When a rental conks out, the quest for a new car turns a vacation into a tour de France

For a 12-day summer trip to France with my husband and two children, I prepaid the U.S.-based company Europe by Car for a Citroën C4. We picked up the rental in Paris from Citer, the local affiliate that Europe by Car had contracted with. Three days into the trip, however, the car stopped working while we were driving through the French countryside. I called Citer, and a mechanic soon arrived. He towed the car but left us stranded for five hours, and we had to spend $60 on lunch (we had planned to cook for ourselves in our rented house) before we were eventually taken home in a taxi sent by Citer. Although we were given an Avis vehicle the next afternoon, it was for only three days, so we had to keep calling Citer to locate a replacement. On the day we were to lose the Avis car, a Citer agent told me that we would have to drive to Albi, three hours to the south, to return the Avis rental and pick up a new one from Citer. Two hours into the trip to Albi, Citer called my cell phone with "good news": It had found a vehicle in Brive, a town one hour north of where we were staying.

Unfortunately, we were three hours from Brive at this point and would not be able to get there before the office closed. Early the next morning, we loaded the kids into the car and set off for Brive. Since Citer had been unable to give us directions to the Avis office, it took us almost two hours to find the place. When we finally got to the Citer office, it had just closed for lunch. Astonishingly, we were later given the same Citroën that had broken down a few days earlier and had set in motion this epic catastrophe.

It is difficult to describe the physical and emotional toll that resulted from Citer's inability to provide us with a replacement vehicle in a timely and efficient manner. Once home, I wrote to Europe by Car to ask for a refund of $900 to cover all the meals we had to eat out, the entertainment costs to keep the kids occupied, and the phone calls, not to mention the exorbitant refueling fees. Two months later, it still has not acknowledged my letter. Can you help?
Elizabeth Litten
Moorestown, New Jersey

A summer in rural France always sounds like a tempting proposition, but then Ombudsman read Litten's comedy of errors. The family's peaceful countryside retreat turned into a frenzied, zigzagging ordeal of a road trip because of poor communication and sloppy handling by Citer. We approached Europe by Car to get a response.

Within a few weeks, a customer service agent wrote to us, offering the family his apologies and describing how he had been in touch with Citer several times to request that it adjust the charges. Finally, Citer agreed to refund $430—the full prepaid cost of the rental—which Europe by Car passed on to Litten. However, it denied reimbursement for the food and entertainment charges, reasoning that even meals cooked at home would have cost something, that the family might have eaten out anyway at times, and that entertainment expenses are part of a vacation. The agent also explained that since the rental took place during peak season and in a remote area, replacement options were limited. Considering that the Littens had a vehicle for all of the 11 days they had contracted for (including 3 days in an Avis car, for which they were not charged), Europe by Car believed that the refund was fair. Ombudsman is inclined to agree.