - so much so that we pulled into a garage and got a mechanic to have a look. Having described to him where we'd been, he added oil to the engine and sent us on our way. We suspected clutch problems but he said that this was highly unlikely.
As we drove up the slip road onto the coastal motorway (run by SALT - which is referred to in the emails), the car began to quickly lose power - and the engine began to overrev. Even from my non-engineering education I could tell this was a clutch problem.
We pulled onto the hard shoulder and called Locauto's recovery company - they said they'd call us back in ten minutes. They didn't.
Twenty minutes later, a SALT motorway patrol pulled up behind us to find out what was going on. For those that don't know, private companies build and maintain motorways in Italy - they are essentially private roads. We explained that we were waiting for the recovery company - and the patrol man said that he had concerns for our safety on the hard shoulder and that that if no recovery company came he'd arrange an alternative.
A second call to Locauto's recovery company got the same response: we'll call you back. At this point the SALT patrol called an alternative company and told us to use it. We should pay the alternative company and recover the cost from Locauto's recovery company. Given little option, we took the SALT recovery vehicle, which got us back to Pisa and returned us to Pisa airport. Cost: 100 euro / £87.41.
Locauto at Pisa gave us a replacement car, told us to speak to their customer service once we got back to the UK, and sent us on our way.
We finished the holiday, and then the problems started. |