Dollar Car Rental - Philadelphia International Airport — Local services in Philadelphia

This was by far the worst experience I’ve ever had with renting a car. My wife and I travel and rent cars often and have never had such a terrible experience. Carrol who works up front was very rude and did not want to help us from the get go. We had booked our reservation through Expedia and she was looking for every reason to not give us the rental. I go by my middle name and had booked the car under my middle name and because of the name not matching my legal first name she wasn’t going to give me the rental that we had already paid for despite my card payment has my first initial, middle name and last name and all the other forms of id that have my first and middle name. Then finally when she decided to accept my id she needed our departing flight iteanrry with our name on it. Well the email with the flight information didn’t have our name, but I showed here on my phone that I could search my name and my flight confirmation number and then it would pull up my flight. I even showed her me typing my name to get my flight to come up and that it was clearly though my name but on American Airlines website it no longer showed the name once you searched the flight. She said that it needs to show the flight with my name next to it even though she saw me enter my name to get the flight to appear. I kept my cool and said I understand, but I feel like common sense is going out the window here. She then snapped and said we can speak with her manager instead and when he came in she told him that we were complaining about paying the 500 dollar debit card deposit instead of the credit card deposit of 200. THAT WAS NOT WHAT WE WERE TALKING ABOUT AT ALL! We were talking about the flight information and I told the manger right away that she was being dishonest and that was not what we were discussing at all. He was very dismissive and defended his employee and was condescending towards us. Despite all of that he was much easier to work with than Carrol and had the common sense to see that we did indeed have our flight information. We then got our car and as we approached the exit gate we let the person inspecting know that the car had a slight scratch on the driver side and she ignored us and didn’t say anything. Then we asked if we were good to go and she didn’t say anything and just nodded her head and glared at us. Not a single word. It was very unprofessional from a business to not even respond to a customer when a customer speaks to you. Everyone who works there was incredibly rude and will look for any reason to not give you your car if you booked through a third party. I have never been in a place where everyone gives me dirty looks and finds any reason not to help. I work in customer service and I look for every reason to help a customer and will even bend over backwards to find loopholes. I’d be fired from my job immediately if I behaved the way the people here did. This evidently is an attitude that is carried out all the way to management. Do not rent here...

I arrived at the rental location (PHL) around 6:45AM because online had said they were open 6am-midnight. When I walked in, both workers on duty (white male, black female) were noticeably upset they were having to take customers prior to 7am, saying they had the hours listed wrong on Google (Not my problem). I got up to thw counter and was not greeted with any kind of hospitality, rather, attitude and barely any eye contact. I was then told by the black female employee to write my social secuirty number down on this small piece of paper she ripped off somewhere (Very professional by the way). When I asked why she said she needed to eun a credit check to see if I am eligible to rent there. I have rented many cars from this location in the last 2 years and have NEVER had to provide my social. I was also paying with a debit care so I asked why they had to run a credit check over and over and was never given a reason. The check printed out and she looked at me and said "You didnt pass. You might as well go rent somewhere else and get youe money back". At this point I am becoming very frustrated and upset and the white male explained this is normal and how they do business, which I remained addement that they have NEVER run a credit check before, and STILL did not understand why they would need to when I reserved the card with my debit card and was paying the $500 deposit with my debit card. The white male then took me aside and brokenly tried to explain things. He then told me I should call customer service and get a refund, to which I vehemently denied and demanded a vehicle since Dollar had no problem processing my $443.00 over the computer to reserve the car but now all the sudden I was denied. I still.hadnt been given an explanation on the credit check either (which resulted in a 722 credit score so I dont know how much better your credit must be to rent a car with DOLLAR RENTAL, ironically). I told him I was not waiting 7-10 days for a refund and this was severely unprofessional and I demanded a vehicle. After ALL of the back and forth he asked if I has a credit card to put the security deposit hold on. He told me it would be $200. I handed him my card and he ran it, then hits me with "We ran it for $347.00 because of unpaid taxes". I did not give.my consent prior to that amount and was instead just completely caught off guard and had already been charged and at this rate. I NEEDED A CAR, so I just accepted their lazy, moronic, ridiculous reasoning and overcharges and took the damn vehicle. I will most likely never rent from Dollar Rental at PHL again, or any location for that matter, after this absurd and completely ignorant experience. They both...

I’m convinced this entire establishment is some kind of elaborate practical joke.

First, we arrived at the airport and found the car rental shuttle pickup spot. For about 45 minutes every other rental company sent at least 3 shuttles past, but no Dollar. The phone number listed was the national corporate line, so there was no way to check if we were even at the right place.

Finally a shuttle comes. We arrive to see a long, slow-moving line. When we finally get to the front, the woman informed us that it would be an extra $12 a day for our 7 day rental to add me as a driver…then hands us a receipt showing an extra fee of $189. Just a random $100 of ‘taxes and fees’ added to the $12/day fee for no reason. Also, our options for paying tolls were to rent an EZpass for $20/day, or be charged directly for the tolls themselves with an additional $7 every time tacked on you went through one. There was no option to just pay the tolls without extra fees as local toll booths don’t take cash.

Sensing the futility of continuing to argue with this lady about these insane charges, and exhausted from already being there an hour, we gave up and moved on. Time to finally go find where our car is parked and drive off! Right? No. This place makes you wait for a driver to bring the car to you. They told us to wait outside in the 40 degree weather with our six month old, since it would just be a minute. It took another 45.

We finally have our car! Nothing can go wrong now, right? We’re on our way! NOPE! We pull up to the exit gate and get told ‘something is wrong with the computer so we can’t let you out until we fix it’. At that point, about three hours in, I lost my composure slightly, and that resulted in the guy magically being able to let us out after all.

As you can see, there’s no plausible explanation for this rental car place other than that someone said ‘hey, wouldn’t it be funny if we opened a rental car center that’s intentionally designed to put people through a bureaucratic nightmare in the style of Franz Kafka?

Do not recommend unless ‘rat in a sadistic experiment’ is how you’re hoping to feel throughout your car rental experience.

Oh, and the Apple CarPlay in the rental car...