Had to go to Paynesville, MN for a 4 day trip. Closest hotel I could find was out in St. Cloud, 40 minutes away. Flew into Minneapolis, and head to pick up my reserved mid-sized rental from Thrifty. Get there, they tell me they’ve got a Nissan Versa for me. I disagree with them on the car/category, and tell them I need a more appropriate car. They try to up-sell me to an SUV because there’s a massive snow storm rolling through. I tell them I don’t need an SUV as long as their cars have good tires on them. I’m re-assured that all their cars are perfectly maintained and have great tires on them.

So they eventually offer me an Altima, and as I’m about to sign the electronic pad thing with a cost of $400, it crashes. So they quickly print some paperwork, and shove it under my face to sign. So I did. Little did I know, what I had agreed to on the electronic screen, was the UPGRADE charges, not the over-all charges. So, unbeknownst to me, I signed for a $400 base rental fee plus an extra $400 in upgrade charges.

To top that all off, the car they gave me had bald tires, and the rear defroster wasn’t working. And the storm was bad. Black ice, white outs, etc. My 40 minute drive took me 2 hrs the one trip.

When I went to hand it back and complain about the state of the vehicle, they just bounced the buck back and forth between group after group. “Any complaints about the vehicle can be taken up with the team inside”. “The team outside are the ones who field complaints about the condition of the cars”. “There is no manager on duty today”. This went back and forth for 15-30 minutes, and I needed to catch a flight.

So then I went on to the excess charges. The same attendant was working there, and she was asking me “Are you accusing me of cheating you / lying to you?” My answer “Yes. I would never had knowingly paid $800 for an Altima for 4 days. I would have gone to Enterprise and gotten my corporate rate instead”. She was quite offended by this, but I had nothing to loose.

This went on for 15-30 minutes with my voice increasing in volume and customers piling up behind me until they finally agreed to change the upgrade charge from $100 per day to $25 per day. And then screwed up applying it to only 1 day rather than 4.

Got inside the airport and immediately called their head office to lodge my complaint. Got a coupon in the mail a few weeks later for $25 off my next rental from them. It went straight in the garbage. There will never be a next rental from them.

TL;DR - Thrifty massively overcharged me, gave me a mechanically unsafe car in the middle of a snowstorm, shrugged it all off.

(I know there’s going to be someone who says “You signed it”. Yes, I did. But I also shouldn’t need to get my lawyers to review any rental agreements before I sign then. I need car. You have car. Would you like insurance? Here’s the total. Credit card please, signature please, here are the keys, cars outside. This isn’t rocket science, it’s renting a car.)