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

WORST SERVICE EVER --- NEVER EVER RENT FROM THEM!

I am making a complaint about the third time I received UNACCEPTABLE service for the third time at the Philadelphia Airport Thrifty Location.

For our first experience, we waited 30 minutes for a bus to pick us up at the airport shuttle location, and we waited in line for 1.5 hours during the afternoon. The manager encouraged us to join the "blue chip" program so that the next time we could skip the line and breeze through the rental car process because the Blue Chip program would do all of the standard questions/payments upfront during our reservation before arriving. We joined the Blue Chip Program after that trip.

For our second experience, we waited 30 minutes for a bus to pick us up at the airport shuttle location, and despite me being a Blue Chip member, they refused to honor the "Blue Chip program" because my wife made the reservation. They told us that Blue Chip Program must have the person who made the reservation, the credit card, and the blue-chip account linked to the same person, or else Thrifty would not provide the "breeze through the process."

For the third experience (last night), we arrived at the rental car shuttle stand and never saw a Thrifty bus for 25 minutes. We saw Budget, Hertz, and National rental car buses multiple times (3+ each). We used google maps and saw that the Budget Rental Car location was closest and decided to ride that bus. We had to walk 15 minutes from the Budget Rental Car location to the Thrifty Location when we arrived.

Ultimately, saw a line with 40-50 people and only one person checking people in. We saw the blue-chip line and went there. I made the reservation, used my credit card, and I am the one who has the blue-chip account, so based on previous experiences, we should be good to go to "breeze" through the line based on the perks of the "Blue Chip" Program. When I was in line, the lady checking people in looked at me and said, "we do not do Blue Chip here." I calmly asked why not, given there is a "blue chip line?" She replied, "because when we have a line of 30+ people, we do not honor the program." I asked to speak with a manager, and he expressed we are short-staffed; therefore, we cannot honor the "blue-chip program." I've attached a screenshot of the Blue Chip program.

We waited in line for 2 hours and finally got a vehicle. The check-in process took 2 minutes, given I had done all of the items before during reservation. Additionally, for the 2 hours, we were at Thrifty, we never saw a Thrifty Bus make an airport run. Therefore from 9:35 - 11:55, they never ran a bus. BE AWARE that you may be stranded if you ever rent from that thrifty location.

I say all of this to express that I've learned my lesson after three bad experiences to never rent from Thrifty again. I would consider extending that to their parent company Hertz, but I have not rented from them; therefore, I have to reserve judgment until I have a first-hand experience with that location. I would encourage anyone between Thrifty and any other company at the Philadelphia airport to always go with the...

AVOID! Thrifty will STEAL money from you by adding false charges as long as they have your credit card number and a signature. NOTICE IN THEIR COPY AND PASTE APOLOGY BELOW, THEY STILL WOULDN'T OFFER ANY WAY TO CORRECT THIS. The two of us rented a car, and without even giving us the option of one or two drivers, they put us both down as drivers. They said they'd need both of our credit cards so I provided mine as well and said I'd have no charges on my card other than a $200 security deposit which would be refunded when the vehicle is returned. I came to find out that they charged me $117.60 after we returned the vehicle. I called to find out what this was for and they told me it was a secondary driver fee even though there was absolutely no mention of this when we picked up the vehicle and it wasn't even something we wanted, needed or even used. I called to dispute this with two different people, and they both told me they were not authorized to give refunds, but they also would not put me through to anyone that is authorized. One even told me that the mistake was caused by the branch we rented the car from, so they inadvertently admitted it was their mistake. She told me I'd need to call that specific location to dispute it. I was quick to point out that this is just an obvious tactic to give me the runaround as I called the number provided for that branch to begin with so if I were to hang up and call that number, it would just loop me back to the call center again to which she quickly tried to change the subject. They even refused to transfer me directly to that branch or provide me with a direct number, which is a huge red flag that this is all part of their strategy designed to take your money. This large company would rather STEAL an extra $117.60 from a customer than to make more off of a return customer or a good recommendation. EDIT: Two weeks later now I found out they are billing me for an additional charge. When we picked up the car, we opted not to pay for their EZ pass option as we were only going to pass a few $1 tolls along the way. At the first toll, the toll booth attendant advised us that the EZ pass on the windshield was open and had scanned. He said he could not undo this and advised us to close it for future tolls (We picked up the car at night so we did not notice it was left open) When we returned the vehicle, we were honest with the attendant and told him what happened. He said to not worry about it, and we'd simply be charged $1 through thrify instead of paying at the toll, which was perfectly reasonable. Come to find out, this was a lie, and two weeks later, I received a bill for $82.49 for this $1 toll. This rental company is disgusting. I'm still attempting to correct this as it is completely deceitful. UPDATE: I was able to get the 82.49 ez pass charge knocked down to $1, but only by agreeing to have my name be on some sort of bizarre Thrifty "naughty list" that they keep on customers even though I did nothing wrong. Fine with me as we will never...

Another edit, still noone has contacted me after 4 MONTHS.

Edit: nearly 2 months later and I STILL have not been refunded for the excess charges!!!

Absolutely horrid experience. STAY AWAY. This place deserves a 0. I believed the good reviews on expedia. I booked direct because the price was less than expedia. I did not see any of the reviews here or on Yelp or never would have used them. They will try and take advantage of you. They refused to honor a PREPAID quote and the customer service is useless.

I booked and paid 3 weeks in advance. My credit card was hacked the day prior to pickup, and I did not have my physical card anymore since the bank changed it. After explaining politely and hoping they would work with me, (this situation was out of my hands) they refused to do the same price for using debit. I do not know how they could not just switch the amount to my other card, which is a common buisness practice. The counter rep gave up and told me to call customer service because there was no manager on duty that day. Because I now had to use a debit they made me redo the entire reservation which defeated the purpose of even having a reservation. There was also a debit deposit which I did not know about. When they gave me a new price over the phone they acted very deceptive and lied and did not say the deposit was on top (I assumed it was included) bringing a rental charge of around 200 up to 800 and over 1300 after the deposit!!!!!

I felt pressured to take the car only because I was running over an hour and a half late to meet my boyfriend after months of him being stationed on the East Coast.

I even drove all the way back the next day. The store manager only met me about half way on the price because he would have to explain to his boss. The price he gave still was not satisfactory considering everything that happened so I called the customer service line a day later. The customer service line was once again useless and also refused to help honor the initial price, after spending several hours trying to reach call center management. They route all calls through an overseas call center and I could not find any corporate contact information. I think they make it very hard to reach corporate because they must have a lot of problems like this.

I filed a complaint with the FTC for poor buisness/deceptive practices. I may also file a cfpb complaint. I have also not received my full refund for the amount that went to my credit card yet. Hours of my time wasted on this.

I should have used enterprise from the beginning as I have worked with them a lot when I worked at an auto repair shop and have never had an issue with customer service. Next time I come to the east coast I might even just drive 3k miles as this experience ruined the start of my trip and wasted my money and my time with my boyfriend since I've had to deal with this. I had to extend my trip to make more time. This is honestly going to make me very paranoid about renting cars in the future from...