I generally don't like to make broad generalizations. However, after talking to 4 car rental companies, all with the same policy that puts the company needs ahead of the customers I'm making an exception.
As part of our temporary living arrangements in the 'burbs (about an hour outside of Toronto) I've had to get used to living in car culture. Since Kirk is using our one car to head into the wilderness for a boys camping trip this weekend I decided to rent a car.
The pain point is that many rental agencies close early on Sunday, if they're open at all. I figured I could drop the car off late afternoon and put the keys in a drop box. Some of them do have this option. However, and here's the rub, they'll still charge me as if I had the car until they reopen Monday morning. WTF?
I understand it might not be profitable to stay open until 6pm on Sunday. However, just because they're not open, and therefore can't rent the car to someone else, I don't see why the customer should have to carry that cost.
Finding a way to make this drop-off policy work seems like an opportunity for a car rental place to differentiate itself. Enterprise is so focused on customer service I'm kind of surprised they haven't already done this (they were on my list of 4 that I called).
It was easy enough for me to re-jig my plans so I don't end up paying for about 14 hours of car rental I don't need. But I still find it infuriating.
I was looking for a rental company and selected Budget. The price they quoted me for rental, LDW and fuel was a large but okay number ($415). Then I discovered they had a pre-pay option which was supposed to cut the amount the rental cost by up to 25%. Nice, figured I'll try it... entered the same things as on the original quote and the response came back: $370. I prepaid. When I returned I was dinged another $67! Apparently for the fuel which as $47, but also a GST bill of $20... for the gas. WTF! So now the rental cost more than the original quote. More than the quotes from all the other rental companies I got in touch with. Definitely NEVER using them again.
Hertz is okay, but they are usually way more expensive than others, something I don't understand as I have yet so see that their cars are worth the extra cost. The Avis place I rent from seems to be staffed by overly rude idiots; I once had to show the person behind the counter where on the card to find my driver's license number! I could understand if I was out of town but I was in Ontario, showing her an Ontario license!
I have yet to find a convenient, helpful, truthful car rental company in Toronto (only ever had one in the rest of world). Do such things exist?
Posted by: Katherine Came | May 29, 2009 at 02:41 PM