Thrifty Car Rental Unfounded and unexpected charges and shady business practices San Jose Del Cabo, Mexico

I wish that I had read Rip Off Report prior to booking with Thrifty Car Rental but it is definitely a lesson learned and I will never book with them again inside or outside of the United States. It started with booking a car for a week through expedia.com for our arrival in Los Cabos on Nov. 5. Well, the deception started right from the beginning. When we booked online at expedia.com, the price of the car total and I have the booking and the receipt shows $57.35 for the week. Yes, I know! A little cheap, but I read all the fine print over and over again and it clearly was saying that the car was $57.35 for the week. Again, I have the booking and the receipt. That even included estimated taxes and fees of $8.75. Of course, we expected a minor fluctuation upon actually renting the car because $8.75 was estimated taxes and fees. Upon arriving to pick up the car, we were quickly trying to be sold extra insurance. We had multiple options to choose from and they ranged anywhere from around $200.00 to $300.00. We continuously declined and then there was an attempt to intimidate saying accidents happen a lot in Mexico and we really should reconsider. We repeatedly declined as we would just use our own insurance in the event of an accident or even pay if the situated was due to our neglect. At that point, we were told that Mexico had a mandatory insurance and that we didn't have a choice that this was included in the price of the car. The price of the car went from $57.35 to $224.55. O.k. that is more than a little fluctuation for taxes. Whether this mandatory insurance charge is real or fictitious is really irrelevant. There should have been some mention of this when we received our itiniary and booking from Thrifty. But, what were we to do? We didn't want to ruin our vacation and we were at a little disadvantage outside of the United States. So, we paid. Upon leaving the booking counter, a gentlemen with a Thrifty shirt approached us and started asking us questions about where we were staying and if we had time share and so on. He said that if we went to this timeshare presentation, he would give us $200.00 off our car rental, 50% off any excursions that we booked, and of course a really good breakfast during the presentation. It would only take 90 minutes and we didn't have to buy anything. We really were not interested but since we felt that we had just got ripped off on the rental car, it sounded pretty good. Still not over though, to secure our reservation at this 90 minute presentation, he would need $20.00 that he would promptly refund to us once we showed for the presentation along with our free gifts. He said this was necessary because he had paid Thrifty $45.00 to let him try and upsale us on this presentation. He had a picture of our hotel and everything and showed us on the picture where he would meet us on the following day to take us to the presentation. So, on the following day, he was where he said he was going to be but was very nervous when we thought that we were going to be riding with him and insisted that we take our own car for our convenience. I will keep the rest of the story short as that is a whole different complaint. But in summary, 3 and 1/2 hours later, we are still sitting in front of this salesman and we have said no in two different languages and in every way that we can think of and there is no sign of the presentation ending for us. We were not given our free gifts. Nor, was Thrifty's representative/Time share consultant (whatever he was-I believe his name was Luis Rogdriguez) anywhere to be found when we came out to give us our free gifts or our $20.00 back. So, two days of my vacation was taken up with headaches related to Thrifty Car Rental. Now let's go back to the day that we picked up the car. Once we were finished with the time share person/Thrifty rental, we got in the car and drove off. Less than a mile down the rode, we realized that the engine light was on. We were alarmed, especially being in a foreign country and already not feeling real secure with our rental. So, we turned around and brought the car back to Thrifty. They said that the light had been on and that they had attempted to get it to go off but couldn't. The car was perfectly safe and urged us to keep it and enjoy our vacation. We persisted and refused to keep the car as we didn't feel that we could trust anything that these employees said at this point. They gave us another car which had several scrapes on the exterior, very dirty interior, and a large cigarette burn on the back seat. The engine light wasn't on and we were just really tired and done at this point, so we took the car. Upon returning the car, which only myself and husband drove around in, they meticulously inspected the outside of the car and continuously kept walking around the car touching it repeatedly in spots. Another customer wrote in their complaint that they were being treated like criminals and that is exactly what I felt like. The low and behold, they opened the car and they are pointing to the cigarette burn in the back seat which we had them mark as already damaged when we picked up the car. To my surprise, however, they were not concerned about the cigarette burn, they were concerned with a stain over and around the cigarette burn! First of all, this was the back seat. My husband and I never even got in the back seat. Second, it was over a very large cigarette (possibly cigar) burn that had never been replaced or fixed. They also mentioned that the car had sand in it and wanted to charge us for cleaning. HELLO? We are in Mexico. Los Cabos at that. You can't get sand in a rental car? Is is not normal to have to reasonably vaccum and clean rental cars when they are returned. It is obvious that Thrifty charges customers for damage and never actually makes the repairs as the scratches and cigarette burn clearly demonstrated. They ended up charging us roughly $50.00 for the stain around the cigarette burn which I still insist that we had nothing to do with but we didn't want to have an altercation in a foreign country so we reluctantly paid. But I promptly disputed in a telephone conversation to my credit card company once I got to the airport. In summary, this company is shady to say the least, they have extremely poor business practices and I recommend to anyone and everyone to never use them! Especially outside of the United States! I actually feel lucky that we did not get ripped off for a lot more. They had a $5000.00 hold on our credit card, so in reality, they could have taken whatever they wanted and gotten away with it!!!!!!