Here is the letter I just wrote to Alamo about my experience using them--it is long, but I had to vent. I will never use them again.
This is in regard to reservation ******* for rental Dec. 27-Jan. 10 at the Cancun airport for *************.
Dear Alamo,
I have never received such poor service. This is not the only time this has happened when I have used your company--it has been everytime. Each time, I think I will give you another chance, but it only gets worse. The latest one was noted above. We arrived at the airport booth with lots of upset people because there were no cars for people who had reservations. However, the lady tells us we can have this little volkwagon bug for the same price. I had my wife and son with me, along with our luggage, and it was too small. I told her that we had this resevation for over 3 months for a class two tiers up. The ladies attitude was "take it or leave it." Knowing that this was all we would get, we took it. After traveling for 16 hours, we were just wanting to get to our destination--which was 2.5 hours down the coast in Tulum. If we did not take the car, how would we get there? Next, we fill out the paper work and she tells us we have to buy this CDW insurance. After telling her repeatedly that this was optional and our visa gold covers us, she said we had to buy the personal accident coverage. At this point, we just wanted to get out of there so we just agreed. Next, she told us to wait outside and a van will pick us up to take us to the main rental agency. We waited outside for 1.5 hours before the van showed up. My wife kept going inside asking the lady were the van was and all she would say is "wait outside, it will be there." Finally we get picked up and taken to the main office. To my dismay, there were about 15 of the cars I had reservations for sitting in the lot. This did not surprise me because everytime I have used you, we have NEVER received the car we had reservations for, and it has NEVER been an upgrade, only down to your bottom end car. I have used Hertz, Avis, Dollar, and many others and have never had this happen to me. This has happened EVERYTIME with you. What I would like is to have the personal accident coverage refunded to my credit card. We were charged 598 peso for this. I waited this long to contact you so I could receive my credit card bill and find out the exchange rate. Here is the break down:
Peso charged for total rental, including PAC $4107.2
US money for exchange on credit card bill $423.55
So the exchange rate was 9.7 peso to the US dollar
Peso charged for PAC 598
US money at 9.7 exchange rate is $61.65
Also, on my reservation form, optional PAC coverage is stated at $3.00/day. For 13 days that is only $39.00. Why were we charged $61.65 for it in the first place? We only agreed to purchase this coverage due to the fact we would not get a car if we did not. I was so sorry we gave you guys another chance. 13 days of driving on our vacation in a little cramped car with my family was not enjoyable. Here is also a breif run down of the prior experince with Alamo. We picked up the car from the strip in Las Vegas, with intentions of dropping it off at the airport when we left. Well, we spent close to an hour looking for your airport drop-off. All the other car companies where there, but no Alamo. After driving in circles for close to an hour, we found a little sign to fallow for Alamo. To our surprise, it was atleast 2 miles down the road. To me, this did not seem like an airport location. By the time we made it back to the airport, we missed our flight. Tried to go stand by for a day, but all flights were completely booked. The only way we were going to get on a plane was to pay a change ticket fee for all of us--3X75=$225. Also, $400.00 for a day of work. Grand total $625.00 for renting from you. Also, the car we had was a lower level then we had reservations for. My family travels atleast a few times a year--but you have lost my business. I have never "driven happy with Alamo."
If you would like to contact me, my number is *********. I would like to atleast be refunded the forced PAC insurance for $61.65
Thank you