Apex Car Rentals Australia
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This seems like a scam company
Rented a car for 3 days, caught COVID on the third day and had to isolate for a week, couldn't drop off the car. Followed advice on the Apex website to the letter, tried to contact. Tried calling customer contact number and corporate for 3 hours (within business hours), no answer at any point on any number. Sent emails to advise that I would follow their website's instructions, which stated that Apex would arrange to collect the car ASAP. Got a call the next day from the person at the depot asking why I hadn't dropped off the car; no communication had happened. I advised them of the situation and they charged me a week extra on the spot without advising me of what they were doing. I did not agree to anything and they did not explain anything, beyond asking when my flight had been rescheduled to. I got a bank notification and called them back, they didn't believe that they needed to collect the car and asked me to walk them through their website to find where the COVID policies were located. They then defended charging me more on the basis that they couldn't rent out the car, and that the website didn't explicitly say they couldn't charge extra, and they had no staff avaliable to collect it anyway. They insisted they couldn't reverse the fee and it would have to go through management. They refused to give me contact details for management, saying they had already contacted them. At the same time as the initial phone call from the depot received one email from someone at customer contact asking what rental ID I had, which I answered, and have now had no response since, despite follow-up emails asking for an explanation of the situation. If the depot did actually contact their manager, then the radio silence lines up with when the depot contacted them. While dealing with COVID I had to safeguard their car for them for a week and drop it off, contrary to what their website said would be the case. They were supposed to collect it, and I had to change travel plans again to drop their car off for them, despite their website saying they would collect it in the event of COVID. I continued trying to contact and two weeks later I have still not received any return contact from anyone, and the only staff member I can reach insists that it's not their problem, I have to talk to management via the generic email address they've now given me, despite not having gotten a single response and still not gotten through to anyone on the phone. I've not gotten my bond back despite the car being returned in perfect condition (certainly nothing to explain why the bond might not have been returned), and am out of pocket nearly $750 on top of the initial rental fee, because there is apparently nobody to contact if they decide to ignore their own website, charge extra for no reason or not pay back a bond for no reason. I later realised that I should not have been charged the bond, because I live interstate and the bond only applies to people living in-state. If I hadn't gotten a car, I would have sworn this was some kind of shell company, given how impossible it is to reach anyone. Nobody answers the phone, nobody responds to emails, nobody follows up voicemail messages on the rare occasion the voicemail systems are turned on. I regret not going for a more reputable rental company, because this has now cost me WAY more time and money than anything the more established companies charge. Even a taxi across the state would have been cheaper. Very glad that I recorded all conversations with the one person I did speak to there, so I can continue following up and hopefully get my money back. Recommend you don't use Apex, but if you must, record EVERYTHING. They will apparently scam you. But seriously, go for the more expensive companies. It'll be much cheaper if anything goes wrong.