‘Are you sure it’s got snow tyres?’ That sentence will be burned into my memory for a very long time. I was standing at the Avis desk at Geneva airport French side, and my boyfriend was grilling the girl behind the counter about the exact spec of the vehicle we were about to drive into the mountains. He asked her the snow tyres question seven times before I stopped counting. Then he started forensic interrogation about the make and model. Upon learning it was not a BMW X5 but something called a Peugeot 4007 he demanded pictures. And if he hadn’t asked, I would have.
Last year, we got stuck in the driveway of our chalet and missed two days’ skiing after Avis packed us off to Chamonix with a vehicle so utterly indisposed to coping with snow it would have won a competition for least snow-proof car on the planet.
‘Yes, yes, snow tyres, yes, yes, snow chains, yes, yes…’ the bored-looking Frenchman behind the desk had droned at us, while looking at his watch as if he were wondering when he could knock off for a Gauloises.
But when we rummaged desperately through the boot for said appliances upon becoming stuck down that slope all we could find was a rusty orange tangled-up mass of twisted metal. So we rang them and they said, ‘Yes, yes, we’ll send you a big four-by-four, yes, yes, it’ll be there in an hour, yes, yes…’
We waited and waited. Until, many hours later, the front door of our little cabin flew open, without so much as a knock, and a man in a leather jacket and corduroy trousers with the fly undone stood wide-eyed in the doorway screaming ‘tête de merde!’ at us. Which is service with a smile, the Avis way. It turned out he had tumbled down the hill trying to get to our chalet and practically crawled to our door on his hands and knees. His boss back at Geneva airport, showing characteristic Avisian consideration, hadn’t thought to tell him that where he was going was thigh-deep in snow and it might not be a good idea to drive a replacement car there in his corduroys and loafers.
‘Tête de merde de cochon de merde de tête de…!’ he kept shouting, or something that sounded very much like that, as we led him to our abandoned vehicle. He crouched down beside it in driving sleet and sub-zero temperatures and, without so much as a pair of gloves, tried to fit those rusty chains to the wheels for nearly an hour before my boyfriend declared that he was through with standing in the snow watching Avis freeze to death one of its older employees. We rang and told them that if they didn’t get this poor man off our driveway in a recovery van we would. And in the end we had to. We put him in the four-by-four and took him to a garage and found him a mechanic who would help him.
That was last year, and you might ask why on earth we would use that company again. I can only say that there aren’t that many car-hire firms and my boyfriend booked through his bank and Avis was what we got. We thought that forewarned was forearmed and so long as we were clear with our demands we would get a suitable car.
In fact, so paranoid were we that we got it in writing. ‘Guaranteed four-by-four with snow tyres’ it said in the contract. And to make even more sure, when we got to the Avis desk, we asked them over and over again if it had got snow tyres. And over and over again they said yes.
So you would think we were all right. Right?
All I can say is that three days later, travelling at just 15 miles per hour, we didn’t feel very all right as we careered out of control down a narrow, icy mountain pass and ploughed into another car coming up, narrowly missing going over the edge.
All I can say is we didn’t feel all right as the guy in the other car examined our tyres and told us with a horrified look, ‘But you haven’t got snow tyres!’
All I can say is I wished I’d known that snow tyres are only snow tyres if they have little squiggles between the treads. If they don’t have squiggles, it means that some idiot has lied to you to cut corners and that you will be sitting in a wreck with the airbags hanging out on a dark mountain pass a few days later, if you are lucky. If you are not so lucky…well, I guess we never get to hear about them.
Melissa Kite is deputy political editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
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