Rentalcars.comReviews 1,141

Be careful with this company. We arrived in the UK and went to collect the car from Europcar, to be told we needed a bigger car to get all our luggage in. We were upgraded at a premium price and the vehicle provided was too big and expensive, but after 24 hours on a plane with 2 kids under 5, we just wanted to drive the 4 hours to our destination and sleep.
We returned the car the next day where Europcar cancelled the orginal booking (with Rental Car) and we took a new booking out for a smaller car. We were told we need to get a refund from Rentalcar.com as we had used the car orginally booked for 24 hours and the booking had been cancelled.
It's been 2 months and 10 emails later, yet I am still being told they are are "investigating the issue", we have paperwork showing the cancellation as well as the new booking, and have provided all this to rental car... still waiting on $1500 AUD refund...
This has left a bad taste after a nice holiday.

Attention customers,
Had to cancel my Booking with carrentals.com at the location they suggested me to pick up the car.
The lady at the front desk said that cancellation its been processed and the money will be returned on my account.
Called local company also carrentals.com and they suggest to submit online claim.
Submitted an online claim and got an email from carrentals.com that cancellation its been processed and approved but the cancellation fee was the exact amount of money they took as down payment from me.
Called local company and they said that no money has never been taken from them.
Very Dissapointed from the carrentals.com
Booking reference no; *******

I flew to Washington from Cape Town and had booked a car through Rentalcars.com. After 24 hrs of flying I reached the rental outlet only to be told that the would not accept my international drivers licence and I did not have my national licence on me. I was stranded and now had to check into a hotel and book a train ticket and two taxi rides to get to my destination costing 300$ and Rentalcars.com refused to refund me anything. No car, no apologies.

1. Rentalcars.com - email received with booking number, no address where to pick up car - in Atocha station Madrid only information and "Provider" - Record. So you think to go to the area with all the hire car firms are. Think again. Helpful lady in Alamo pointed me in right direction. 10 minutes walk from Atocha.
2. Record - the provider. Pay 1100 excess please on credit card. Insert in pay point. NEVER been asked for such a steep excess bond before. I ultimately declined.
3. Record - the provider. Pay 70 insurance cover instead... ( I had already paid 42 full premium cover with Rentalcars.com.)
3. Rentalcars.com rang - you can drop our insurance and pay Record insurance. 42+ 70 = 112 for a one day car hire.
4. I am taking the metro today.
Thieves@ Record; Cowboys@ Rentalcars.com
5. Intermediary www for car hire. Nothing to see here. Go directly to providers.

I rented a passenger van using rentalcars.com for my family vacation in Greece. I was refused the rental at the Athens airport as I did not have an international drivers license. I'm well aware that they are needed in some countries and have purchased this before. However, on the rentalcars.com site this information was so buried it would be impossible to find. They did have a section at the top of the rental page that misled me into believing all I needed was a valid passport, drivers license and credit card. A total fraud. When I called to complain they refused to refund me the $350 for the van. I ended up paying $650 at Avis bringing my rental total to $1000 for ten days of a van. At this point I've heard nothing back from rentalcars.com. Avoid them. Don't be pennywise. Go directly to the merchants and avoid this scam site.

I rented a car from Manchester Airport In July for 5 weeks. Rentalcars took full payment form my credit card for the hire but when I went to pick-up the car, I was told I would have to pay an extra 17 pound because I was picking up the car early. How early was It?. It was 20 minutes early. I asked if I came back in 20 minutes would I be charged extra, the guy said "No" I came back after 25 minutes, the guy took my details, driving license and so on, then asked my for my credit card for any damages when the car was returned. The company refused to take my credit card because it did not have a 'chip' in the card. This is the same card I used to pay Rentalcars. After being humiliated at the desk, I then had to find my own transport to Shropshire. I emailed Rentalcars on July 15, finally (because they hide there email address on the site) explained what had happened and expressed I would like a refund and explanation, why Rentalcars accepted my credit card but I was not told it would be refused at the Airport. At this moment, 30th November (That is 6 months) I have not had an explanation or a refund. I am still waiting! I also have a voice recording of my conversation at the Airport.

If I could give Zero stars I would!. Awful service with misleading adverts so beware when you book through them. I booked a car recently, a lesser model was supplied. The car I initially ordered did not have a sat nav so I paid extra for one. The lesser model had a sat nav making this extra cost redundant. So for my many pounds spent I got a lesser car and paid extra for something that was not needed. When I reported to them they said there was nothing that I could do and they could offer me possibly a few pounds off another car hire! They then had the cheek to ask to be marked highly on any customer satisfaction surveys! - An awful company avoid!

Absolutely terrible
Absolutely terrible. We paid more just to ensure we were covered. Our flight into Pula was due to land at 9.30 p.m. and was late. We arrived to pick up the car about 10.15 and was astounded that we had to wait 45 minutes in a queue (with only two in front of us) while they tried to sell every foreseeable extra to the people in front. Then they tried with us. You need to realise that if you book fully comprehensive as we did, to cover all eventualities, you are not buying it from the rental company. We added an additional driver, but then found out it was only basic because it was not with the same company. We then were told we had to pay an extra 39 Euros amount for late pick up as it was after 9.00 p.m. but we were always going to arrive after that time, so it should have been quoted for. Customer service, appalling, they have taken months to come back, completely missed the point of our complaint and then said we need to claim against our insurance company. Absolutely disgraceful. Whatever you do, book direct with a hire company. Oh, and to add to this, when we tried to exit the car park, it did not recognise the number plate so we had to go back in to get the gates lifted. All after a flight, when you are tired. Appalling.

Hired a car, collected from Sixt and was advised of extra insurance which I declined and everything else covered. Didn't select any additional options. Had to give my credit card as down-payment of £1000 in case there was any damage to the car. Returned fine, no concerns. I was advised there were no additional charges. Few weeks later they charged my account £60... Rental cars gave me the runaround as they said it was Sixt's problem and surprisingly Sixt did the same... £60 extra for insurance that I didn't request and a fuel charge that was apparently included in what I paid for already. Would never book with them again!

I rented a car from Rentalcars.com from Orlando airport online two weeks prior to my arrival once I landed I wasn't able to find which car dealer I was renting from someone told me I had to take a shuttle about a mile away to get the car I should have known that was a red flag when I got there I gave the lady my reservation number she told me it did not exist and she does not a have a car for me the look on her face told me this happens all the time she told me you need to call the company you rented from so I did I explained to them there is no car for me and they put me on hold for twenty minutes only to tell me they could not help me so I was taken back on the shuttle to the Orlando airport without a car I end up spending $400 dollars for the five days because It wasn't booked in advance which by the way the booking agent at the airport said to me anytime you have to get a shuttle to get a car is usually fishy so my advice to anyone who books from these people ask a lot of questions they should be put out of business they don't even exist in the USA.

RentalCars.com services carry the notion of fraudulent practices. Their website is a social engineering minefield filled with booby traps designed to create a sense of desperate fight for the "best deal" while they are literally "slipping through our fingers". PANIC! THE CLOCK IS TICKING GODDAMNIT!

RentalCars.com offer comparison page is deliberately deceiving their customers into thinking that the prices displayed on the page are the definitive cost of rental (see "1_search_engine" screenshot attached). As it turns out the customer is being surcharged for the so called "additional services" that happen to be mandatory effectively hiding the real cost of the rental and rendering the comparison page faulty and useless.

RentalCars.com options page does not indicate that any mandatory surcharge is required - the price continues to seem definitive (see "2_options_page" screenshot attached).

RentalCars.com payment details page is designed in a way to trick the customer into an expectation that the greyed out "Fuel Service Charge" is a cost of fuel subject to partial refund as indicated in the center part of the page, not a mandatory charge that he has no way to refuse (see screenshot "3_payment_page" attached).

And finally, RentalCars.com booking summary page continues to uphold an illusion of a fully paid booking by displaying the "total summary" of the booking payments without no mention of the mandatory charges, ultimately ensuring the customer that he had paid the full amount (see "4_booking_summary" screenshot attached).

"Shocklingly" - he did not. The payment on the website is just an advance fee and the real cost of your rental awaits at the desk of the factual car rental provider.

To add insult to injury, on the starting day of my failed rental I was misinformed by their customer service agent ensuring me that the charge of 25 was subject of partial refund dependent on the amount of fuel in the returned car, which turned out to be a blatant lie.

The hidden mandatory costs of the rental sandwiched somewhere in-between the 2593th and 2594th line of the terms and conditions cannot justify the mischievous trickery they openly subject the misinformed customers on their website.

I repeat, RentalCars.com is A SCAM.

Booked a car through RentalCars.com that included a $600, oneway dropoff fee since we were picking it up in Lefkada and dropping off in Athens. When we arrived at the airport, the line was about 15 people long, the counter was chaos and not a single person in line was processed in the 30 minutes we stood there waiting. Since we had to catch a ferry, and other rental companies were wide-open, I rented a car from Hertz. I immediately emailed RentalCars.com to inform them we could not pick up the car and ask for a refund. They refused, saying i had not followed their terms and conditions. The fact that my car was not available when i was supposed to pick it up makes that unfair. However, even if I could choke that down, the fact that they also refused to refund my one-way fee for a car that I never took anywhere and, therefore, did not incur any one-way delivery or recovery costs is just STEALING! This company is rotten, and every review I have read since makes it clear that is how they operate. Buyer beware! You will NOT get what you paid for (and possibly not get anything at all, like I did).

I also will never use rentalcars.com again. I recently rented a car in Brussels. Upon arrival at the Hertz counter I was hit with significant additional fees. I pointed out where Rentalcars.com email and receipt stated what was supposed to be the total cost. As indicated the rentalcars.com fees were "non-refundable." I, therefore, took the rental and later complained, with no success, to Rentalcars.com. (They stated that I should read the fine print, I forwarded them their own emails, pointing out what their emails and receipt said, to which they stopped communicating.) Fortunately, I disputed the charge with my credit card and was fully credited the Rentalcars.com charge. DO NOT RENT FROM THIS COMPANY!

Following Rentalcars agents advice, I managed to open a case after the contracted rental period was completed. Case submission is tricky; my advice is to prepare all your supporting attachments ready to attach from your laptop before you start. On the case entry page, you are only given a 350 character field in which to enter your case summary.
Since this is usually insufficient, prepare and attach a separate file with your full account of what happened and what you are claiming.

Try to complete the case summary and uploading of attachments promptly otherwise you may have to start again. On case submission, you will see an onscreen confirmation message and email with subject "Looking into your issue". After that, it took several emails on my part to expedite a refund - it took about 6 weeks. Other than the fact that denial of service at the time on a technicality totally disrupted my holiday plans, there was significant extra cost of booking a replacement hire car with another more reasonable supplier than Europcar!

Unethical for sure: they know there is a recurring problem with debit/credit cards and only leave it in the T&C - realising full-well that the deals aren't half as good if they would be clearer about the issue. In the end, they wanted to charge me double what the booking first cost at the counter (ie telling the first!) - and the same happened to others in line - in my country, Hungary, credit cards are not the norm, everyone uses debit cards. I refused to pay, rented a car at another company (Avis - for some reason they were fine with my debit card) and it cost about the same as the surcharge i would have had to pay for my Rentalcars.com booking. I contacted them, they knew the issue before I spelled it out and refused to refund... Sounds like a scam to me.