Fourth time Lucky, Well Maybe!! (Alamo Rent-A-Car)

Member Name: velo

Product:	Alamo Rent-A-Car
Date:	27/11/01 (201 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: normally reliable, cheap

Disadvantages: mucked us about a bit this time

We have been to the States several times and have used Dollar once and Alamo quite a few times.
I believe Alamo are the better company as they don't hassle you to upgrade your car like Dollar do. Even though we always upgrade the car before we actually get there, Dollar still tried to upgrade us even more, what to next I asked, a Limo?

My wife Binnie, always books the holidays for us, I'm hopeless you see.
She booked a car for us at our local travel agent and asked for a three door Intermediate Car, that's normally two stages upgraded. I think they start at a budget car, then it's an Economy, then intermediate.
Well that's what it is with Dollar anyway. She asked for something similar.
We always find the USA cars very good, normally something largish, very clean and best of all I can cruise control down the freeway, yee ha!

We Paid £199 which was for one week and we had included in that price, fully comp insurance. Sometimes we had paid just that for the insurance only with Dollar. Sorry to keep mentioning Dollar but I wouldn't use them again ever.
I thought it was safer to get the fully comp insurance as you know what the Americans are like for suing you for almost anything.
Even though I have drove several times in the states and have never had a bump, I didn't want to risk not being covered.

Later on in the year though, Belinda's parents and friends decided to join us on our holiday, and we decided to get a larger car to house all six of us. We asked the travel agent to find a car for us all. We didn't really want a mini bus, I wouldn't have been too keen to drive one of those to be honest.
They told us that it would cost another £120, Belinda's parents paid that.
We were expecting a Buick or something similar. We once had hired a car that fit six people in before so we knew it could be done.

Well the day came and we arrived at LAX airport,
(Los Angeles) and we were taken to the Alamo base by shuttle.
We only queued for several minutes, and the girl there greeted us with a smile and some crazy sayings.
She was quite over the top, but we didn't mind as it was better than being unfriendly.
I did all the paperwork, I had to show my drivers licence, they checked my passport, they took an imprint of my credit card, which if we didn't do any damage then it would get torn up.
We were handed a key and told where the car would be. We grabbed a trolley for our luggage and off we popped.
Simple as that, we thought!!.
Arriving at the car, we peered inside and noticed that it would only fit about five in, there was only two seat belts in the back and two seats in the front.
Normally to fit six in, there was an extra seat in the front and three in the back.
We had evidence of this as we had hired one before.
We then went back to the hire centre and saw the same girl. She said she thought six would have fit in. We didn't want to risk it especially for the insurance side.

We were then given another car, which when we went to it was exactly the same car but in a different spot. This time Belinda went back on her own, to tell the member of staff. She is the firm one so I left her to it.
She then gave her another key to a car which she promised would fit us all in.
We found the car and guess what, it was smaller than ever. By then we were loosing our patience, it doesn't normally happen this way when we've been to Alamo before.
I went back and lost it a bit, I wasn't nasty or anything, but I said it was getting beyond a joke now.
The only thing left was , Guess what? A blooming Mini-Bus, type thing.

In the end we settled for the 8 seater bus, it looked more like an oversized four wheel drive.
The snag was, it cost us another $77.00 dollars, I must admit I wasn't very pleased as we had already paid the ex
tra £120 at the travel agent and told them exactly what we wanted.
The girl really wanted another $120, but I said I'm not paying it. Luckily Belinda's parents and friends paid the extra, they said it was because of them coming, that we had had the mucking around.

To cap it all, I didn't actually mind driving the bus around, it was sometimes hard to get us all in, especially the ones at the back, the doors only went so far back and you had to climb in at an angle.
But next time, there will only be the two of us and back to the normal Intermediate car for me.

I think normally Alamo are a good car hire place, it's just been this last time we had a trying experience.
The staff are polite, the place is clean and normally very reasonable except on this occasion.

I would still use them again though.

Summary: