Alert! Advantage will scam you.
Written: Feb 15 '05
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Product Rating:
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Pros: None
Cons: Hundreds of testimonies online prove that Advantage are making illegal credit card charges frequently.
The Bottom Line: Keep your credit card in your wallet!
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| disadvantage's Full Review: Advantage Rent-A-Car |
As a Hertz ***** No 1. Club member I should definitely know better.
A long awaited vacation to Cancun turned out to be, and still is, an ongoing rent a car nightmare. My girlfriend and I went to Cancun a week before christmas. Because Hertz and Avis was extremely expensive, I looked at Expedia.com to find a cheaper option. First hit was, to me unknown, Advantage rent a car. I went to their own website and found an offer that was too good to be true, A full-size for 79 USD for a week, including insurance. I booked it and got a confirmation e-mail. 2 days later, I got an e-mail saying they cancelled my reservation, there was no reason for it. I called them and after a lot of calls back and forth I finally got a new confirmation.
On the departure day, I called from O’Hare to make sure the reservation was still good. They were going to call Cancun, and I was to call them back on our stopover in Charlotte. I called and they confirmed the car was ready for me.
On arrival in Cancun, there was no car. The guy was dealing around the airport and the only thing he could offer was a Chevrolet Chevy, a supermini compact car.
We were tired, so we accepted that car instead of the Stratus we booked. It was tainted, smelly with dents and definitely needed a tune up. The chart with dents contained about 25 arrows to previous damages made to the car.
It was pitch dark outside their shady office with no furniture, computers or signs about 5 miles from where the other rent a car companies at the airport was, There was no light, so I could just register that the car was messed up an absolutely no gas in it!
I guess I was an idiot for signing the papers, a blank credit card slip and accepting the 30 USD a day (!) Lost Damage Waiver, knocking down my liability to 10% of the cars value. So, rent was 79 USD, Insurance 180. (so not a LDW like it says online, a blanc check to rip you off for 10% of the car.)
(I thought, "this is an American company, they are not going to cheat me, but just in case, I’ll put it on my company card")
After a week in this car, we were happy and tanned returning to Chicago on Christmas eve. At the airport, a guy who didn’t speak English, was waiting for us. He looked at the car and pointed to a little scratch under the bumper in front of the car. I tried to tell him, that nothing happened to the car in my horrible Spanish, no dice. He went inside to call the boss. I talked to him on the phone, he was going to come over and straighten the whole thing out. After 15 minutes he was dropped off. He looked at the car and said "that little scrape is new" He called his boss and the agreed i owed them 200 USD. I obviously objected, a well dressed local then came up to me and asked what was going on. I told him, and he said: we’ve had many problems with this company, cancel your credit card and go home. The Advantage employee then offered me to pay 100, if not, he wouldn’t give me back the credit card stub that I had signed. After a lot of arguing, the advantage man screamed, “if you don’t pay us a 100 dollars, I will call the police and make sure you don’t come home alive!!!” In front of my girlfriend and 2 Mexican witnesses!
We were about to miss out flight home on Christmas eve, and I signed for 100 USD to get the hell outta there. I took pictures of the car and got the business card of the gentleman who helped me, so I was pretty sure I would get a refund.
I couldn’t be more wrong.
I wrote a complaint to Advantage customer service, two days later, I get my credit card bill. They had charged me 200, not the 100 I signed for!
Today I get my reply from Advantage, 6 weeks after I sent the complaint with a copy of my credit card statement from Visa.
They are not giving me any refunds! They had talked to the Cancun office, the car was damaged and they hadn’t charged me 200, they had charged a 100.
They didn’t believe me even if I have a credit card bill from visa that confirms that they had charged me twice as much as agreed on. They didn’t want to talk to the witness or see the pictures of the car. They had made up their mind: Their people was telling the truth, Visa and I were lying!
If anyone wants to see the correspondence with advantage, you can. You won’t believe it till you see it!
Now I have looked around the net for facts about this company. You find complaints about all rent a car companies, but with advantage, you will find hundreds of testimonies about customer who have been fraudulently charged on their credit card.
They are counting on me to give up, since the amount is so low, forget it, for the first time I have a quest: I’m going to do all I can so everyone are warned about this shady company. I’m going to get that 100 dollars back and donate it to The Red Cross.
My advice: Spend the extra money on Hertz or Avis. This company is a huge scam
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
disadvantage
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Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 0 members
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