Car rental query

eskin

Wondering if anybody else came across this situation on rented cars.
Just back from Rome - had a car rented from hertz
The LCD display language on the dash was in russian (well I think it was russian) and I couldn't change it to any other language- even looked up the car manual online but couldn't find the options to change it.
It seemed to have satnav built in so was thinking that as I didn't purchase satnav this may be the way they prevent you from using it.
If this is true then it's dangerous as one can't understand warnings that display. I had some sort of a warning displayed for a whole days driving and couldn't do anything about it only hope the car didn't give up.
I tried calling hertz but they didn't seem to understand what I was talking about .
I did not have oportunity to talk to anybody when leaving the car back as it was out of hours.

biko

I have never come across that on a rented car.
Possibly a russian rented the car before you and hertz couldn't reset the language.

Yamanoto

I rented a car from Sixt in Dusseldorf last week that came with sat nav as standard & the in-car display was also in some Cyrillic alphabet. I managed to set it to English through sheer luck, though I always use my own Garmin unit anyway.

Most likely just a case of the previous renters being Russian OP, as you'll often end up with feature-rich vehicles above the class you paid for & staff simply wouldn't care that you'd have use of a built-in GPS one way or the other.

SusanC10

Something similar happened to us in France. We hired a car, did not pay extra for Sat Nav and the language setting seemed to be in Polish. My Husband fiddled with a few buttons and then set it to English. To be honest we just assumed that a Polish person had the car before us.

keithclancy

Happens all the time, I'm sure when you rent a car on the Continent and change the language to English the next person who rents the car is also mildly inconvenienced.

eskin

It's a bit more than mildly inconvenienced when the language is russian or Greek. It's something I will be checking in future before driving off outbox the car rental lot
I believe it's not just a matter of fiddling with buttons on this one.

keithclancy

eskin wrote: »

It's a bit more than mildly inconvenienced when the language is russian or Greek. It's something I will be checking in future before driving off outbox the car rental lot
I believe it's not just a matter of fiddling with buttons on this one.

Also for a Russian or a Greek that gets into a Car with English.

I once got a Rental that was in Japanese .... I think :pac:

K.Flyer

Recently hired a car from Dusseldorf also and of course everything was in German. One day, when I was back in Ireland for a few days, my wife rang me to say that a warning light with an odd symbol was flashing when she stopped and turned off the car and that she couldn't figure out what it was for.
So she took a picture of the dash and sent it to me, I had no idea either, so I went up to the local dealer here with the pic and they told me it was nothing to worry about as it was part of the immobiliser system.
All done in an hour, saved bringing the car back to find out it was nothing.

wandererz

That's a very valid point. Most of us just check for the usual dents/scratches etc.

However, it may be worthwhile to turn the key on and complain about any erroneous settings before driving off.

MarkAnthony

Same here with a rental in France. The Sat nav is now in English