Thrifty Car Rentals Review - You rent a car, but the deal is a bomb!

In february 2011, I rented a time bomb from Thrifty Car Rentals. I thought I was renting a car, that was what I booked, but Thrifty fooled me. After the first 200 kilometers the car started to fail, and my wife and I had a tough time for 15 days!

I was with my wife in Portugal and decided to rent a car with Thrifty to go to Spain. Our road trip started on a cold rainy day of winter, and the first thing to fail was the air conditioning. Have you tried to drive a car when it's cold outside without air conditioning? Well, the windshield gets dangerously foggy, and the only way to fix this is by opening the window. Thank god I was in Spain and not in Canada. It was "only" 9ºC outside. Blood doesn't freeze at this temperature.

But that was only the begining...

The next day I noticed that one of the tires was flat, so I filled it up. But that tire was actually loosing air, permanently and gradually, so I had to do that everyday for two weeks. And the reason is because Thrifty doesn't offer assistance to their clients in Spain, even though I was only 200 kilometers away from their closest agency.

They didn't offer (or accepted, after I asked) to send me a replacement car. Instead, they told me I should fix their vehicle myself!

When I finally got back to Lisbon and expressed my discontent, they didn't care much, and just offered a miserable 20% discount, as a deal to get rid of me. The amount would be refunded directly to my credit card account.

And that's when I was fooled again. I should have known they would never reimburse me. They were only trying to get rid of a complaining client before another sucker came in to burn his money away with them.

But I was still hopeful, trusting on the company and thinking that was an isolated problem when, one month Iater, I sent an e-mail through their website, at Thrifty.com explaining what hapened. Few days later they confirmed my fear when I read their answer saying that was not their problem and I should deal straight with their agency at Lisbon. As if Thrifty Portugal, at Lisbon, was not really Thrifty.

It's really disapointing. I recomend this company to be a (bad) case of study for business schools around the world.

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[dustoff49]

It was the extra charges in Miami that disgust me with Thrifty. Never will I ever rent from Thrifty/Dollar again. $275 per week quoted online, which turned out to be >$400 with all the added taxes. How about thruth in advertising? Then nothing emphasized for this family who has never experienced toll roads, or what the pass is all about. We thought we'd just pay at a toll booth. Nope. All autometd. Charges from Thrifty for a 0.25 cent toll was $25.00. All totalled, over $400 in "Service charges"

[farahmichael]

Hahaha... Wow! Shame... Your life is so hard :P