American Eagle Car Rental

We rented a cargo van from American Eagle Rental Car. We also dealt with Sam Bhai, who provided us a urine soiled van. It literally had a wet spot where someone had urinated. He had an older Hispanic gentlemen load are belonging which we were appreciative of until we realized our personal items and luggage were placed in the middle of the urine. My wife smelled the urine right away before we drove off. We were not issued a refund or even complimentary dry cleaning.

NOPE! Sam Bhai claimed he couldn't do anything because the owner of the company was unavailable. He just rinsed out the van, when we refused to continue doing business he kept our $300 deposit. Watch out the previous reviews are true.

LOL ... This company American Eagle Car Rental and its owner Sam Bhai has also been exposed on Google Reviews as well. Sounds like a shady character.

My horror story involves never actually ending up with the rental. My wife and I were going through a bit of financial hardship due to lack of work a while back. When the clutch went out in our car, we had to get a rental so my wife can get back and forth to work as she works out of public transit range. The combination of ordering the clutch and having to pay rent and some bills right away had gutted both of our accounts so my father in law had offered to pay for the rental.

Of course, it's never easy to get a straight answer from Sam of American Eagle Rental Car as to how much you need to have in the account to pay for the deposit since neither of us have credit cards. Sam whole I talked to from American Eagle Rental Car said that we only had to have enough to cover the cost of the car for however long we were going to rent it for, in our case about $160. So, with the money secured and a cheap car reserved, we set out into the summer heat (around 93 degrees plus stifling humidity) for our 3 mile trek to Travel Lodge at 1400 Bristol Street in Costa Mesa where this shady outfit operates from. Keep in mind that my wife has a pretty low tolerance for heat, and we ended up having to stop rather often to rest because of it.

When we finally got to the Travel Lodge, the guy (a different guy than who I talked to on the phone) tried to run our card without telling us how much it was being run for, only to have it decline. After it was declined he then told us that the deposit was $250. So, my wife and I left to go transfer some cash into her account so it would clear, which involved walking another half mile to the closest bank. We ended up pooling all of our money into her account to make it over $250 before heading back to Budget.

When we got back into the counter at budget, the same guy ran our card again and still declined it. When we asked him why, he said that we needed $255 and refused to run the card again. This set off an argument with me asserting that he had told us that we needed $250 earlier.

I ended up storming out a few minutes later with my wife in tears. The temperature had risen a bit for the long trudge home. The whole ordeal ended up making me 2 hours late for my shift at work, because it generally took me about an hour and a half to get to work on public transit.

It was my first and last experience with Sam and American Eagle Rental Car!

OH AND I'LL NEVER STAY AT A TRAVEL LODGE AGAIN SINCE THEY ALLOW THIS GUY TO WORK THERE.