Rentalcars.com are shonky, not providing services when they have been paid for

AVOID rentalcars-dot-com – check their reviews on a range of review sites to see many people have had a similar problem to me… I didn’t believe it would happen to me, but given half the chance, it will!
Go direct to the rental company and avoid these resellers/aggregators/brokers.

I changed the collection time of my car rental 11 days prior to the rental period by phone call to a call taker I could barely hear/understand, kept dropping out, and there was a dog barking in the background. When we arrived at the time I thought was confirmed (1.5 hours after the initial collection time), the car rental company had rented the car (that was fully paid for by us through rentalcars-dot-com brokers) out to someone else: rentalcars-dot-com had not advised the car rental company of either our details or of the change of time, and had not transferred our payment to them.

We were stranded in the middle of Sweden having to try and work out how to proceed with the rest of our DRIVING holiday with no car, extremely stressful, on the phone to rentalcars-dot-com (the broker), for hours. Why do they allow a car I have paid for to be rented to someone else, and why does it matter if you arrive a few hours late? Isn’t it your disadvantage having paid for it – they are just stealing by not passing on customer information and payment to the rental company (who were helpful to us).

Despite my having contacted rentalcars-dot-com on multiple occasions to pursue a refund, they have refused. This organisation are thieves, DO NOT book a car through them, go direct to the rental company, not through a broker. Believe all the poor reviews!

Here are just a sample:
https://www.productreview.com.au/listings/rentalcars-com
https://au.trustpilot.com/review/www.rentalcars.com

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Welcome to the Community @KarenA .

Another booking site to add to the list to be avoided. :roll_eyes: :grimacing:

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Can anyone even be trusted anymore. We, all need to be our own investigator and be careful.

Your frustration is clear.

Are you aware ‘rentalcars.com’ is part of the Bookings Holdings Inc travel businesses? Eg Agoda, Bookings.com etc

What did the T&C’s related to your car rental advise? The following came up on a direct search of the relevant website. ‘https://www.rentalcars.com/TermsAndConditions.do

I’ve no direct experience of that booking service. I’ve experience of booking and making changes with several other services Bookings Holdings Inc own, their major competitor Expedia, and booking car hire direct with the big name rentals OS. Every change has always been followed up with a confirmation of the details from the business. Typically I also expect a reminder a day or so in advance of each booking, via SMS or email. Any booking changes are also evident by logging into my online account.

What does your online account reflect for the booking?

It’s difficult to understand why you needed to pay twice or the car was let go before your later arrival. How things happen in Australia it is not always exactly the same elsewhere. I’ve had one only OS experience where due to our flight delays plus on ground weather issues affecting returns, the rental company had a backlog in making vehicles available. Frustrating but a vehicle was eventually available against the original booking. I’d booked directly.

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I recently hired a car in France through Rentalcars.com. I understood the insurance excess would be about AU$3000 but I was not worried because I had good travel insurance which would cover this. When I got to the desk I was told that in fact there was zero insurance on the car and I was liable for 35,000 euros if the car was a write off because “I came from an English speaking country”. Sounded like a scam but what could I do except take the rental car company’s very expensive insurance which more than doubled the cost of the car hire. I tried to bring this to the attention of rentalcars.com hoping that others would not be effected but I just received standard letters in reply which suggested that they didn’t understand what had happened or else they didn’t care.

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