CERMINGTON ENTERPRISES LTD - Baku, Azerbaijan

This was the worst experience I ever did. The car was old and dirty inside, technical condition too bad, we always expected it to be broken at any time. Deposit was in cash and renter declined to return it due to - "the other customer who hired car at the same time with you declined to pay for repair!". We faced with such insolent extortion first time. No law, nothing, but always lie about anything. Avoid this renter, there are a lot of international renters in Baku (at least they respect law). Run away.

I had a 6 day rental with Cermnington company from Baku and cannot say it was quite lucky. After fiiling in papers and leaving a deposit in cash I was allowed to take away their shabby car. The engine did not start after I stopped the car in 100 m from the rental office but as soon as the employee came to attend the issue it was possible to start it. And so we spent 4.5 days without this problem far way from Baku. Once we returned to the vicinity of Baku, the problem reappeared and became more persistent. Sometimes it took us dozens of attempts to start the motor. 28 hours before returning the car on schedule I called to the agency employee in the late evening and informed that we were worried by this fact and even more so by the forthcoming night departure to the airport in 50 km from the hotel far from taxis. Apparently we did not want to face a delay caused by the failing starter. And so I asked to replace the car or at least to do something during our last day of stay in Azerbaijan. I was promised to have the problem dealt next day but no further call from the agency was received. We hoped for luck and we partially had it, with an exception that our last ride to the airport was slightly delayed because we had to attempt starting quite a few times before we succeded. Of course, that caused stress to us. We could have simply returned the car and forgotten about this disrepectful attitude from the agency. But we were disappointed by their careless treatment once again. The car agent refused to give back the deposit under the pretext they had received fines issued in care of the car owner (it was a physical person from the agency who gave us a letter of attorney for driving the car, just as in some countries people have to sign these letters if they lend their own cars to others). What we were shown on a laptop or a tablet as a proof were some b/w images of a windshield with a figure behind remotely reminding myself sitting on a front seat. That was on some web site in Azerbaijani I don't understand. They have also presented a letter from Cermington's manager stating I had surpassed speed limits 3 times (two of which differed by 1 minute). Road markings in Azerbaijan are quite often controversial and put in an unorderly way so I might well had a misfortune to be regarded as an infractor, at least technically. However, I was not shown any documents supporting the fines (only the paper from Cermington stating they completely retain the deposit amount even though, as I investigated myself right away, it significantly differs from the purported 3 fines which I technically could pay myself instantly online). I called to the manager and explained my disappointment about the quality of the car and the extortion already happened and was promised by him to be able to see official documents in 30 days (according to him, it is the time required for papers to come from police) and get the residue from the deposit back to my bank account. One month has passed and I wrote to the agency to remind about the promise, got a reading confirmation reciept, called twice to the manager and all I got was a clear hint I was distracting him from his current clients, non-relevant repititions of the words about the 30-day period, also my wish to get the promised looked unnatural to him. He did not openly state I would not receive what I was looking for but only asked to send an email again so he could condescend to reading it again and looking if he can be finally of assistance. I did it. A response did not follow it. I have no wish to continue my exploration on the subject of Cermington cheating me or not but for sure they do not show real respect to their customers and consider them as mere means to get money without caring much about their own obligations as a car rentaly company. I would not recommend to deal with them unless one is very desperate.