Advantage Worked Out For Me
Written: Apr 01 '08
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: New Cars, VERY Low Prices
Cons: Horrible Online Reviews
The Bottom Line: I'd rent from Advantage again, based on my experience at PHX: the price was right and the car ran well--what more can I expect?
|
|
|
| dosland's Full Review: Advantage Rent-A-Car |
After reading the many horrible reviews on this site, I was a bit nervous about my reservations with Advantage. Fortunately, my fears proved ill-founded, and I had an excellent overall experience with Advantage. Based only on my experience, I'd recommend this company to friends.
I reserved my rental through nwareservations.com, and through this service was able to secure a "guaranteed" reservation rate substantially lower than any of the competitors. After I had made the reservation, I tried checking prices directly through Advantage's website, and found that the price offered through nwareservations.com was even better than Advantage had listed.
We rented a car from Phoenix Intl Airport (PHX), and getting to and from the rental facility from the terminals is fairly straightforward, if a little time-consuming. The rental car terminal is huge, and as I had feared, the line at the Advantage agency was really long. Even though there were about 30 people in front of us, we were able to get through all the line and paperwork within about a half hour, which was pretty impressive to me (I found out later that if I had just clicked a button on the Advantage website, I would have joined their express rental program and not had to wait at all--live and learn).
When we got to the rental counter, the gentleman working acted surprised to see that we could rent an SUV for only $5 more per day, and practically insisted that we do so. I insisted in return that I would rather saw off both of my feet than drive an SUV with gas prices the way they are, and he was shocked and somewhat hurt by this response. He kept moaning about how great a deal that was, but I refused to budge. Then he offered the special additional insurance, and I asked him to make sure he noted that I declined ALL optional coverages in EVERY category. He did so, and after I signed a dozen boxes on the receipts, he allowed us to take the car keys and we were on our way.
The "Economy" car we rented turned out to be a "Compact," which doesn't matter to me at all, I just wanted a small car with good gas mileage. We thought we'd get a Chevy Aveo, but ended up with the Cobalt, which still gets decent gas mileage, if you drive it right. The car was fire engine red, had 12,000 miles on it, and was a 2008 model, in practically perfect condition. I made sure to mark any blemish (no matter how minute) on the little paper provided, for fear that they'd try to make me pay for the tiny injuries others had done the vehicle.
Our actual use of the vehicle was uneventful--I drove it like a rental, which means respectfully, and then turned it in 2 days earlier than I had planned. Advantage refunded the balance of those two days to my credit card, so in the end the bill was quite a bit lower than I had initially expected.
Overall, my experience with Advantage was really good. I am probably more impressed with how good it was after having read all the horrible stories on epinions, but I am fortunate in never having had a bad experience (so far--knock on wood!).
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
dosland
|
|
Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 1 member
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.