What you see when you book is what you pay

The mirror: car hire

In 2016, around 2,000 people complained to the European Consumer Centres because, when they picked up their hire car, they paid more than they had booked online.^{Source 1} In January 2017, the five biggest companies in the sector in Europe committed to the European Commission to include all unavoidable charges in the price, to always offer a full-to-full fuel option, and to show evidence of any damage before charging for it.^{Source 1}

In 2022, consumer authorities in eleven European countries reviewed 78 car-hire broker websites. Only 45% complied with the law: almost half didn't properly explain what the insurance covered, and information on mandatory charges, such as the young driver fee, was incomplete.^{Source 2}

And in 2026, Spain's Ministry of Consumer Affairs fined one of those five companies one million euros for charging €33.88 to €45 in “admin fees” to every customer who got a fine in a hire car, for handling the fine and telling the authorities who was driving: a step the law already requires it to take. A court had struck down that clause in 2020. The company can still appeal in the courts.^{Source 3}

And in moving

In a survey by the Spanish consumer organisation OCU published in 2017, 96% of people who had hired a moving company asked for a quote, but only 65% got it in writing. And 1 in 10 ended up paying more than quoted: €218 on average.^{Source 4}

If a move is charged by the hour, what you pay depends on how long it takes, and that's almost never in your hands. We don't charge by the hour.

What Spanish law says

• Before starting, the moving company has to give you a written quote with the services, their cost and the total price, and tell you whether it includes permits (Law 15/2009, art. 73).^{Source 5}
• The advertised price has to be the final price, with taxes and costs included (Consumer Protection Law, arts. 20 and 60).^{Source 6}
• Rounding time up or charging for services that weren't used is unfair (art. 87.5).^{Source 6}

For us, this isn't small print: it's how we work. If you're comparing quotes, read our guides on cheap moves in Madrid (in Spanish) and how much a move in Madrid costs (in Spanish).