CarRentals.com
reviews and complaints

06/05/17
I rent a car through carrentals.com from 06/06 to 06/17/17 and I go to de website to make a change because my flight was cancelled for mechanical problems and no phone numbers to contact. This really a bad company what they do is stolen money from the people. I want a refund. they charges the money since I made the reservation and no way to make changes. confirmation #1714939337Count

I paid 2 months in advance for my rental May 1st -5th with my debit card and when i arrived to NU at Lax they said they don't take debit cards and that he had to cancel my rental. I called NU they said I had to email carrentals.com so I tried emailing since car rental doesn't have a number to get my refund. Next step I will call my back and make a claim.

Hi everyone. Please do not use this company. My flight was delayed by two and a half hours which was completely out of my control. When I arrived at manchester airport to collect they sold on my car for which I paid for in full. They only hold the car for one hour. I mean they work at a international airport and delays happen all the time. Don't they check to see where I am. What is the point of giving them my flight details when I book the car and don't use them. Everybody please do not use these people. What's freaking me out the most is I did get a full refund for the car they sold on. Thanks I guess. I then hired another car which I then paid more for because it is now short notice. When I arrived at budget/avis with a reference number they told me there were no cars available and they found it strange that they managed to book one. Please refund me the money I paid for a car that was not available. I then had to pay again directly with budget/avis for a car at a much higher category at rentalcars.com had let me down. Please refund me or I will keep posting on social media sites.

We booked a car on carrentals.com website stating that it was unlimited mileage through Advantage Car Rental at Dallas LoveField Airport. When we went in to check-out the car, Advantage stated that it was NOT unlimited mileage and we were only allowed 150 miles per day. In our situation, that would not work for us. We asked for a refund and they refused. Their customer service was terrible and not willing to work with us. Fortunately, we charged it on Discover. Even though we are currently disputing it through Discover, we received a temporary credit. This situation has been an inconvenience and a pain. It's NOT WORTH saving a few extra bucks for these 2 terrible companies. Never use Advantage Car Rentals and carrentals.com .

Carrentals.com is deceiving people and ill informing customers of what they are really getting. How is what they do even legal!?

I was seeking a car rental in Costa Rica and did in depth research on the best deal. The Carrentals.com website consistently exceeded other website deals and seemed very straight forward and clear on what it was offering. I looked at the insurance policy offered through Alliance and other deals to compare through there site and others like Alamo and Economy Car. Looked great.

I booked a car in advance for the deal claiming $7 a day and payed for the extra $100 insurance claiming to cover everything outside of the country through NU Car Rentals. Upon arrival to the car rental place after commuting 2 hours to the deal, they inform me I need to pay $400-$600 MORE for mandatory Costa Rican liability insurance on top of what was paid. NO WHERE on the website did it offer information on how Costa Rica has additional mandatory insurance beyond what they sold me.

I then proceeded to call to cancel the additional insurance I purchased and no number worked, and the policy number was unrecognizable so I paid $100 for NOTHING through car rentals.com. I also had to pay the full price for a SUV (which was supposedly a great $7 deal), yet downgraded to a Kia in order to pay less on the mandatory insurance. They couldn't even give me a refund/ fair price on paying less for the Kia. Carrentals.com hasn't sent me any follow up emails, just when purchased and the website has limited ways to either contact them or leave a review or even view reviews from prior customers... Now I understand why.

I would NEVER use this website and I will continue to inform other travelers to avoid carrentals.com.

I reserved a car to be picked up in costa mesa. The confirmation came back saying it was to be picked up in miami, florida!

I called to cancel. Was told to call back in 5 minutes because he was with a customer. I called back getting an answer machine. Pressing 3 to cancel just put me back at the beginning of the answer machine.

Do not deal with these people!

Prepaid rental of car, due to 85 yr old mom arriving at 6pm in Fort Myers. No notice about needing to credit qualify to rent a Hertz car. Booked reservation, took my money, and waited a week for date of rental. Hour before picking up my elderly mom, arrived and was denied car because of credit rating. No one even mentioned the condition of having a perfect credit rating. So no car, no rental to pick up mom, 1 hr before she was due in. Did not pick up car and now I am not getting the refund. Will have to fight 3 different companies to try and get some of it. Visa, Hertz and Carrentals.com...do nt book on CarRentals.com...probably shouldn't book Expedia either if they run a company like CarRentals.com! No STARS! Crappy crappy crappy!

We were arriving by cruise ship into Colon, Panama and leaving two days later from Panama City Airport so we decided to book a rental car so we could see Panama and provide ourselves transportation to the airport. We booked online through carrentals.com and got a reasonable reservation for $47 with ACE Rental car in Colon. We also were told on that carrentals.com site that insurance might be required so we bought the additional insurance offered through Allianz. It seemed like a great plan. We had other options to book tours and transfers through the ship, catch a ride with friends, take public transportation, but we liked this option the best and thought we had made all the appropriate arrangements – until it all fell apart and cost us a great deal of money.
Problem #1 – carrentals.com told us we could pick up the car at the ACE counter in the Four Points Sheraton hotel in Colon. Seemed straight forward until we found out that there IS NO FOUR POINTS SHERATON hotel in Colon. We found a taxi driver who told us based on the address that this hotel was known as the Sand Diamond. He let us use his phone to call the Sand Diamond and they confirmed that there was an ACE counter in the hotel. It seemed like the crisis was averted until….
Problem #2 – The ACE counter was closed! Our reservation was for 9am but we got there shortly before 10am. The office was locked up tight and there was no note about returning. We looked at our reservation and it had a number to call, so we called it. It was an answering machine and the outgoing message was in Spanish so I’m not sure what it was telling me but I left my name and number anyway. I looked for any other contact information and there was none. My husband asked the hotel desk and they said they would call someone. They reached someone named Ernesto and put me on the phone with him. He said he had to call the head office in Panama City and confirm my reservation and would call the hotel back in three minutes. I’m not sure where he was or why he had to confirm when I had the reservation in my hand, but I said ok and we hung up. He NEVER called back.
The hotel desk told us that Ernesto is normally the guy who works in that office and they see him almost every day so he wasn’t some person at a corporate office. The hotel and I both continued to call Ernesto every 10 minutes for an hour. He never answered the phone and he never called back.
Finally I called the US headquarters of ACE Car Rental. The lady there told me that this location is independently owned and there wasn’t much she could do for me except call the location herself (which would probably just roll to the same voice mail I kept getting). I explained to her that I was having to pay for these phone calls and that this mess was ruining our vacation and we wanted to get on the road and didn’t know how long we could sit there not knowing when, if ever, there would be a car for us. She said everyone she needed to talk to were in a meeting but she would call me back in 5 minutes and if I didn’t hear from her I should go make other arrangements. Not particularly helpful. She didn’t call back.
Problem #3 – Realizing we weren’t going to get a car from ACE Rental we decided to check other rental companies. Budget was sold out of cars and Hertz wanted $285! The hotel said we could get a taxi to Panama City airport for $80 and then we could rent a car there. Even though this meant $80 expense and we didn’t get to explore between Colon and Panama City, we decided this was the best course of action. So we took the taxi to the airport.
Problem #4 – The airport had cars, and were actually cheaper than $47 since we were no longer doing the one-way drop off but picking up and dropping off at the airport but they said there was mandatory insurance of $65. We said we don’t need the insurance because we already bought the insurance policy that CarRentals.com told us to buy and I pulled it out to show them. They told us that policy didn’t cover the mandatory liability required in Panama. That policy was nothing more than a secondary policy to my own car insurance – not even necessary in Panama. We didn’t want to pay this ridiculous rate for insurance. No one would help us – not CarRentals.com and not ACE Rental Car.
By the time the weekend was over instead of the $47 rental fee and $27 insurance fee originally quoted by CarRentals.com we ended up paying:
$80 taxi to Panama City
$30 taxi to our hotel
$25 taxi to downtown sightseeing
$30 taxi back to airport for our flight
$165 out of pocket of unplanned expenses, plus the hassle and the inability to see as many things as we wanted due to lack of transportation.
Additionally, because we thought we would have a car, we stayed in a hotel that we wouldn’t have stayed in which wasn’t really close to the things we wanted to see because we thought we would have transportation to go see those things.
Thank you CarRentals.com and ACE Rental Car company for RUINING my weekend in Panama and costing me three times my budget for transportation costs. I HAD other options I could have chosen but your lack of accurate information and TERRIBLE customer service and NO contact phone numbers completely screwed up my vacation and I will probably never get the chance to go back there. These are BOTH TERRIBLE companies and SHOULD NOT BE TRUSTED!

Car Rentals.COM is a total rip off. Of course they offer the cheapest rates to catch your eye but what they don't do is highlight the important details which are located two or three hyperlinks away on only the confirmation page.

They did not inform me that I would have to use the same credit card used to prepay for the car at the time of the reservation to pick up the car. The deposits on these cars vary, especially when you reserve an economy size car that may only require a 100.00 deposit versus a sports car which requires a larger deposit which is the only car available once you show up to pick up the economy size car you reserved...

Once you go thru several hyper links on their website in order to reach customer service, you are not only exhausted but you are also pissed completely off when you plainly see "not able to modify or cancel any reservations". So they get to keep 100% of the amount I paid to rent a car for 4 days.

The worst customer service in the world!

Spread the word

Carrentals.com basically steals your money through deception. We booked a hertz car rental for pickup at ecp airport and prepaid for it online. Only after booking was it revealed that the car would not be at ecp airport, but 23 miles away and that we were responsible for transportation from ecp airport to the car rental location, are you kidding me? They make sure it is a non refundable rental so they can scam you and keep your money, then they provide no contact phone #, search the internet all you want, you will not find legitimate phone # anywhere for these crooks. I have never dealt with such a dishonest company in all the years I have been booking rental cars. Never again!

Carrentals. com allowed my to schedule a vehicle rental via advantage to be picked up at 11pm, the time at which my pregnant wife's and my flight was scheduled to land at msp. Upon arriving at the customer service desk there was a sign that read advantage is closed at 11pm. No one was available to help us. Numerous attempts to phone advantage rent a car and carrental. com yielded nothing but automated messages directing us to websites. Furthermore, my wife was feeling horrible w / pregnancy illness. We were left helpless. Even after emailing carrental. com we received a generic response lending no aid, telling us they would look into it... And refused to refund my payment. We will never use either company again and plan to spread the word so that loved ones never have to go through the same frustrating situation.

Jonathan mccabe - reservation ladp089d57ad

I booked my car using carrentals.com.
I had searched for a rental car in Hartford, Connecticut. I selected a car based on price and size and booked it online. When I landed from my flight and went to the car rental company I was surprised to find out that my car was booked in a different city 35 miles away. Hertz was great and helped me get a car, but since this was a holiday weekend and they didn't have a similar car it costs me an additional $60 for a car that could hold my kids, car seats, and luggage. The search engine does not display the city where the car is being booked. They give a street address only. Awful search engine. Next time I will definitely just book directly with the rental car company.

I wish I would have read this complaint board before trying to rent a car through CarRentals.com. I thought I had a reservation at the Cleveland Airport through Avis, but when I arrived at the Avis rental counter, the Avis rep said she did not have my reservation. When I called the Avis support number on my confirmation form, I was told my reservation was at an airport in Canada, which was a complete surprise since I have not been to Canada in 20 years. Anyway, I ended up going to several other car rental agents before I finally rented a car for $90 more than my original reservation. When I contacted CarRentals.com via e-mail as they do not post any customer support phone numbers on their website, I was told I would be compensated for the difference in cost, but so far their customer service or support has not offered me any compensation. All I can say is you are on your own if they screw up your reservation as apparently they do this a lot. Several of the rental car agents at Cleveland said rental car reservations are often routed to the wrong rental car locations when customers book through third party web sites like CarRentals.com. What frustrates me is CarRentals.com pretends to have a customer support function, but their only purpose is to avoid providing any helpful customer support.

This is a terrible company. I made a reservation online. The reservation was to pick up the rental car at DFW and return the rental car to DAL. After I made my payment I received a confirmation email which stated that I had to drop the rental back off at DFW. This was not the reservation I had made. I immediately called the car rental place and they told me I would have to pay an additional $25 drop off fee and that in order to cancel my reservation I had to call CarRentals.com. Well, CarRentals.com only deals with customers through email and there is no phone number. I immediately emailed CarRentals.com, explaining to them that my confirmation email did not reflect the reservation I had made and asked them to cancel my reservation and refund my credit card. They told they wouldn't do that even though the error was on their end. I will be contesting the charge with my credit card company.

Stay away. booked a car rental for 4 days in Liberia Costa Rica through carrentals.com. Ultimate provider was Ace Rent a Car (which in Costa Rica also operates under Toyota Rent a Car). I showed up on time only to hear that there were no cars in the lot. Lot was shared with National / Budget and a few others and my sense is that the $10.40 / day rate (vs. others at $50+/day) was a way to jam business to the agencies and resulted in overbooking. Carrentals.com suggested to contact Ace to have them resolve the issue. a bit of he said, she said, leaving a frustrated customer who will in the future book with the car rental company directly (and who incurred 4x additional charges to find alternative transportation)

Rented a car online, but pickup and drop off time was noon ( their default time) not the time we chose. When we realized the mistake the next day, it was impossible to change. No phone # to call for customer service, they just send you emails with the "rules" stating, no changes are possible and they wont hold your reservation past 2 hours from the booking time. which means they have a right to give away our car because our arrival is in the evening. What's more, the drop off is wrong too, so late charges will also apply. You just go round and round in circles and no one cares at all. Horrible waste of time, terrible customer service. Avoid CAR RENTALS.COM, go with the big name rental companies direct. This service will have you pulling out your hair in frustration. We just want to change the time of pickup and drop off that reflects our actual times that we will arrive and depart, you might as well be asking for the moon.

I rented a car from RentalCars.com for a 11 day trip to Germany late Sept/early Oct. I paid for the rental and RentalCars.com gave me a voucher to use with BuchBinder (a European rental car company) for the rental. When I went to pick up the car, BuchBinder refused to honor the voucher unless I purchased additional insurance and I was told that it was in the terms and conditions of the contract. I was given two options---fight rentalcars.com for a refund and try to rent a car elsewhere or purchase the additional insurance from BuchBinder for 300 Euro. I purchased the additional insurance rather than disrupt my vacation. After returning home, I raised the issue with RentalCars.com and they said they would investigate. They just got back to me saying that BuchBinder said that my purchase of the insurance was purely voluntary and therefore would not be refunded. I am fully convinced that this is a regular practice between these two companies constituting a significant level of fraud over the internet.

Rented a car in Munich, Germany from Buchbinder Car Rental through CarRentals.com. in September. Thought I had gotten a good price, until I tried to pick up the car, and found out that I could not decline the liability insurance (which was a whopping $272.) unless I had a Gold MasterCard. No other credit card was acceptable. I had a Gold American Express and a Gold Visa, but they wouldn't accept them. So I had to pay for liability insurance that cost more than the car rental, even though I didn't need any because my AMEX covers liability. I recommend you never book a car with Buchbinder or CarRentals.com unless you are prepared to be overcharged.

Cannot modify a reservation. No phone numbers to reach them. They hide behind pre-programmed emails. Will never use this frustrating organization ever again. Very much too aggravating to deal with them. Not worth their nonsense at any price.

I have had one of the worst customer service experiences of my life with Carrentals.com. Their customer service has been appalling and I have spent over 2 weeks trying to get a refund for a service I never received confirmation for and never actually used.

Their team has been thoroughly unhelpful and I have had to send over a dozen emails to try and resolve this. I have tried several times to get a contact address to lodge a complaint however have been constantly left to ask again. I have spoken to at least 6 different members of their team with one one seeming to take accountability for the task.

I would strongly recommend not to to use this company and instead use another provider who have more respect for their customers.