oskar Reviewed on Sep 7, 2020, 5:04 PM
Unbelievably Bad Rental Experience... Never again. So I rent a car via carrentals.com for the weekend - estimate $207. I turned down LDW with the reservation as I have insurance. I get there Saturday morning and they don't have an SUV - give me a van. Not a problem. No mention of insurance. I sign and initial the contract without reading carefully... fine, my bad, but there was a line and I was in a hurry. Place closes at 4pm on Sunday. Fine. If there was a sign saying that you can't drop off the car after hours, I didn't see it, but still fine. So Sunday night, I go to return the car at 6pm. Lot is locked, sign says you have to return it at the airport if after hours. Fine. Drive to the airport location. Avis counter is closed so I leave the keys in the drop box and take a cab back to the train station. Still basically fine. But then i look at my credit card the next week and find that $207 has become $375... How could this be? So first I make several phone calls to actually get a copy of the receipt, then get placed on perma-hold twice trying to get a hold of somebody to discuss, etc. etc. Leaving aside the details of abysmal customer service, the nub of the problem was that even though I had dropped the car off on Sunday evening, they didn't get around to checking it in until mid-day Monday. So apparently I should be grateful that they only charged me for an hour instead of an extra day. Because they had jammed me with LDW and additional insurance without asking me, the extra hour cost me rental+LDW+ insurance for the day.... kind of an expensive hour considering I had dropped the car off at the Avis lot the evening before. But over and above the unpleasant surprise of getting charged almost twice as much as expected, leaving aside the lengthy periods spent on hold, eliding the lengthy and frustrating negotiation to get part of the bill fixed, was their bald-faced insistence that even though I had returned the car Sunday evening, and they opened at 8am Monday, it was perfectly reasonable for them to charge me extra as if i hadn't returned the car until mid morning on Monday. I guess the only bright side is that I now better appreciate the normal customer service i have gotten when I have rented from other companies such as Enterprise or Hertz or really anybody else. So the moral of the story is 1) Avoid Avis New Haven like the plague. 2) If you don't follow 1) make sure you read the contract carefully before initialing. 3) Either way, prepare to get scr*wed on the bill. 4) When you are screwed, budget lots of time and patience to try to get it resolved. NEVER AGAIN.
Ed Reviewed on Nov 18, 2019, 8:57 PM
When I arrived holding my reservation for an economy car, the desk staff informed me that they had NO cars available. The only vehicles in the lot were a pickup truck and a multi-passenger van. Additionally, although there were other AVIS/Budget locations in the city with available cars, because they were different franchises, they would not deliver a car to my location. However, I was welcome to get myself to a different location for a car. Fortunately, while I was on the phone with Budget customer service arranging for a transfer of my reservation to another location with cars, someone happened to return their rental and I claimed it as My Car. The staff agreed to this. I must be clear that the staff at the desk were sincerely sorry and not reluctant to help, however they were powerless apparently to make a car appear in their lot. The lack of cooperation however between Budget locations within the same city does not make for a good impression of the company. And what is generally understood as a Reservation apparently needs clarification.
Thomas P Reviewed on Oct 28, 2019, 8:20 AM
The car was not cleaned, empty food packaging from the previous tenant was still in it. Very annoying to dangerous: the washing liquid for the windscreen wipers was almost empty, you can tell then only on the highway. To the coronation; $ 60 extra on the bill without explanation. Never again budget!