We reserved a car for $54.00 for one day to explore Niagara Falls. We arrived to pick up and were told that there were no cars available and "sorry, but you'll just have to wait for a few hours because there may be some cars returning this afternoon." There were at least 3 people in line ahead of us with the exact same predicament. We asked "how many cars are you expecting back?" Their manager said "we're not really sure...there may be none. We've had a man waiting since this morning so he gets the first one anyway." We told them that this was incredibly disappointing and frustrating and requested a full refund. She refused and said that because we had booked through Kayak as a 3rd party, then they weren't responsible for refunding us. The manager was distinctly rude to all of us and raised her voice several times, insisting there was nothing they could do and it wasn't her problem. We asked if they could at least call around for us, as we didn't have Canadian cell phones and were unable to find another rental company. They reluctantly made a few phone calls, joking with each other throughout the process and being generally insensitive. The managers name is Kim Tan. I suggest that she be fired or, at the very least, spoken with about the importance of elementary customer service and basic human decency. Is it really too much to ask to provide polite, efficient, kind service to people your business has assured a pre-paid service to? The other attendant, Adriane, finally called down the street to the other Dollar rental and said, "oh yeah they have a few cars". We went there and were able to rent a small car for $150/day, which we ended up doing because we really wanted to be done with the situation and get to Niagara falls. In the end, we paid 4x the price for what could have been a very simple, enjoyable experience. I hope that Kayak will at least refund us our original $54 pre-payment, and that Dollar Rental will not allow overbooking of their cars. It really does affect the lives of your customers! We were deeply unimpressed with this entire situation and will never rent with Dollar again.
