Costa Rica car rental recomendations wanted
 

I'm counting down the days until my Costa Rica vacation in the begining of June. We will be arriving on a Sunday evening and will stay our first night at the Orquideas Inn in Alajuela. We need to rent a car for 9 days but I'm having trouble deciding which company to rent from. I've done a lot of searching on the travel web sites and I hear the typical horror stories of the company not having the reservation, delivering cars with bald tires, charging your credit card a higher amount that what the contract said, etc.

Any recomendations on who to rent from? We would preferably like to have the car delivered to the Orquideas Inn in the morning or would we need to take a taxi to the car rental agency?

I used Adobe last June and liked them--pretty new car and everything went smoothly. Later this month, I'm using National (because Adobe's minimum-rental is longer than I need).

Ditto Adobe. We had a great experience with them. They dropped off the car exactly where we wanted and on time, and also came to pick it up at our last hotel which was 20 minutes from the airport. They were very friendly, spoke excellent good English and very helpful.

Just returned form 17 days in CR. We rented a car from Mapache, local company, http://www.mapache.com/fleet.htm and I would recommend them highly. they even have a 800 number that you can call from USA. When I was doing the research, the forums were recommending several renatl companies, Mapache and Dollar were among them.
Dollar is very quick in responding via email, Mapache never replied, but I decided to call them and they gave a much better rate than enyone else and they did keep their promise. Their office is outside the airport so you won't have to pay the airpot fee and they will deliver the car ro Alajuella for free and once you return the car they will drive you to the airport for free, too. We had Toyota 4 runner for $400 a week incl. basic insurance, btw. as we knew we will go off road a lot. Great car, nice people at Mapache, gave us a number that we can call 24/7 if in trouble.

We used Dollar a couple of time and were very happy with their service. For the car I wanted (large SUV with automatic), they had the best price as well.

We've had excellent luck with Tricolor and Dollar. Haven't ever found anyone who matches Tricolor's prices. However, you have gotten excellent advice from others as well. Mapache, our daughter has used and liked. Adobe consistently gets good reviews. Chances are you'll do just fine with any of the above. Have a great time!