I am a former customer and employee of Advantage. As a customer, I was drawn to them only because of price. As an employee, I saw exactly why their prices are below industry standards.

Cars were rented with bald tires constantly. 50K-70K miles on the odometer was common. We were told to pull battery cables on vehicles with check engine lights that were on (most of their fleet,) so the light would go off long enough to rent the vehicle. If possible, we sometimes pulled the dashboard off and removed the light altogether. When we needed to run an errand, we were instructed to take the car that showed it was "over" full, and not "top off the tank" thus leaving us with renting a car to the customer that showed full, but was generally 3-4 gallons bellow that mark because of company use. They had us rig cars to rent. IE Take parts off of other cars, buy used parts at junk yards, etc. Heck... They used to tell us to stand in front of the tires as much as possible while showing the car to a customer if it indeed had bad rubber.

As a management employee, our district manager told us that by no means were we to have a car "out of service" at any time. If it was on the lot, we were to rent it no matter what. They did encourage us to give the "really bad" cars with bald tires and mechanical problems to local drivers so we could take care of the problems if they came up.

Just a quick story- Everyone in the owners family has a "company" car... The daughter of the company was given a 50K mi+ Dodge Durange to drive for personal use. It had been rigged so many times that while she was driving down the expressway one of the wheels flew off ad she totaled the vehicle.

Then there was the customer who rented a Durango (yep again) that had over 70K miles (like most of the cars) and took it to New Mexico. One of the ORIGINAL tires was still on the vehicle, bald as hell, and blew up on the road. She went careening in to a field in the middle of the night. She called the 800 number and was instructed to buy a tire out of her own pocket and that we would reimburse her upon return. Well the District Manager couldnt see paying $200 for the tire (It was a nice Goodyear something or the other) so he told her he thought she was responsible for the damage and told her to take a hike.

The REAL KICKER... They use illegal paper temporary tags on their cars. They are struggling so much financially that they use these "Dealer Tags" for up to a year after a car is put in to their fleet, or if they need new tags for their year+ old cars, they use these tags for months upon months. If you ever get stopped by a cop worth his weight in salt while driving one of these illegally tagged vehicles, then you will get a ticket. We had at least 6 customers have this happen to them, and boy were they mad. It happened to an employee with a warrant out for his arrest. He subsequently went to jail lol.



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