FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Australia car rental
View Single Post
Old May 18, 2016, 4:08 pm
  #25  
SpannerSpinner
 
Join Date: Dec 2012
Programs: NZ*S
Posts: 773
Originally Posted by wco81
Checked some more rates. An agency called East Coast Car Rental shows up on Auto Europe search with prices about half that of the majors (Thrifty, Enterprise, Alamo).

$26 USD for one day rental out of Melbourne for Economy or Compact automatic, $27 for a Midsize Auto.

Presumably an Aussie agency?

Anyone ever use them?
Yes. Once, never again.

Had two problems with them. I put a minor scrape in the paint on the bumper (A piece of fencing wire was sticking out in some shubbery I brushed past at the motel I was staying at). They took a $1000 charge for what was going to be a max of a couple hundred dollars of damage and would refund the rest once the repair was made. Except the car was returned in Decemeber, and the repair didn't happen till mid Feburary. So they held ~$800 of my money for several months, even with me chasing them to get this finalised.

Then there was the tolls, ECCR at the time had no option for dealing with tolls cleanly, they were your problem and if any came back to ECCR they would pass them on with a hefty admin charge. I setup a toll pass with the toll company, you go online, enter the time period you have the car and the plate details, and they charge you for the tolls in that period. All worked fine, I got charged for the tolls I incurred and thought nothing of it until 2 or three months later I got a letter from the toll company for non-payment of tolls. I checked the details, and these tolls were about midnight the day before I arrived in Australia. So I took photos of my hire documents with the dates and time of hire highlighted, sent them back to the toll company pointing out it wasn't my problem. Toll company referred it back to ECCR, who promptly charged it to my credit card (without notifying me) with a hefty admin fee. Needless to say getting that reversed or any sense out of the ECCR people on why they had first referred it to the toll company, and then charged it to me when it was clearly incurred while I did not have the car was a nightmare.

Also from memory they are limited mileage rentals with a fairly low limit.

This was several years ago, I see from the website they have e-tags for tolls now. Still not sure I would take the risk, they may still be just as incompetent.
SpannerSpinner is offline