Thrifty Review

I'm not brand-loyal when it comes to renting a vehicle; I rent based on price and location.  However, since I have rented from Thrifty several times, I am a Blue Chip member and utilize that service when renting a car from them.

My last Thrifty rental was out of the Albuquerque, New Mexico airport.  I had reserved the car using my Blue Chip number so everything was ready when I got to the counter.  The customer service agent was very friendly and helpful and our check-in experience pleasant.

Our vehicle was exactly what we had reserved and was clean and drove well.  That said, the following day the oil light came on inside of the car.  My husband checked the oil and it was low.  That is something that should have been checked before we were loaned out the car.  Since we were not convenient to the Thrifty location and didn't want the hassle of returning the car, we forked over $5 at Walgreen's and put more oil in the car.  Problem solved but we were still irritated that we had to pay an extra $5 for our car rental.  When we returned the car, we didn't tell the Thrifty employee about the oil problem because we didn't want to be accused of damaging the car or doing something that was prohibited in our rental agreement.   

Flash back a few years to our Thrifty car rental at the Lihue Airport location in Kauai, Hawaii.  It was our honeymoon and we were excited to get in our car and explore the beautiful island of Kauai.  Even though I was a Thrifty Blue Chip member, we had an extraordinarily long wait with no apologies.  We weren't happy but let it go since it was our honeymoon and we were in Hawaii! 

We had used the car for approximately 24 hours before we went to get inside of it on our second night in Kauai.  We had planned on going out for a romantic dinner.  All romance was lost when my husband loudly told me to get out of the car.  It was then that we noticed the car was infested with cockroaches!  We had unknowingly been driving around in it for an entire day (and the previous night) with open bags and food.  We contacted the Thrifty office and were told that no one was available to bring us another rental car until the following morning.  That didn't help us because we were leaving the next day for our cruise. 

Needless to say, our romantic dinner never happened and I didn't sleep well that night thinking that our luggage was infested with cockroaches.  When we returned the car the following morning (the cockroaches only came out at night), we told a Thrifty employee about the cockroach problem.  We were told that they would take care of it but they just put the car back in the line to be washed and re-rented out.  I was later told that cockroaches in rental cars in Hawaii is not unusual.  Even so, we were never compensated for our cockroach-infested car and none of the employees seemed to really care.

Overall, my impression of Thrifty is just that - a "thrifty" rental company where you get what you pay for.  I will still use them for future car rentals if the price is right, although you can bet that when my husband and I finally return to Hawaii to celebrate an anniversary, we will not be using Thrifty then. 

By the way, several months later we had a garage sale and when I opened up an empty plastic bag from Hawaii, I found a dead cockroach inside.  Not the kind of souvenir that I had intended to bring back home.