Advantage Car Rental Should have read reviews Tamp, Florida

   We booked a car through rentalcars.com. Total for the week was supposed to be $157. We've used rentalcars.com before without incident. When we arrived at the Advantage, there were people waiting outside and a long line. The issue? No cars apparently. So don't bother booking with these yokels because they run such a tight operation that they are never going to have excess inventory. Over two hours later, we finally took a mid size car (we'd booked a full) as we were tired of waiting. They have you sign electronically on a kiosk. Note that by default they will charge you a 'roadside service fee' of $2.99/day without even asking you. And you can't review the whole document until you sign and they print it, so you don't even know it's there unless you read the fine print immediately. They do have a sign indicating they will charge a $200 deposit on your credit card.

   When we returned the car and disputed the amount as it was $20 more than the rentalcars.com quote, the two return agents actually laughed at us. Then told us to go speak to someone inside. As usual there was a line and we couldn't wait as the van was there to take us to the airport. When reviewing my credit card charges, I see they charged my card $377 all at once. Now if I'd have seen a $200 charge and then a credit for $23, I could understand that, but $200 plus the cost of the rental seems like a cash float scam. If they charge enough $200 extra charges for a week at a time (or more) and do this to 10,000 customers (or more),  they can earn the interest on $2,000,000 (or more) for a week. Even at today's float rates, that could generate them $200/week for nothing. And I suspect the number is probably significantly higher.

   Please, please, please avoid these people at all costs.