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We booked a car with ACE via Expedia.com several weeks prior to our trip to London, England. I had never heard of this company, but figured it was a UK business and mistakenly assumed that since they were promoted by Expedia, that they MUST be ok. I should have taken the extra time to look at their website and check the web for complaints. Now, to be fair, the fine print on the reservation did say the car company was at Heathrow Airport but "offsite". However, it also said there was shuttle service available (no charge was mentioned or implied). The fine print also stated that certain mandatory insurance charges may be applied, but again, did not state an amount -- so this did not concern me. It should have. :( We arrived at Heathrow after a 9.5 hour flight and surprise, surprise no sign of an ACE shuttle, no signage, no info on my booking reservation. After wandering around terminal 3 for what must have been close to an HOUR, a very nice lady at the Europcar reservation desk called around and after 15 minutes, told us we needed to take the shuttle bus from stand 17/18. We finally get to the bus stand only to discover that the shuttle was the equivalent of $8 per person EACH WAY. There were three of us. We quickly figured out that the bus ride alone was going make this car rental $40+ more expensive than if we had just rented from Budget... but of course, we'd taken the "cheaper" ACE car, hadn't we? I used the free wifi at Heathrow to book another car through Priceline and finally, 3.5 hours after we landed we were in our car and on our way. Final note... when we picked up our rental car we were in line with some other folks who had tried to rent an ACE car... they discovered that ACE did not provide liability insurance and you were required to purchase it. That little mandatory insurance cost that we MAY have had to pay... turns out it would have tacked on another $43 PER DAY to our bill. I just counted my blessings that we never got on the shuttle over there because I would have been fit to be tied and likely stranded at the M4J4 Holiday Inn as well (the hotel from where they rent their cars). Moral to this story... if you don't recognize the name of the car rental company, take the extra few minutes and check out their website. I went to the ACE website and it did say there was a charge for the shuttle, though no mention of the liability insurance cost. :( What stuns me most about this is that Expedia promotes them!
