Skip to main content

Parents: Beware of Avis... They don't care about the safety of your kids

I had the most frustrating and scary experience with Avis tonight. We are preparing to take a trip to South California at the end of next week, where we will have our 2 young kids (3.5 and 1.5 year olds) with us. My in-laws will be coming with us as well, they were the ones who made the reservation for a car with 2 child safety seats, from Germany. Through the process, someone had suggested that it might be helpful to confirm that the car seats were really going to be available when we come to pick up our car. I thought it seemed a little but unnecessary since the reservation clearly stated that they had reserved - and paid for - 2 car seats. But to appease everyone before the trip, I went ahead and called Avis.

OMG - What a scary experience. I talked to 3 people, including the shift manager (Andrew Diaz) and got told that Avis can not guarantee that we will have car seats when we come pick up the car. Even though, it's written in our contract, they might not be able to fulfill their obligations at the end! Apparently their systems can take the reservation, but they don't sync up with their car seat inventory. And, these 3 agents were able to tell this to me in a straight voice, without blinking!? There are so many wrong things with this.
1. How hard is it to build a system that tracks car seat inventory? They have to know how many cars they can offer. Can't they do the same for car seats?
2. More concerning, they don't seem to care about breaching a contract that they let customers get into!
3. And most concerning, they don't care about the implications of not having car seats available for parents who need them to drive away from the airport. When I asked Andrew if I might have to drive my kids without car seats if Avis can't provide them, he couldn't deny that possible scenario. WOW! I see a huge legal liability in Avis' future if this policy gets exposed.

Really, Avis, is this what you stand for? Not caring for kids or for the law?
Sadly, it seems that it's not the first time that customers have horrible experiences with Avis and their ignorance of car seat safety rules
Is someone in their Legal department aware of this?

Sadly, we can't wait for the pending lawsuit to happen. I think we will probably just cancel our reservation (since Avis isn't able to fulfill their side of the contract, this shouldn't be too hard anyways).
Does someone know any good rental car agency that is reliable with car seats?
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Central America top picks

I was recently talking to a friend about places to go in Central America, one of our favorite regions to visit. She was primarily interested in Costa Rica, which is a wonderful place, no doubt. But as I was about to write to her, I decided to do a round up of our trips in Central America. You can't go wrong with any of these destinations. They are all wonderful in their own ways, but below are our favorites to date. 1.  Roatan I think the big gem of Latin America is Roatan (island in Honduras). We had the best time there: great beach, warm water, amazing snorkeling, jungle access. Flight there was convenient and affordable (red eye through El Salvador). I can’t think of any Con at this point. We are hoping to go back to Roatan later this year (which is very unusual for us to go to the same place twice, so this says something!) 2. Caribbean Coast of Costa Rica Even during the rainy season, this was a highlight for us. Tortuguero is   Wow! Amazing! Great jungle; turtles (at the right
Post a Comment
Read more

Turkey travel with toddler - a good idea after all

After 10 days traveling in Turkey with our 16-month old son, we found that going to far-away countries with a toddler is not as difficult as many people believe. Yes, we also had our own concerns, and we had set our expectations that we might have a rough time. Yet, we had decided that it would be worth the effort since we were very eager to visit Turkey. As it turns out, most of our concerns weren’t justified, and we found that Daniel had a great time in Turkey. Below are a few things we have learned in our trip. • Jetlag : Interestingly enough, it was easier for Daniel to adjust after this complex trip than after a “simple” journey to Germany. After a 26-hour journey (2 flights and one 2.5 hour car drive) and a jump of 10 time zones, internal rhythm is typically quite upset for everyone, big and small. We flew with the night flight from San Francisco to Frankfurt, so Daniel had a good night of sleep behind him when we landed in Germany. From then, we paced his naps until the follo
6 comments
Read more

Yosemite trip

Last week, we had another big milestone in our family life. After last year's first quick camping trip at Pinnacles , we went camping for 2 nights for the first time. And it was a great success. We were lucky to get a reservation at a campground in Yosemite, on a weekend where the weather was perfect, if not a little too hot. We spent a weekend exploring the valley, hiking, looking for wildlife (not very successfully though) and enjoying the outdoors. It was fun! Even though Daniel had a short phase of accidents after a long hike to the top of Bernal Fall (bitten by a squirrel - or so he thinks, and a fall leading to a cut gum), he quickly recovered and enjoyed the rest of the trip. A few minutes later, he was again climbing on boulders, running around, and enjoying being outdoors to use his endless energy. The hardest part was leaving. Everyone was heart-broken, but Daniel had the hardest time. It seems to be a pattern for him lately, and I think this had to do with the age (a
Post a Comment
Read more