Renting a vehicle at the "airport"? Beware!
We have been in the Toronto Airport a number of times, mostly connecting with other flights and never have encountered any problems. This time Toronto was our destination and because of the nature of our trip, renting a car was a necessity. We were here for a wedding and later on we were heading into Quebec for a bit of a sightseeing tour. We arranged for, and paid for in full, a car rental through a company called Holiday Autos Rentals in March about six months previous to the departure of our trip. Everything appeared to be arranged according to plan. Holiday Autos acts like a car rental broker, they search out "deals" through actual car rental companies and then arrange for the car rental through these companies on your behalf. (In our case, the rental company was called Mex Rent A Car). This, I think, is common enough and we have used similar online platforms without any problems in the past. We received our car rental voucher a few days before our departure outlining the particulars of how to pick up our car, etc. When we arrived at the airport, Wednesday at 9:00 pm., we found out that Mex Rent A Car was located off the airport premises and that you had to call them to pick you up. We were not aware of this previously, so first we had to take the Link Train to, what I believe was Viscount Station, contact the car rental company on a designated courtesy phone there and then arrange for them to pick you. So far so good. Upon calling them, we found out that they had closed at 9:00 pm. and as it turned out, we had no way of contacting them. The information that we had received from Holiday Autos stated that if we arrived past the closing time, there would be a representative waiting for us. The company had our flight number information and should have been aware of our after 9 p.m. arrival. As I said, we could not get a hold of anyone.
We ended up taking an Uber to our hotel, with the intention of contacting Mex Rent A Car the next day to arrange for our car. We had prepaid for it, months in advance. So, next morning when we contacted them, we were told, "Sorry, we have no car for you". Apparently, we were at fault for not being on time to receive our car before 9. Well, okay and thank you very much, but no vehicle!
Thankfully we were able to obtain a car rental from the good folks at Alamo. Albeit a bit more expensive, it was upgraded to a larger vehicle and under better rental conditions, which as it turned out, better suited our needs. The people at Alamo were courteous and we want to give a special thank you to the very pleasant and helpful lady that helped us! One last note regarding this incident, three weeks later we are still awaiting our refund from Holiday Autos. Apparently, they are still investigating the alleged "Failure to pick up our prepaid car rental and who is to blame"!
What have we learned from this said/sad affair? Don't take what appears to be the "best deal", it probably isn’t, and deal directly with a recognized car rental company is most likely the best course to go on!
Still waiting for our money back on a car that we never received!!!