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

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

Old May 24th, 2011, 03:40 PM
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Thrifty Car Rentals Review - You rent a car, but the deal is a bomb!

I have posted a video on YouTube showing my experience, at:

http://youtu.be/xZplcXlghyA

But basically, what hapened is...

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 (48º F) 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.
marvelloso is offline  
Old May 25th, 2011, 07:12 AM
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If it's only 9 Celcius and your windows start to fog you turn on the heater and direct the airflow to the windshield! AC not required.

Any garage could have fixed a slow leak for a few euros and saved a stop at the air hose every day!

Sorry but no sympathy from me!
ParisAmsterdam is offline  
Old May 25th, 2011, 07:23 AM
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Did you have permission to take the car into Spain? Did they tell you there would be no support for the vehicle if you did?
Was it the heater or the airco that failed?
My car's windscreen looks like that most of the winter and the heater and airco work on it. Opening the window doesn't help - it just lets more damp air in to the car.

It would not have cost much to get the tyre fixed. you could then have kept the receipt and presented it to Thrifty when you returned the car.

If that had been me in a car with no heater I would have turned round and taken back it to a Thrifty even if it meant breaking into my holiday. Better a day or two of problems returning it then two weeks of misery.
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Old May 25th, 2011, 07:30 AM
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Why would you turn on the AC if it's cold outside? That's what the heater is for. And did you really think it was wise just to keep filling up the tire instead of having it patched for a few euros? You drove around for 2 WEEKS with a tire leaking air?

Sorry, but you let this situation take control of you when you could have taken control of the situation.
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Old May 25th, 2011, 03:08 PM
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Sorry guys, I imagine you never had such problems before. That's good, I hope you never do.

Actually, I was already 500 Km away when the problems started, and the hole system (AC/heat/ventilation) went down.

I had already paid for the hotels, but I did what I could to change my plans and drove back 300 km when I asked if they could bring me another car.

Yes, I had permission to travel into Spain, I have paid an extra fee for that.

No, not only they never told me they didn't offer support there, but they gave me a phone number I should call if I had any problem. That's what I did, and you don't know what I heard from them, so that's why I prefered to have that trouble everytime I stopped to fill the tank, and not spend a dime to fix THEIR car.

Which ended up to be somewhat good - now I know - because they didn't even refunded me what they said they would, so I figure I would have spend more time and money to return a car in better conditions then when I picked it and wouldn't even hear "thank you".

Anyway, that's not the point, guys. Problems happens with any car, from any company (although I think Thrifty don't invest much in maintenance), is the customer care, the service that matters after all. And let's face it, Thrifty sucks. Even if that particular crew, from that particular agency woke up on the wrong side of the bed, I was expecting a different answer from customer care. Maybe just see the refund in my account could be enough to see they did something.
marvelloso is offline  
Old May 25th, 2011, 03:26 PM
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You DID say: "Have you tried to drive a car when it's cold outside without air conditioning..."
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Old May 25th, 2011, 04:43 PM
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Perhaps this person is not a native speaker and he meant.. an air (" conditioning") system.

Thanks for your story. It is a shame when incidents such as these are not resolved the way we had hoped/expected.

It wouldn't hurt to keep writing, and perhaps also get in touch with an ombudsman from a travel magazine about this.
lincasanova is offline  
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