Fox Rent A Car Burbank — Attraction in Burbank

(Originally a 5-star review in 2021) Helen is an incredible asset to your team!! Due to previous experiences with Fox I was dreading the pick up process, but there was no wait and Helen is literally the kindest rental car agent I’ve ever encountered, and I’ve encountered hundreds!!

CJ was great when I dropped the vehicle off, as was Stephan when I asked if Helen was in so we could say goodbye before flying out. You have great people in Burbank!! 👏🏼 Please let them know their kindness is much appreciated!! Thank you!

12/21/22 Well, that was then, this is now. Took 5 star review down to a 2 star. 😢 I’m sad to have to edit my review, but want to warn others after my experience yesterday. Expect an upcharge if you arrive 6 hours + later than original booking, EVEN if you call and CLEARLY communicate with this corporation about your delayed arrival. 🙄 But they won’t warn you of that when you call, they just assure you that they’ve noted your adjusted arrival time in your reservation. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Initially, we had reserved a car for 11:45a, but needed to arrive later to adjust for a family member we were meeting. I called Fox to inform them of my later arrival and they noted the reservation, but I wanted confirmation that the van would be there or I wanted to make back up plans, so he requested a call from this location. I received the call and informed the gentleman (Scott) that our later flight was delayed and asked if the van would still be available, to which he replied yes.

Our flight takes off and once the flight attendants began service, the pilot came over the PA to inform us that they had a malfunction and we were heading back to Phoenix. So our day was already delayed and we arrived to Fox car rental within 2 hours of the time I adjusted our arrival to when I called corporate earlier. The gentleman working the booth basically told me since it was beyond the 6 hours of my ORIGINAL booking, if I wanted the Toyota Sienna that I’d have to pay an additional $120 for our 2 1/2 day rental. 😲 Seriously? I told him I communicated with his company and they assured me the vehicle would be waiting for us. It was his inconsistency that bothered me. He said if I arrived within the 6 hours we would have gotten the Sienna for no additional charge. Plus, he was willing to let us take the vehicle if we paid the additional $120, even though he claimed they had customers who prepaid for the remaining vehicles. I asked, “If i pay the additional and take the Sienna, what will you do when the customers who prepaid arrive?” He said, “I’ll figure something out.” Shady, man!!

This company’s team effort does NOT foster loyalty, unfortunately. 👎🏼

Because of this Fox guy’s shady inconsistency, I just booked another car with Thrifty and saved even more, but because of all the time he wasted, we missed eating dinner where we wanted to eat....

The Good: The car was nice. Also clean. The return process was also pretty easy.

The bad: Hooboy. Here we go. First and foremost, I booked this through Avelo -- which was actually a nice budget airline. I figured it'd be cool to just get it all done in one go.

When we landed, we made our way to the kiosk. Waited for a few minutes for service. Was greeted by one employee, then turned over to another -- Taher.

At first, Taher asked us where we were from, why we were visiting, etc. Seemed like nice chit chat. Then he proceeded to tell us that he lived where we currently live and how much he hated it. Kind of off putting, but I chalked it up to honesty.

After that, he informed us that we were NOT getting the 4 door sedan (or equivalent) we were told we would get upon booking. So he offered us a big van. And that was all that was available -- until miraculously he could put us in a Charger or Challenger -- which we did not want at all. He tried REALLY hard to get us into one of those because they obviously don't get rented much.

Out of the blue, he somehow managed to dig up a 4Runner. Still bigger than I wanted and worse on gas than I wanted, but it was the best option of the bunch.

Then he got into pushy sales mode. I gave in and bought the insurance, but he was trying to push pre-paid gas, and I just kind of shut down after a while realizing that every word out of his mouth was going to be more product or service to push.

The last thing was trying to offer coverage for my wife as a driver, and we already knew she would not be driving, so I declined. After attempting the pitch again, I said, "If she needs to get somewhere, and I'm not around, she can grab an uber," to which he sneered and replied, "Seriously...?" So I looked him in the eye and said, "Yeah, seriously." I think he could tell that was the end of the conversation.

I know some sales managers LOVE reviews like this because it means their sales people are pushing hard, but I hope consumers see this as a tale of caution. I have used services like Turo before and figured I'd take a chance on a company, and this will be the last time I do that. Turo all the way from now on from private renters.

It saves me money AND time to go that way. I'd be happy to pay extra for the service, but apparently, Fox makes me pay extra for BAD service. It's this kind of stuff that's going to pull the rug out from industries like this.

I mean, if you can't make me feel good about spending the extra cash, why on earth would I ever rent from a rental company again?

Thanks, Taher. You single-handedly ensured that I will always rent privately -- thus saving me time, money,...

This was the last time I will ever rent from Fox. I had to extend my trip by a couple of days so I talked to a representative on the chat site and they said it would be about an additional $90 if I extended the rental vs going back to the airport for a new rental so I opted to return my rental and pick up the new car (same car class) instead to save around $90. The morning of the switch I called Fox and asked if it would be ok to do the car exchange early (my rental time was 8 pm it was about 1:30) they told me yes no problem since I was getting the same type of car. So I go to the airport to exchange my car and told the checkout person I would be right back I have another rental! She said ok sounds good you can even leave your stuff in the car! She checked me out and was attempting to be helpful. When I went to pickup the car the representative said he can’t approve the early pickup without charging an additional $90…this was in total contradiction to what I was told on the phone. Then his manager came out and said the same thing. So I said fine I’ll just keep my original car until 8 and come back (since I’ve already paid for it) and they said no because it’s already checked out and they can’t check it in again…the girl upstairs shouldn’t have checked you out. So they’re contradicting your phone reps, then trying to throw the checkout person upstairs under the bus, then saying I’m out of luck until 8 pm despite having 2 car reservations for the same car. One of which I had paid for and was still within my time. The “manager” just kept saying she can’t choose a button that isn’t blue on her screen. She was incredibly rude and didn’t want to even attempt to try to help and problem solve. The obvious solution would’ve been to make a note in the system of the situation and do the car exchange at 8 pm but she was acting like she can’t do anything at all and her behavior and attitude were awful. We ended up renting from another company and we won’t be renting from Fox again. I never got to pick up my new reservation and I was cheated out of the remaining time on my original rental because of the lack of communication and systems of this company.

To the company credit the billing department issued me a refund but the service counter at the airport was extremely rude! No need to wonder why they have such a low rating. The incompetence...