AGCM

The Italian Competition Authority sanctioned Oscar Rent company (today named XPROJECT CARS ASSOCIATED LORIGA & LEILA S.r.l.) with a 300,000 euro penalty for two unfair commercial practices, one of it misleading and the other one aggressive.
In particular, the company supplied misleading information as regards the availability of the vehicles offered for rental and their time of delivery. The gathered evidences demonstrated that the company proposed and concluded the long-term rental of many vehicles, during the years 2016 to2017, collecting many orders through an extended network of agents operating on the National territory, but without delivering the ordered vehicles in the scheduled time.
Moreover, as a result of the resolution of the rental contracts due to lack of delivery of the vehicles in the scheduled time, the company did not proceed to reimburse the prepayments provided by the consumers for the confirmation of the respective orders, or as deposits.
The evidence demonstrates that the company delivered very few vehicles compared to the acquired orders and it was totally aware that they could not succeed in delivering the ordered vehicles in the scheduled time, while it continued to promote car rental contracts and to collect the amounts provided by the new customers to confirm the reservations.
The investigation also revealed that Oscar Rent has given back only a small part of the amounts provided by the consumers, and since June 2017, has interrupted any form of communication with its clients, unduly hindering the exercise of the consumers contractual rights.
It is also reminded that the Italian Competition Authority immediately after launching the procedure, had adopted a precautionary measure, in order to stop these unfair practices, imposing that Oscar Rent should only acquire the orders related to available cars. The company answered that they had terminated their commercial activities.

Rome, 29 March 2018