A horror story how an elderly Aussie tourist was ripped off with his car hire experience at Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage July 2017, by Thrifty Car Rental.
Armed with my Rentalcars.com Pre Paid voucher for a Hertz Chevrolet Malibu for 16 days, I alight from the hotel courtesy coach in full view of the rental car hall and for some unknown reason I unfortunately ended up in front of the Thrifty Car Rental desk confronted by the rudest, most arrogant person I have ever encountered. To my defence, Hertz were not located in this section and being still a little jet lagged from the long flight from Australia and a little disorientated I made a very bad mistake. It’s not that I was not aware of the car company I had reserved, as I had visited the Hertz office in town the day before to arrange an earlier pickup.
Instead of redirecting me around the corner to the Hertz office, he proceeded to interrogate me on the validity of my document, first stating I should have been there the day before, then changing it to “it’s for next month”. By this time I started to panic, as this was the start of our 6 week holiday around Alaska all I could think about was, ‘how much more has been stuffed up’. When I mentioned I’d reserved a Malibu or similar, he barked back to me I could only have a Corolla or Camry. Thinking this was as good as it gets I said a Camry thinking this must be there “or similar”. He then said you’re getting a Corolla and projected the keys across the desk where they came to a halt in front of me. His attitude was the height of arrogance. The voucher clearly stated it included CDW,TPL,TP,SLI, airport charges, local taxes,vehicle registration fees and unlimited kilometres. This apparently meant nothing to him and he proceeded to charge me for the above and much more. By this time I was in full panic and I became quite disorientated and just wanted to get out of there and on the road. He demanded I initial and sign things I stupidly didn’t understand and as by this time there was a line behind me I left, still not knowing I had a Thrifty car.
I arrived back to the hotel to collect Ros and the luggage for the drive to Denali and noticed how filthy the car was, so I took some photos for later reference.
While in Denali I decided to contact Hertz to say I was not happy with the Corolla and could I get the car I reserved from the fairbanks airport office to which they agreed.
When I handed over the rental agreement to the Hertz staff in Fairbanks for the change over, I was told that it was a Thrifty contract and that I had a Thrifty car NOT a Hertz.
This completely threw me and I could not believe I was in such a ridiculous situation. Thanks to the unbelievable assistance of Shellie at Thrifty in Fairbanks and the staff at Hertz, I terminated the Thrifty agreement (382 miles cost AUD1452 = $3.80 per mile) and proceeded with my original prepaid voucher. Luckily both the Anchorage and Fairbanks Hertz offices are owned by the same company.
The 4 days I had the Thrifty Corolla cost AUD1452, the amount I prepaid for the Hertz Malibu for 16 days was AUD1298.16.
However after checking the original contract with Thrifty the rude arrogant rental agent at Anchorage had charged me AUD3109 for 16 days.
I have approached Thrifty in Anchorage for some answers and compensation for this disgusting personal attacked on someone so vulnerable.
The company president once stated in a local newspaper in 2005 about a company ripping off elderly people as “heart-wrenching, especially for those who had saved up for a trip of a lifetime, he went on to say, for those people to get ripped off is criminal. I can only thinks it’s OK these days.
My tip is : GIVE THRIFTY CAR RENTAL ANCHORAGE a very very wide berth. My experience is, they cannot be trusted.
RosandDensTravels 