I've made posts in the past about crappy airlines (Americaworst and Northwest). This weekend I rented my first car and had a horrible experience, so here we go...

This past weekend I made a trip to Charlottesville to visit friends at a reunion-type party. I flew from Memphis to DC, but needed transportation to get from DC to Charlottesville. I figured that I was old enough to start renting a car, so I used Travelocity to find a deal. All of the economy-priced cars were the same price, so I randomly selected Dollar Rent-A-Car. What a mistake that was.

The first sign that my experience with the company was going to suck was immediately after I got off the plane. I went out curbside to catch the bus in the freezing DC cold and had to wait literally 15 minutes standing there. The same wasn't true for all of the other car rental companies. They all had a bus at the curb almost all of the time. But not Dollar -- they just send one after each ice age.

Once I finally got to the rental office, I encountered more problems. Before walking in, I assumed that I would need to pay the base $27.98 that I was quoted plus $50 because I'm not 25 years old. That was not the case. The website failed to inform me that insurance on the car is not included, which set me back an extra $30 per day. There were also a lot of other miscellaneous expenses. Here is what my receipt looked like at the end:

I was astonished and pissed that I got hosed for an extra $90. I suppose that all of the rental companies do that, though. But that doesn't make it alright. I didn't have any other option, so I paid the money and took my red Dodge Neon. I got to Charlottesville pretty late.

The following day I needed to know which office to drop the car off at. I picked it up at Dulles and was to return it to National since that is where my return flight originated. The problem is that there are two offices next to National so I called to ask how to get there. What I got first was an automated machine that kept asking questions, to which it could not understand simple yes or no answers. At one point I yelled at the phone and it said, "I'm sorry, my mistake." After it 15 or more failed questions from the computer, it sent me to a person. This number was supposed to be the DC office, but the lady on the other line informed me that she was in Oklahoma. I asked for the DC office number because I wanted correct directions and she informed me that they don't give out the number. She said that Oklahoma gives out directions for the entire nation. Whatever. So I took out the complementary map that Dollar gave me to see where I was supposed to go. In following the woman's directions, I got pretty confused because she kept saying to take 66 East to Jefferson Davis Hwy. I was confused because the map says 66 just randomly ends:

I knew this couldn't be right, because I had taken 66 into the district before, which is farther East than Arlington. I finally decided that the company was so full of shit that I just asked which location to return the car and hung up. She said I would return it to the one on Jefferson Davis Hwy (#2 on the map). I asked my friends directions and after looking at the map they said the map was straight up wrong. 66 goes all the way through. How the hell do you hand out a map with that kind of mistake?

So today I cruised up to DC and found the Dollar office and go to turn in my overpriced car. It turns out that the lady in Oklahoma had told me the wrong office. I had to return it to the other location, which was at the airport. It's a good thing that I budgeted time for stupid problems like this, or I might have missed my flight.

Anyhow, don't rent from Dollar. They didn't get one thing done correctly. They suck. These people say so too.

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