Routes Car Rental
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Don't rent from these people
I am editing my review, primarily because it consisted merely of name calling and wasn't constructive. Nor was it entirely fair; after all, as far as I know, no one lied to me. I will leave my one star review to stand, because zero stars is not an option. I will also detail what happened here, so that others can read it and be suitably warned to not use this company to rent a vehicle. I am not going to send this account in a private email to the company, to be dealt with outside public view. I contracted with this company on 17 March to rent a vehicle. They charged my credit card $447.13 for the rental fee. When I appeared on 20 March at the local branch of Routes Car Rental (Leitrim & Albion) to pick up the vehicle, I was informed that I had to provide a $1,500.00 security hold for the vehicle. I've rented vehicles before from other car rental agencies. Never before have I been asked for a security hold so high. The email the company sent me confirming the rental did not mention the security hold would be so high, or any security hold at all. Because I didn't anticipate this, there wasn't room on my credit card to satisfy the security hold and the rental couldn't proceed. I told the young lady at the rental location that I wanted to cancel the reservation; she told me she couldn't do that and that I should contact the company's customer care line (please note that I will refrain from anything derogatory such as putting the words customer care in sarcastic quotation marks). I was on hold for 20 minutes. While I was on hold, another gentleman arrived to pick up his rental vehicle; I overheard that the security hold for his vehicle was $500, not $1,500. Eventually, I spoke to a person at your customer care line; I told them I wanted to cancel my reservation. They asked a few questions, and then said they would transfer my call to someone who could help me. They transferred me to the young lady at the rental location...the young lady who was right in front of me and had already told me she couldn't do anything. I tried calling customer care again, and couldn't get through. So I sent customer care an email through the interface on their website, asking to cancel my reservation. I instantly got a notification saying that a ticket had been created. Two days later, I got a reply from customer care saying that because my credit card had been declined, the rental was considered expired and I could not get a refund. There was no expression of apology or regret -- just a statement that this was company policy and that they were going to follow it. Sucks to be me. I was angry and replied, "See you in court." They replied that they stand by their published policies. Again, there was no expression of regret or remorse. Since I couldn't rent from your company, I arranged a rental from another company for a similar vehicle. Please note that the security hold for this vehicle was less than the one your company charged. How much less? The security hold was $300. Not $300 less. Just $300. Your security hold for a similar vehicle was FIVE TIMES the size of the security hold another agency charged me. Had your security hold been $300 instead of $1,500, I would have had no trouble fitting it on my credit card. Please be advised that I will be contacting legal counsel to determine if Routes' customer care practice of trying to delay giving a refund in a timely manner, both by misdirecting my initial phone call and then by waiting two days to reply to my email, constitutes some kind of predatory business practice and whether or not if I make a claim in small claims court I may have a decent chance of winning a judgement against the company. Regardless, please also be advised that I intend to put negative reviews of your company on every possible review site that I can find. I've paid for the privilege, after all.