I returned our hire car to Europcar at Bastia airport last month. I had rinsed down the exterior and swept out the boot. The footwells did have sand in them, but nothing more than you would expect following a week-long family holiday in the sun. To cut a long story short, I was charged €80 for interior cleaning, which is an exceptionally unreasonable amount of money for a job that would not have taken long to do.

The sign in the office did say that an additional charge would be made if “special cleaning” over and above vacuuming was required - although nobody could tell me what that actually meant, or what I was paying for. I offered to sweep the car but was told I couldn’t, although they did say that I could take it to a garage up the road and vacuum it. Time, unfortunately, didn’t allow for that. A case of hirer beware... Mark Lund, Shepperton

Europcar replies:“According to our records, it did take longer than normal to clean the car because of the sand. As a gesture of goodwill, however, our Bastia office has offered a full refund of the €80 cleaning charge.”

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