Looking for a car rental, I went to Kayak.com/cars. I quickly found a list of companies offering cars for my desired dates, with a pickup and drop-off at LAX. Prices ranged from $230 - $500, with the cheapest being $197 through Priceline. Twelve years ago, I swore I would never use Priceline again. This experience does it! The rental company is Economy Rental Car and/or Allied Rent a Car, on Century Blvd. Near LAX. The ad implied that there was a shuttle. The fact that I had to pay upfront should have put me off, but, anxious to save some money, I went for the deal. Stock market experts tell you that pigs (for making or saving money) get slaughtered. The night before the pickup date, I went over my itinerary and discovered that I had made the reservation for a day later than I needed the car. I went back into the reservation and changed it—I thought. But Priceline doesn't allow for correcting human error. They make a lot of extra money that way and cause a lot of human misery that way.

But assuming making the date change had been successful, arriving at LAX, I went to the rental car shuttle pickup area. After a half hour, I hadn't seen any shuttle with "Economy Rental Car" nor "Allied Rental Car" on it. I asked one of the shuttle drivers about it. He said that Allied/Economy Rental Car doesn't have a license to come directly to the pickup area at LAX. I tried calling Priceline. I kept getting a recording. I tried calling Allied/Economy Rental Car. I got David, who went silent when I asked if I could get a shuttle. I decided to get an Uber, so I caught the LAXIT bus to the staging area for all the methods of transportation that LAX finds too bothersome to allow in the area of the terminals. For $22, the Uber took me to Economy Rental Car. I had waited so long for the non-existent shuttle that Economy had just closed. Employees were inside but would not open to rent me my car. The Uber driver was super kind and nice, and for no extra money, took me around the corner to Enterprise/Alamo. I wanted Enterprise, but they were up a narrow escalator and there was no way (I'm 80 years old) I was going to get my baggage up it. So I went to Alamo, where the guy gave me the desperate grandma rate: $703.00! I got on my phone and found a $21.35 a day rate at Fox. I tried clicking on Book, but couldn't get it to work. Another Uber at $8 got me to Fox. I was quoted $50 a day. Evidently the Book button didn't work because "the website was shut down for the night." Huh? Another variation on the desperate grandma rate, I guess.

At this point, I was totally tired of smarmy rental car tactics. I had come to see my family for one evening, which was rapidly disappearing. I got another Uber, which took me to my family for $60. The next day, I decided to get an Uber back to Economy Rental Car to get the car I had already paid for. I spent the next hour initialing all kinds of fair-to-the-company, unfair-to-the-customer contract items. I was told I would have to pay $20 per day for collision insurance or they wouldn't rent me the car. I protested that I have auto insurance and my American Express card covers just about everything. That didn't matter. Without a crystal ball, I couldn't see that the cheapest thing would have been to walk away from the $197. But I didn't. So they added $200 to the $197 I had already paid.

So here we are:
Rental: $197.00
Uber LAX-Economy 22.00
Uber Alamo-Fox 8.00
Uber Fox-Valencia 60.00
Uber Valencia-Economy 60.00
Forced insurance: 200.00

Total: $547.00
Wow! WHAT A BARGAIN YOU GET FROM PRICELINE!

WAIT! THAT'S NOT ALL! I finally got home and found that Allied/Economy had charged an additional SIX HUNDRED AND THIRTY-NINE DOLLARS and 88 cents to my American Express card. $200 is for the insurance they forced me to buy, but the rest? I brought the car back on time and in the same condition in which I got it (with the check engine light on). What's the rest for?

Oh. Maybe I drove it too far? $439.88 too far? I drove it 407 miles. Other reviewers state there's a limit of 150 miles per day. So for an 8 day rental, I should be able to drive it for 1,200 miles without extra charges.

So how about fuel charges? I filled the car up at Costco in Santa Clarita before heading into L.A. To turn it in. If the car (a Toyota Corolla about 4 years old) gets 29-38 mpg and it is 35 miles from Santa Clarita to Los Angeles, I was short one gallon of gas when I turned the car in. Let's say they charge $6.00/gallon to fill up. So I owe them (though I shouldn't) a total of $206, then what's the other $433.88 for? The guy at Economy/Allied who accepted the key while denying that any further paperwork--like a receipt with a total like reputable car rental companies give you--had a big, sly smile on his face. Hmmm. I wonder why?

I have a fraud case started with American Express. If that fails, my $197 rental will cost me ONE THOUSAND, ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-SIX DOLLARS AND 88 CENTS! ($1,186.88) OUTRAGEOUS!

DO NOT STAY HERE! The Manager is extremely unprofessional and needs to take a course in customer service. Hence why she's managing a dumpy hotel.

We booked two rooms at this hotel a year ago for our youngest daughters wedding June 10. The rooms were for us and our older daughter and her husband. The youngest daughter was not staying at the hotel.

To start, I asked for early checkin when I originally booked the rooms, so the "father of the bride" could get ready. They said to call back closer to the date to request. Long and behold when I did that it was a flat out NO and 3:00 was the earliest check-in (wedding was 4:30 and 20 min drive away). Let's just say when he arrived at the room, it had mold, smelled really bad, had bubbling and peeling wallpaper, no carpet on floors, etc. others who were attending the wedding and staying here had somewhat ok rooms. We did eventually get switched after my daughter "the Bride" called to complain about it, mind you when my husband went to get the new key the manager told him that our daughter had reamed her out, FLAT OUT LIE! There were a few of us there when she called and she was very polite explaining the situation and extremely thankful when the switch was made.

The next morning the parents of the groom were told by the waitress at breakfast that "she heard" our daughter was "a $#*! and mad" and then told them she doesn't blame out daughter for being upset because our original room got flooded and hasn't been booked with guests for over a year until this weekend. She said those rooms are horrible on lower level. We booked them a year ago before anyone else knew the location of wedding, so wasn't like we were a last minute booking.

On another note, If checkout is 11 then breakfast should be served until 11. This was our next experience with this MANAGER was at breakfast, when we came down about 9:55 and our other daughter and husband came down at 10:03 with our nephew for breakfast and AGAIN the MANAGER told the waitress to refuse to serve them saying the cutoff is 10:00 am. our nephew had sat at a different table with his wife and had no problem getting served and we literally had just ordered our meal, could have barely been put into the kitchen for making.

Unfortunately my husband was in such a rush due to Timelines of the wedding he was unable to grab photos of the room, but we did grab this one of our other daughter's door, same floor different room.

It works well, will use again

Very helpful
TDG

Very efficient

Good

Really helpful site

Useful for travel

Always the cheapest flights posted

This company also goes by Vayama