A few of you have asked about the rental car scam we referenced in our video. Here is the full breakdown of what happened: A few weeks before arriving, we booked a rental car through a company called Drivalia in Belfast, Northern Ireland for 30ish days. We got a great rate ($600 for an entire month) through a 3rd party company called Car Rental 8, which essentially a middle-man between us & Drivalia. Pretty common, especially in the rental car space. Upon arriving at the Belfast Drivalia location, we met the person behind the desk. His name was Alex (short for Alexei). He was extremely friendly off the bat, but we noticed there was another couple there leaving who’d just had a really bad experience with him. We didn’t think much about it though. Our rental car was a Fiat 500, but when Hannah’s parents said they were going to come visit us in Dublin we knew we’d need a larger vehicle. We asked Alex if there’d be any options for an upgrade. He said of course, & that he’d put us in a much larger Vauxhall Grandland for free. We were absolutely ecstatic about this! After a few minutes, he says “We just need a credit card on file for the deposit”, which is something you do every single time you rent a vehicle. It’s usually somewhere in the ballpark of $1,500, & it’s just a hold for funds in case the car comes back damaged. Simple enough. I placed my card on the reader & looked down at the number. As my card beeped, I saw a transaction of £950 which was odd, as it’s usually much higher. I asked him what that number was for, to which he said that was for the supplemental insurance for the car. By law in the UK/Ireland, you can’t rent a vehicle without CDW insurance. We have CDW insurance included with the credit card we used to pay for the rental, & this is accepted throughout the UK because we’ve done it multiple times without issue (including the road trip through the UK that we’ve just finished). I immediately told him that we didn’t need the supplemental rental car insurance because we already had it covered with our credit card, to which he said it didn’t count. I began pulling up the exact details, when he became extremely hostile. He began to insult us for pushing back on this, & started threatening to cancel our reservation (keep in mind that it was booked through a 3rd party & the headquarters of Drivalia were closed as it was a weekend). He was working by himself also, so we couldn’t speak to anyone or get the name of his manager from him. We asked him to refund us our money, to which he said he wouldn’t do & that we needed to accept it or he’d cancel. He just kept threatening us. At this point, the other couple we’d seen have a bad experience with him came over & asked if he’d just scammed us with the same line. This is something that he’s done to other people, most likely many times. After all of this, he walked us outside to our car, which ended up still being the Fiat 500. At this point Hannah kind of fell apart. We asked why we weren’t getting the Vauxhall Grandland anymore, to which he just kept responding “because you were cheap & didn’t book before”. From here, I decided the best thing for us in the moment was to get us away from this person. Hannah was pretty beside herself, I was trying to keep what little calm I had left in me, & he was clearly trying to rile me up. Even the guys painting the building inside came over & apologized for what was happening. It was honestly just an insane experience. I took a detailed video on my phone of every little scratch on the car before leaving the lot. We drove about an hour south of Belfast just past the border when the oil light on the car came on. I immediately pulled into a gas station, where an incredibly kind young guy came up to us to ask if he could help us (the car hood was popped & I checking the oil myself). The oil stick on the car was bone dry. He called his dad to come down to help us, which truly felt like a godsend. He confirmed that it was completely out of oil, & we got three bottles of motor oil to fill it back up. This was another £65 for the oil for the car. At this point I realized we needed to just return the car the following morning. This is where the story does improve. We woke up & drove straight to the Drivalia office in Belfast. Just before arriving, I called the Belfast police to come mediate if possible. Basically just another set of eyes who could make sure things wouldn’t escalate in any fashion (we’d read online that he also would find fingernail-sized scratches on the car & charge people £50 for each one). He’d already scammed us out of £950, so I didn’t want to lose any other funds unnecessarily. When we arrived, he wasn’t there but his manager (Nick) was. The manager had just started two weeks prior & was truly fantastic. He was hired for the exact purpose of cleaning up the reputation of the branch & while he wouldn’t specifically say that it was because of Alex’s actions, it was pretty clear. From the moment we got there, he made us feel so much more at ease. He said that he’d do anything in order for us not to cancel our reservation/trip & that we could have literally any car in the lot that we wanted. All we wanted was the Vauxhall Grandland, which he immediately said yes to. 

He was not able to reimburse us the money. We’ve tried getting the money back from Drivalia on numerous occasions but nothing has come of it. 

We took the new SUV provided by Nick & spent the next four days with Hannah’s parents. During this time we were honestly just trying to recover mentally. After the four days with her parents, we spent another four days in Ireland & just couldn’t get past it. Since all of our Airbnbs we’d booked through the month were fully refundable still, we decided it was in our best interest to just return the vehicle & book a new flight that would take us to a place we were comfortable in (Ryanair allowed us to change our flight date & destination free of charge, so we changed the location from Gdansk, Poland, to Bergamo, Italy where we then caught a Flixbus to Croatia). After losing that amount of money, we didn’t have funds left in the budget for gas or food in Ireland & we knew that what funds we had left would go much further in Croatia. We went to Croatia & Slovenia for a month to lick our wounds, before jumping into the Christmas markets that we ended up visiting. To be clear, the manager of this Drivalia branch is truly fantastic. We can’t say enough good things about him. And from what we’ve seen, it’s clear that Drivalia knew they had a problem on their hands & hired him to fix it. I also know that to some, £950 might not seem like a gigantic number, but for us it was absolutely massive & completely flipped us on our heads for quite awhile. Also, PLEASE don’t let this discourage you from visiting Ireland or renting a car in Ireland for a road trip of your own. Every Irish person that we interacted with was kinder to us than we could’ve ever imagined they would be. This was just one extremely bad actor that clearly hasn’t adopted the Irish hospitality that the people there are so well-known for. Hopefully this clears things up a bit for you guys.

New here and absolutely love what you both do. KZfaq is a grind and you guys are absolutely on 🔥. I wish you both the absolute best. Your kindness comes through in your videos so vividly. Thank you.

great story keep travelling keep sharing great channel cheers Joel from Australia Sydney

Hey there, very sorry to hear about what happened to you. We are planning a similar trip and more details about the scam would be very helpful so that we would know how to avoid what happened to you and protect ourselves. Hope you can share. Thanks very much and best wishes on your future travels.

So glad you are back! Can't wait for the new videos!

YAY! We’re so glad to have you back! ❤️ Bring on the adventures! ✈️🥰

Looking forward to the next videos and can't wait to see, what was on your bucket list😊

Glad you guys are back and came back with stronger! Thank you for sharing! By sharing, you are helping thousands of people to be prepared when renting cars and traveling abroad! Just got back from NZ. Loved it. Loved Dunedin! The wine country was amazing as well! Cheers to you both!

We are SO EXCITED you guys are back!!!! We're so sorry to hear about the rough experience in Ireland. I can't imagine how hard that was to recover from. Glad you got what you needed to keep on going! :)

New subscriber and been going through all your videos! Love you guys, so sorry you had such a bad experience. Excited to see you back and can't wait for all your new content. Love from NZ

Ha, I'm one of those new subscribers, had no idea you hadn't been posting. We're going to Thailand in May with our 9 year old daughter and was doing research from your channel. She wants to go just so she can say she's been to the Poo Poo Paper Factory in Chiang Mai. Love your channel, sorry you went through a tough spot. But we all need some breaks once in a while. Enjoy your family this summer!

So incredibly sorry that happened, this world just has some awful people in it sometimes. But good on you for keeping going! I’m looking forward to the new videos, you guys always put a smile on my face!😊

So sorry that happened to you guys!! But glad you guys are back and we are very excited for your upcoming videos!

So glad to see you guys back ❤ so sad to hear what happened to you in Northern Ireland 😢 we know that horrible sinking feeling all to well but happy the south was able to make you feel a little better 🇮🇪 ☘️ can’t wait to see those luscious locks 😍😂

So happy you guys are back, weve missed seeing you... Looking forward to your next adventures ❤😊

I missed y'all so much, been watching other videos out of boredom and missing yours, needless to say that in my opinion no others can come even close! I was in Belgium again and can't wait to fly tomorrow back to beautiful Austria where I live. It was like missing part of my family not seeing y'all anymore, Take care and PLEASE give us some more of your excellent videos. I believe I am speaking for all your fans, we all missed you!🥰

Enjoy your videos. I will be glad to see new content, but I also understand what you are going through because sometimes you just need to change things up, especially after that kind of horrible experience you had in Ireland. Rental car companies can be the worst (and I worked for one for 4 years).

So glad to see y’all back! We are your Chattanooga Tennessee friends. My husband and I speak of y’all like we’re old friends! We say, that’s too high, would Trey attempt this height! We will look forward to all the new videos! So very sorry for what happened but if there’s lemonade to be made out of lemons, you’re the couple!! We send you happiness and best wishes!!

So happy to see ya'll back on KZfaq but mostly happy that you're home and safe. You should seriously consider opening a travel agency. 🙂

Welcome back! I hope that at some point you will share what happened in Ireland. It might help prevent that from happening to someone else.

Great to have you and your videos back.

So sorry about this terrible experience but so happy you’re back!!! ❤

Guys sorry this happened to you! Couldn’t you have called the credit card company and put a stop payment or initiate a dispute? Glad you’re back!!!!

YOUR BACK!!! YAY. Can't wait for the next video.

Hello guys. I'm one of those new subscribers who came along when you guys were on your break. Glad to see you're back and ready to share with us again. 😁

Awwww. We’re so sorry you two amazing, sweet, funny cuties got taken by this horrible person!!! 😢 SO glad you kept traveling and were able to get past this. We love watching your videos, keep smiling, keep loving life and experiencing everything your hearts desire. And BONUS you were at the Chelsea Man U game!!!!! Jealous! Lol (Hannah- best IG posts!) Remember those epic experiences and keep on keepin’ on!! Love you guys!! Oh and have a beer or a KEG on us after THAT mess!!! 🤗🤗

Will you ever share your ireland ? I am now concerned about renting a car there.

this is exactly why you should always hitch hike and never rent a car :P miss u guys!!!!!

Can you share a little more about how you got scammed in Ireland?

Name the company publicly. Much more chance of some sort of help, especially as you are youtube celebrities now 😆

So how did you get scammed so much? I know there is a credit card deposit but didn’t your credit card help you? I hope you didn’t use your debit card. That’s probably what happened .

So glad to see you guys back ❤ so sad to hear what happened to you in Northern Ireland 😢 we know that horrible sinking feeling all to well but happy the south was able to make you feel a little better 🇮🇪 ☘️ can’t wait to see those luscious locks 😍😂