Avis Car Rental — Local services in Philadelphia

Update: Avis corporate refunded me the extra costs I didn't want and apologised, 2 stars for that at least. In a nutshell, I had trouble with booking online (via booking.com) for the rental, when I arrived I saw the rental didn't go through, not their fault so I asked if I could just book at the desk then and there and the lady was fine with it, though she was very robotic.

So I went through the normal procedure, I was not asked about insurance options or coverage, I wasn't given a quote or anything, I was told $872 will be taken from my Debit Card today (including 250 deposit) so I worked out myself this was 622 in total fo 10 days, not the best price but I know you get charged more if you're not a US resident. I accepted it, with my Fiance waiting for me to sort it out, I am then shoved a rental agreement in my face saying "estimated charges of $1410", before I sign it I ask her to clarify the amount is $872 not this, she assures me this is an estimate. I then read it and it says I accepted full coverage for insurance which I was never offered, I asked if this has been added she said it comes with the Rental Agreement, now maybe was confusion here but I have booked a dozen Rentals in my lifetime process has always been the same and I am ALWAYS asked in detail about all the coverage options, and I am always given a receipt of the charges and if I don't understand it is always explaind to me. This didn't occur on this occaision.

Anyway the problem began when I tried to check into my Hotel believing I had enough money to pay for my hotel on my card and it was declined, I checked my Bank App to see a $1363 charge from Avis! Just under $500 more than I was expecting to pay, so I had to use my Fiance card to pay and faff around paying $4 in fees just to book the hotel properly.

Next day I rang up to try sort this out and clarify it, this is when it was confirmed by an agent (who was as robotic and unhelpful as the original customer service agent) that I was charged full coverage that is why I paid the amount. She told me I could not have it sorted out until when I returned the car, I was not going to wait 9 days to get the money I am overpaying for back so I said I am going to drive 50 miles from Allentown back to the Rental and sort it out. I also asked for a copy of the receipt to be emailed again (it didn't arrive) so I range up later and the same thing was confirmed by the agent, that I was best off asking for a Manager.

Final part of the experience which confirms the 1 star review is when I returned it I went straight in and asked for a Manager, after asking twice the guy came along I explained my situation, he just wanted to void it and allow me to pay what I actually wanted for point of sale, I was fine with this, not intending to rent again, the lady who sold me it then went on blathered on about some nonsense about offering me the option of coverage that she did absolutely not offer me and she couldn't even work the computer the fix it, and then saw 2 other customers ahead of me making me wait 15 minutes longer. Finally when it was all sorted they said to charge me the 2 days with full coverage making up some nonsense saying cos I drove it for 2 days I should pay full coverage, when the car was returned in perfect condition and I never had any reason to make a claim. Again I argued and they removed $130 in charges (but not the prepaid gas the manager had offered to void) so I paid a grand total of $217.41 to rent a Chevy Malibu out for 2 days, so that is a $108.71 a day, I said "I feel ripped off" and instead of an apology the women had the absolute cheek to say "Ripped off?!" in a dismissive and insulted manner! Like seriously, I worked in CSA in the past if I knew a customer felt like this I would apologise even if I had 0 power to do more, in fact come to think about it, I got 0 apologies from any of them at the Car Rental.

Summarise - Worst customer experience of my life. I went down the road to Sixt and I was treated like an actual customer, advise all to avoid this place in the...

So if anyone actually cares about context, we had a critical event to attend up in upstate New York and our plan flight got rebooked such that if we had gone through with the rebooked flight, we would have missed it entirely. We ended up deciding to book a slightly fancy rental with AVIS after some frantic price-searching and figuring out what would be viable, reasonably affordable in our emergency, and easy to pickup and return at our destination not at an airport. We went through with renting from here and returning it at our final destination the next day after driving for 5 hours of late-night driving. Ok, great plan.

So, we get off our plane flight shortly after 9pm. Less a fault of AVIS and more of the airport - it was very difficult for us to figure out where the terminal was to get a shuttle to get to the rental cars. No big deal, we did get it figured out.

When we get to the AVIS building, there is already a line of ~10 people in front of us. Not initially surprised since our flight had just arrived and there seemed to be other arrivals too, fine. Here's where my anecdote starts - we were waiting for around 45 minutes. There was a customer who lost her driver's license and therefore couldn't rent a car period until someone either found it or she found an alternative transportation route. There's a customer who brought their military ID and also forgot to bring their driver's license, and the line hardly moves at all for the first 30 minutes we were there. The stations only had one staff member who was trying her best to grapple with all of this chaos with nobody else around to help (bless her poor unfortunate soul). Another staff member eventually came in later and helped get the line moving - finally.

When we eventually do get to the register to pick up our car, long story short it was significantly more complicated than our prior experiences at Enterprise at other airports. Even though we had done the "pre-register" or whatever process online, we still had to repeat some of the information input. Mind you by now it is around 9:45p, we have 5 hours of driving through the night to do. We truly DO NOT care about the little things, we JUST WANT A CAR to start moving to our destination so we can arrive before 4am. By now I had been awake since 5am and had worked a shift earlier in the day and I wasn't keen on functionally pulling an all-nighter in addition to that. It felt like an eternity of filling out information and reading off what I got in a confirmation email for a reservation I had made hours earlier. Of course, I recognize that the employees have to follow a process to get what they need, it just seemed needlessly redundant outside of confirming my identity/payment information. That's not to even mention anything about the price, which was higher than what I was promised in the confirmation email, though at that point, again, we DID NOT CARE. WE JUST WANTED TO START DRIVING. Fine, WHATEVER JUST LET ME GO!

Finally, when we get our way too fancy Lincoln car, it is so difficult to figure out how to drive it. Granted my partner and I both drive very basic cars at home (i.e 5-10yr old base model honda pilot and toyota camry, so literally nothing fancy) so a car with all these weirdly placed buttons below the touch screen to put the car into drive are very foreign to us. It probably took us 10 minutes just to get out of the parking lot between that, the checkout process at the gated exit, and figuring out all the weird lights that would automatically adjust and we initially couldn't figure out why. WHY DO CAR MANUFACTURERS DO THIS?? WHY MUST IT BE SO DIFFICULT TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO DRIVE THESE FANCY CARS??? We finally got out of the exit around 10p.

Anyway I drove us through the night to upstate New York, we did at least finally arrive around 3am. After figuring out how to work with the car's whacko configurations. The return location was much better. AVIS - STAFF THIS LOCATION BETTER PLEASE!!!!...

I was second in line to check out with my vehicle at the Philadelphia airport Avis exit booth. As the car in front of me pulled up to the gate to exit. The Avis lady working in the booth by herself started cursing. Repeating the phrase this is effed up, cursing out loud as she left the booth and walked past my car to head to the main center. I waited about five minutes. The cars begin to back up behind me. When I noticed there was a line of about five cars behind me and no one working the booth. I decided to go into the main office. I notified the only Avis employee working on the inside that there was no one at the gate to let us check out and cars Attempting to gate out head backed up across the lot. The Avis employee made a phone call, hung up and kindly told me that someone would be out to the gate shortly.

On my return walk back from the main office to my car. The disgruntled Avis lady exited at the same time carrying her lunch. We walked together back to the gate about 6 feet away from each other. I said hello, she gave no response. I repeatedly said hello, she gave no response only angry, glaring eyes toward me. Having employees myself, I had compassion for her, because you never know what someone is going through personally, to make them snap like that. Looking directly at her only a few feet away I asked her if she was having a rough day. She glared at me again with no response, or even a head nod. It was very surreal. I repeated the same question clearly, just in case she did not understand.

At this time, I figured it was best to leave her alone. I knew she was upset but now with her look of distaste toward me with no verbal or other form of body language communication she appeared to be upset with me as well.

As we approached the gate, the lady in the car in front of me thanked me for getting help. During my trip to the main office, a customer lady in the first car Exited and spoke to my wife that she was very confused. It was her first time using the Avis app. She told my wife, when she pulled up to the gate, she told the lady that she had no paperwork only the app. The angry Avis lady said this is effed up and walked away.

At this time, The angry Avis lady is back in the gate booth. I re-entered my vehicle and explained to my wife that I did not know what was wrong with her, but she is hot as fish grease! And if she wasn’t so tiny in stature, I would’ve felt threatened for my safety by her body language.

She checked out the car in front of me. As I pulled up to her I wanted to say something to her about her extreme rudeness. But I thought it best not to speak to someone that unhinged who has my Drivers License in their hand. I felt angry and embarrassed to be treated like this in front of my wife and kids.

At this time a younger Avis male employee calmly entered the booth and apologized to her. Wow, at least she talk to him, I thought to myself. She repeated the words,” Y’all real slick” over and over again to his repeated, apologies to her.

He took over the exit transaction calmly and kindly apologized to me for any inconveniences while she never acknowledged me, or even looked my way. She took her lunch and exited the gate as...