seeing as you asked:
We hired a car from Europcar, dropped it off at Ebbsfleet eurostar station on a sunday, so just put the keys in a dropbox
a week later they sent us a bill for £1200, then charged £1450 (ie cashed the £250 deposit as well as charging the 1200). Their reasons were a damaged seat adjuster (never touched it - anyway they have abandoned this) and a full valet.
The valet is
1 ridiculous , the car was left in a very aceptable state
2 they claimed fag ash - not us matey, and mud and grass. True there was a bit of grass on the floor, We nearly picked it up ourselves it would have taken a couple of minutes at worst.
3 They've sent us now two sets of photos, taken at two different places, neither of them being the drop off car park. When I ran a company we had a Damage procedure with a witness called immediately if a customer returned something in a bad state. Nowadays any sensible company would take photos the moment they opened the car door.
The photos whenever they were taken show the floor in a much worse state than we left it, ie someone has sprinkled some grass cuttings and whatever, but still nothing that a vacuum wouldn't sort. No mess shown on the seats etc so no reason for a valet. My OH still boils at the pics of used tissues, she made a point of removing them as it wouldnt be nice for other people to have to pick up.
They sent us some hard to decipher copy bills, but there was an amount captioned valet for £60. It's for this that they are charging 85, but still no explanation as to the difference.
They've also double charged, cancelled bills and then charged them anyway and whatever. Hopeless. Dishonest and incompetent.
Like I said resolver.co.uk is useful. The card company have resisted a bit but have "put into dispute" all the various amounts charged, so ok so far.
But today Escrocar said they are sticking to the £85, so it's war. I'll look at the Europe procedure that seems v hopeful thanks