Stelios and his colleagues, dressed in orange boiler suits and with a fleet of easyCar vehicles, will be protesting outside the Hertz car rental site at 333 Overtoom on Thursday April 25 at 13.00. Stelios, the easyGroup chairman, is coming to Amsterdam to protest about Hertz' attempt to stop easyCar from comparing its prices to those of Hertz.easyCar is one of Stelios' companies and has a site opposite Amstel station that has a fleet of 300 A-Class Mercedes cars that can be hired for as little as 9 Euros a day plus a one off 10 Euros preparation fee. As the fleet is set to grow for the summer season easyCar started an advertising campaign saying, "The best reason to use easyCar.com can be found at hertz.nl". Hertz complained about this comparative advertising and Dutch law said that comparative advertising in the Netherlands had to be exact, not general. So easyCar is now running more advertisements in the Dutch media but
this time they are making exact comparisons, comparing the exact easyCar price with the exact Hertz price, inclusive of all elements such as preparation fee and the date on which the booking was made. Once again, the easyCar price is much less than the Hertz price so once again Hertz is threatening to take easyCar to court. "I am coming to Amsterdam to stop Hertz ripping off the Dutch public," said Stelios. "What is Hertz frightened of? There is no logical reason why a company like easyCar should not be able to make honest comparisons with a company like Hertz in order to show the Dutch public the large difference that exists between our prices. I am prepared to go to any court in the Netherlands or any court in Europe to defend the easyCar right to honest and fair price comparisons in order to protect the Dutch consumer from being ripped off," continued Stelios. "Five years ago KLM tried to stop easyJet from offering the Dutch public cheap air travel but now they are trying to run their own low cost
airline. Hertz will also fail to force Dutch consumers to pay high prices." easyCar has greater efficiencies than Hertz which is why its prices are lower. 95% of customers book their cars from the easyCar website and easyCar has economies of scale at the Amstel site by operating a uniform fleet of Mercedes A-Class cars. Launched in April 2000 easyCar now has 18 sites across Europe and operates a fleet of 6000 A-Class Mercedes.
Stelios will fly in from London on Thursday morning and will assemble with his colleagues, all dressed in orange boiler suits and with easyCar A-Class Mercedes, in front of the Hertz Overtoom site in order to display the advertisement in question to the Dutch public.
The easyGroup presently consists of easyJet, easyInternetCafe, easyCar, easyValue, easyMoney, easy.com with easyCinema presently being studied as a new idea.