Mike
AVOID THIS SCAMMY COMPANY
This is honestly the first time I've ever written a review about a business online because I've never felt more disgusted with a company's policies and practices. To start: I scheduled my reservation for noon and my flight ended up coming in closer to 1. By the time we collected our bags and figured out how to get all the way to their location (2 trains and a shuttle bus later), it was around 2pm. The not-so-friendly guy behind the counter didn't say anything about our arrival time to my face, but when I received my final bill via email a week later, I noticed I was charged $20 for a "late pick-up fee". Apparently this company thinks it's appropriate to penalize you if you pick up your vehicle more than 60 minutes after your reservation. I'm sorry, are you not an airport car rental company? Do you honestly never expect people to be delayed because of things beyond their control, i.e. a flight delay? And it's not like this policy was clearly laid out when I was making the reservation, nor did they not know we were arriving late. I did call them several times as we were trying to figure out how to get to their shoddy office. Either way, how can you justify charging people for having the car in their possession for LESS time than they put on their reservation? And then not even have the decency to tell me about this fee to my face when I was picking up or returning the car in person? The 2nd thing: we were told to avoid tolls by staying out of the left lane on the highways. We did that the whole time, but apparently you still have to pay a toll while driving on some of the highways in Florida. We did not know this. In any case, I expected to have to reimburse the company for the tolls we incurred, and I figured they'd slap us with a fee as well, which is fair. However, I was not prepared for just how absurd it was going to be. Here's the breakdown: 5 tolls: $3.34 Admin fee for the 5 tolls (5 x $25) = $125 That's right. For less than $4 of tolls, they charged me me One Hundred and Twenty Five Dollars. Obviously I called in and tried to negotiate this, but when you call the front desk, Mr. not-so-friendly plays dumb and tells you that he can't help you and you must contact their customer service team. Sure, transfer me to customer service, I said. Too bad. Their customer service team doesn't have a phone number and can only be contacted via email. After I looked back at my e-bill I figured out why this was the case. They outsource their customer service team to Russia. That also explains why they only answer your emails during the middle of the night. Nevertheless, I tried going back and forth with them via email, but they just kept pointing to the contract which I did sign and did lay out these fees (in small print of course). Nicely done. The 3rd thing: when you take out the car they charge your card $600 for a "deposit" and then tell you you'll get that back 5-7 business days after you return the car. Guess what? After 7 business days passed I still didn't have my deposit back. Can't say I was surprised at this point. Knowing I'd get nowhere by dealing directly with them, I got my credit card company involved. When I explained the situation to the rep, he was dumbfounded that they went ahead and actually put the charge on the card. Apparently if it's a deposit it's supposed to sit in your temporary authorizations until it gets finalized. Luckily they were able to sort the situation out without any further action needed on my end. To summarize: They may have had a lower price upfront than some of the big name car rental companies, but in the end I ended up paying more due to their ridiculous hidden fees. Lesson learned. Do yourself a favor and pay the bit of a premium to deal with a fair and reputable company that actually knows what customer service means (and has reps that you can actually speak to). And by reading the other review of this company across the internet, it seems like my experience wasn't an anomaly. AVOID THIS COMPANY AT ALL COSTS. P.S. Think it's a coincidence half of the good reviews on this site for this company are from Russian people? Seems like they're really just paying their customer service team to write fake reviews instead of actually trying to help their customers.