rentalcar-refundComplaining about a car rental company in Türkiye: Consumer Arbitration Committee (Tüketici Hakem Heyeti)
You rented in Türkiye and money left your card. The question that drives everything is not the name of the company, it is the country you rented in: that is what decides which authority you can turn to for free. In Türkiye, the official route is this one, and it costs nothing: Consumer Arbitration Committee (Tüketici Hakem Heyeti).
What is the free remedy after renting in Türkiye?
The Consumer Arbitration Committee (Tüketici Hakem Heyeti) is free, and below a given threshold it is the compulsory first step before any court action. Its decision binds the trader. Filing is done online through the Ministry of Trade portal.
The official remedy in four lines
| Body | Consumer Arbitration Committee (Tüketici Hakem Heyeti) (tuketicisikayeti.ticaret.gov.tr) |
|---|---|
| Cost | Free |
| Language | Turkish |
| Mandatory reply deadline | No statutory reply deadline, but filing forces the trader to explain itself in writing |
Step by step
- Written complaint to the rental company, with a fourteen-day deadline.
- File with the competent arbitration committee, the one for the branch's location or for where you were staying, through the Ministry of Trade online portal.
- The file is submitted in Turkish: have your statement of facts translated. It is short, and it makes all the difference to admissibility.
- Attach the contract, the invoice, the bank statement and time-stamped photos.
Where to click, in order
We walked this path ourselves on 2026-08-18. The walls flagged below are the ones we hit, not the ones the law describes.
- ⚠️ Know this before clicking: the online filing redirects to e-Devlet, the Turkish state digital identity. Without a Turkish identity that door is closed to you, and no trick gets around it.
- What remains is a written application to the arbitration committee of the district where the branch is, filed with the local prefecture, the kaymakamlık, in person or through a representative on site.
- ⚠️ Turkey is outside the EU, so the European Consumer Centre has no competence: that lever simply does not exist here. Do not waste time looking for it.
- In practice your strongest lever from abroad is the card dispute, whose deadline is already running. Deal with that first, the rest after.
Verified entry point: tuketicisikayeti.ticaret.gov.tr.
What comes next, in the same country
- Above the committee's jurisdictional threshold: the consumer court (Tüketici Mahkemesi).
- Card dispute: from abroad this is your strongest lever, and its clock runs from the charge date.
Four more remedies, independent of this one
The country remedy is the second of five. The others do not depend on it and run in parallel: you only need one to succeed.
- Written complaint to the rental company, dated facts, exact amount, a 14-day deadline. It is the prerequisite every other procedure demands. Template
- Card payment dispute for services not provided and unauthorised charges, within 60 to 120 days of the charge, the deadline that expires first. Use your bank's secure messaging or complaints form, not a plain email. If the bank refuses, insist on a written and reasoned refusal: it is what opens the free financial ombudsman. Template
- Legal expenses insurance, often included in a car or household policy: the insurer appoints a lawyer at its own cost. Email
The arguments change with the type of dispute
The remedy above is the same whatever your dispute, but what you write in it changes completely. Pick yours.
Your letters, already filled in, in ten minutes
The portal writes the complaint to the rental company, the filing with Consumer Arbitration Committee (Tüketici Hakem Heyeti), the letter to the European Consumer Centre, the card dispute and the email to your broker, all in your name. It picks the right remedy automatically from the rental country you enter. Free, no commission, no power of attorney: you send them yourself.
All countries Rented somewhere else? The remedy changes, and so does the page. Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Croatia, France, Belgium, Cyprus, Malta.