Some of the biggest car rental companies in Europe regulate their prices depending on where their customers come from. More often than not, being Danish means you pay dearly for renting a car.
Danes often have to pay 20 to 30 percent extra and sometimes even more, according to random checks undertaken by Jyllands-Posten newspaper.
“The car rental companies are clearly acting illegally and I intend to follow through on this case in order to ensure that Danish consumers are not being cheated,” Henrik Øe, the consumer ombudsman, told Jyllands-Posten.
READ MORE: Danes shell out the most in the EU
EU not having it
There is a massive disparity in rental prices dependent on the nationality of the consumer. Six rental companies – Europcar, Hertz, Avis, Sixt, Entreprise and Goldcar – have all been accused of discriminating accordingly.
The practice goes against EU legislation, and the EU Commission has demanded that the illegal discrimination is stopped by August 30.
"The single market should be a daily reality, not only for major international companies, but also for consumers in Europe," Michel Barnier, the deputy president of the European Commission and the head of Internal Market and Services, said in a EU Commission press release (here in English) regarding the issue.
Poul Tvede, the head of Europecar in Denmark, admitted that the prices can fluctuate depending on where a person comes from, but argued that they do it in order to adhere to the competition situation in the individual nations.
