Despite all the car rental brands, there are only really three major car rental brands: Hertz, Avis Budget and Enterprise. Hertz owns Dollar, Thrifty and Firefly. Avis owns Avis and Budget. Enterprise owns National and Alamo. Sixt is a mid-size (at least in the US) car rental company. Avis also owns Payless but that’s a little bit of a different situation as those are mostly franchises. I’ll get back to that. Outside of those, most rental car companies you’ll run into are discount car rentals. These include NU, Easirent, Fox, Green Motion, Europcar, Mex, Ace among others. Some like Fox and Ace have been around for a while but some others may come and go. Some of these may not even consider themselves discount car rental agencies but they are usually cheaper (sometimes much cheaper) than the name brands. Whenever there’s a situation like that, you have to ask yourself “what the catch” and/or “how are they not putting these other companies out of business?
Let’s consider this scenario: you need a car of any type of 3 days in Orlando. If you look on Priceline, you’ll see that the cheapest car is $91. You have to scroll past about 30 more cars from various discount agencies until you get to the first listing for a major car rental agency which is Alamo. That price is $182 for an economy car. In other words, there are about 30 something cars ranging from a premium car, standard SUV, mid-size car, standard pick up, compact car and others that are less than that economy car from Alamo. So again you have to ask: “what gives?”.
Well in the opinion of a lot of people, what gives are horrible cars and hidden charges. I am sure there are some people that rent from these discount car rental agencies without an issue but those people seem to be in the minority. I’ll admit that in general, most people don’t exactly love any car rental agencies to begin with but let’s look at the reviews of these companies on Trust Pilot.
-Ace Car Rental, 1.4 stars
ACE Rent A Car Reviews | Read Customer Service Reviews of acerentacar.com (trustpilot.com)
Many people mention that this is a scam company that has a ton of fine print and hidden charges that pop up after you turn the car in.\
-Fox Rent a car, 4.4 stars
Fox Rent a Car Reviews | Read Customer Service Reviews of www.foxrentacar.com (trustpilot.com)
Most people had good things to say although a number of people mentioned that the cars were not cleaned properly. Some people mentioned that the location was not convenient because it was off airport.
-NU Car Rentals, 3.0 stars
NU Car Rentals Reviews | Read Customer Service Reviews of www.nucarrentals.com (trustpilot.com)
The reviews with this company are mixed but a lot of people mentioned that the customer service is really bad and that they had trouble trying to dispute charges or getting refunds. Some people also feel like they were scammed but this seems to vary by location.
-Europcar, 2.8
Europcar Reviews | Read Customer Service Reviews of www.europcar.com (trustpilot.com)
A number of people complained about being billed for fake damages to the car.
-Payless, 1.8
Payless Car Rental Reviews | Read Customer Service Reviews of www.paylesscar.com (trustpilot.com)
Lots of complaints about fraudulent charges and poorly maintained cars. Although this is owned by Avis, my personal opinion is that these issues arise because of the franchise owners. Since it is not managed by corporate, it shouldn’t even be considered as part of Avis for purposes of this discussion.
-Easirent, 2.8
Easirent Reviews | Read Customer Service Reviews of www.easirent.com (trustpilot.com)
Lots of complaints about fraudulent charges and poorly maintained cars.
I think you get the point so I’m not going to go through every little company. For comparison purposes, Hertz gets 4.4, Dollar gets 2.8 and Thrifty gets 3.7. Enterprise gets 2.2, National gets 1.9 and Alamo gets 2.1. Avis gets 1.3 and gets 1.3. Sixt gets 1.3. So wait, what’s the point of this now if almost all of them are bad?
Well the devil is in the details. You have to look through the reviews. A number of them are people complaining about what happened in other countries and I will admit that renting a car in foreign countries with just about any car rental agency can be tough. A lot of the complaints were about other issues such as bad customer service or cars not being available. So while most people are upset with just about every car rental company, the complaints are different.
I have rented hundreds of cars from the major brands and I have never had a situation where I thought I was scammed. I’ve also found almost all of the cars to be clean and in working order. If some of these companies were scamming people, I think my luck would have run out at some point by now. Most people are going to go to a review site like Trust Pilot to leave a complaint and some people just don’t understand how the industry works so they’re gonna get upset. I like to look at common issues and the common issues I see with almost all of these discount car rental agencies are bad cars and fraudulent charges.
Regardless of what rental car company you choose, be sure to book on Expedia or Priceline via Rakuten. In other words, go to Rakuten first and then choose either Expedia or Priceline. Rakuten will give you cash back on your rental. If you’re not a member, you can get $30 for free by using this link: www.rakuten.com/r/JEFTRA4 If you do not use this link, you’ll only get $10 when you sign up. Your support is always appreciated.