They dont Control their affiliates. Many cars from very bad rent a car companies. In greece our car had no battery. After 1st stop car not working. I call rent a car and they answer me " sorry, its su... See more
While we don't verify specific claims because reviewers' opinions are their own, we may label reviews as "Verified" when we can confirm a business interaction took place. Read more
To protect platform integrity, every review on our platform—verified or not—is screened by our 24/7 automated software. This technology is designed to identify and remove content that breaches our guidelines, including reviews that are not based on a genuine experience. We recognise we may not catch everything, and you can flag anything you think we may have missed. Read more
Review summary
Created with AI, based on recent reviews
What people talk about most
Reviews shaping this summary
Company details
Written by the company
Arranging car hire in 167 countries, with over 60,000 locations and in 40 languages, Rentalcars.com is the world's biggest car hire booking service. Working with leading suppliers, we offer great prices on all car groups, including luxury cars, people carriers, minivans and automatic cars. With a multilingual call centre open 7 days a week, we can find you the best rental prices whenever you want – wherever you go. If you need to get in touch with us, visit www.rentalcars.com/en/contact/
Contact info
Sunlight House, Quay Street, M3 3JZ, Manchester, United Kingdom
- www.rentalcars.com/help?
- www.rentalcars.com
No recent history of asking for reviews
This company hasn't invited customers recently, so reviews may not be representative
Hasn’t replied to negative reviews
How this company uses Trustpilot
See how their reviews and ratings are sourced, scored, and moderated.
Payment method taken by RentalCars but not by car provider, 250+ un-refunded.
I booked a car via this website with an Amex and went to pick it up to find out that the rental car company don't accept Amex or any alternative Debit Card. Only Visa and Mastercard.
When speaking to this websites customer service they were completely unhelpful with the situation, mentioning I should have called while at the pickup desk. While the rental company offered only one solution calling RentalCars for a refund. I'm honestly so disappointed with this experience I'm a loyal booking.com customer and I'm completely shocked by the lack goodwill, in a scenario that was pretty misleading on RentalCars part.
Partial refund due to poor booking systems and process
We booked a car through Ryanair and when we arrived to collect it from Klass wagen we were told it was booked under the name Chris and because my full name is Christopher they could not give me the car. We were then told the only option was to cancel and rebook for alot more. We decided to cancel and were charged a £74.85 cancellation fee, which could have been avoided at the time of booking by checking full name is entered if this is a requirement. Also being unable to change details seems disingenuous, I am very disappointed in how this booking was handled.
My goodness I wish I’d seen this site…
My goodness I wish I’d seen this site first.
This company and their customer Goldcar must turn up to work on horseback .
A simply admin error where for some reason my name Aaron Firth translated to Aaron Y spoilt my holiday.
Neither Goldcar or Rentalcars offered me any help.
All my official documentation was perfect. My email was perfect. My first name was perfect. My phone number was perfect. My address was perfect, but they still would not let me have the car because the form said my second name was Y , I mean who won the face of the planet as a second name that’s Y. They could absolutely see that I was the person that had rented that car and they wouldn’t let me have it. They would however, let me re-rent it on the day for more than double the price that I’ve paid.
I spent hours on the phone to these people pleading for them to have a little bit of common sense and I’ve got absolutely nowhere.
These guys are total Cowboys they use traps and pitfalls to make them money. Do not use either of these two companies you have been warned.
False terminal location, non-existent shuttle, and denied refund – Absolute nightmare
Review Title:
False terminal location, non-existent shuttle, and denied refund – Absolute nightmare
Review Text:
I booked a car with Rentalcars.com for Rome Fiumicino Airport (FCO) under booking reference 790594705 with the supplier Record Go.
The booking voucher explicitly stated an in-airport/terminal pick-up location and instructed me to meet a representative/shuttle opposite Gate 3, Terminal 3.
Upon arrival, there was no one there. No representative, no signage, and no shuttle meeting point. After searching extensively and finding no trace of Record Go, I was stranded at the airport. Because I had urgent travel obligations, I was forced to rent a vehicle from another supplier on the spot just to reach my destination.
When I contacted Rentalcars.com support, they admitted that Record Go operates off-airport and is not inside the terminal. Presenting an off-site rental as an on-airport location is blatant misleading advertising. Worse yet, their customer support attempted to deny a refund by hiding behind "cancellation policies," completely ignoring the fact that they failed to provide the service and left a customer stranded with completely incorrect pick-up instructions.
Renting through Rentalcars.com led to deceptive location details, false instructions, zero on-site presence, and a refusal to take accountability for their vendor's failure.
I demand a full refund for a service that was never delivered. Travelers beware: do not rely on their location descriptions or meeting point instructions.
The appropriate word to describe…
The appropriate word to describe rentalcars.com is THIEVES.
We booked (paid in advance) a car rental at Sofia airport, when we arrived our card does not suit the rental company and they refused to give us the car.
Bring us back to Sofia airport with no car and no refund.
After calling rentalcars : no refund is possible. The payment is done and the service not honored.
If you don’t want to loose money, avoid rentalcars.com
Bad experience double charge for service
Bad experience. I was charged from booking.com / rentalcard for 8 hours drive 248km in total by smallest car thier provider sixt had, the sum of 149 euro. After i came home my abnount was charged additionally 72 hours, they explained that because in 149 was drive of only 150km!!!! included, and for each driven km the customer must pay 0.41€. So sammary 8 hours smallest car was cost 220euro! All my emails on both: booking.com rentalcars and sixt, did not bring anything. The funny was that duri g booking there was no word mentioned that in the day rental price included onöy 150km drive. Fraud service.
Discrepancy in my cost!
I rent a vehicle (July 23) for 2 weeks (unlimited miles) to accommodate my wife and me. They send an email to my wife, the driver, telling her how much we owe for the rental:
Summary of Charges:
Subtotal of the Rental: USD 503.48
Taxes and Fees: USD 122.67
Amount Due at Pick-up: USD 626.15
We are charged on July 23 $225.00.
We return the rental car August 4 which is early. We receive no discount for early return, but that is okay because I rented for 2 weeks.
We are charged on August 5 $581.95.
We end up paying $806.95.
As you can see, we are charged $180.80 more than we are told.
I will never use rentalcars.com again, and I suggest you don't either.
Avoid CAR HIRE with Bookings.com and Europcar
Have had over ten years of great hires from Rentalcars.com of Manchester IN many nations.
BUT now that the are owned by Bookings,Com that has changed.
In South Africa Dec 25 they put me with Europcar Joburg Airport.
At first theyt only returned around £150 of my £499 deposit for no good reason. They guy at car return clearly told me no problems/damage.
Took weeks of emails and complaints befor they eventually returned the rest of my deposit.
ALSo avoid Europocar in UK now as they force you to take out breakdown help at £19 a day and in some cases force you to take maximum Premium Prtoection insyurance at £30 a dAY.
Three hours of my vacation lost because no one at Booking.com could fix a simple name abbreviation
I prepaid €273.77 through Booking.com for a four-day car rental. My reservation listed “Nick,” the common abbreviation of my legal first name, “Nicolas.”
I arrived at the rental counter approximately one hour before pickup and was told Booking.com needed to update the reservation from “Nick” to “Nicolas.”
I immediately tried to make the change through the Booking.com app, but the app would not allow it that close to pickup. I contacted customer service and spent the next three hours being sent between chat, phone support and multiple representatives.
Everyone understood the issue, but no one was empowered to make the simple correction. There was no effective escalation path, and my pickup time passed while I was actively trying to get Booking.com to help me.
What is most troubling is that after I formally complained, Booking.com's own Complaints Executive confirmed in writing that there was no effective process to make the amendment in time, no available self-service solution, and no internal escalation path capable of overriding the limitation.
I accept responsibility for initially entering “Nick” instead of “Nicolas.” What I don't accept is that one of the world's largest travel platforms apparently has no workable way to help a customer correct a simple abbreviation of their own first name—even when the customer arrives early and immediately asks for help.
I lost approximately three hours of the first day of a four-day vacation and have spent additional time since trying to get Booking.com to take responsibility for its customer-service failure.
I exhausted Booking.com's internal complaints process before posting this review. I have requested a refund of the €273.77 I paid Booking.com and appropriate recognition of the time and disruption this caused. Booking.com has refused, and the matter remains unresolved.
Refused rental - vacation totally altered - they don't care
Rented a car in advance and when I got to Palermo was denied the car as I did not have an International Driving Permit (I am licensed in the US). This was not made explicitly clear during the reservation process and although I was at the counter at the specified time, they would not release the car to me (Goldcar) and charged me a cancellation fee as a no-show. I have gone back and forth with Rentalcars to no end, they will not budge on the refund. This significantly impacted my two-week vacation in Sicily as I was forced to now be on foot or travel by bus, something that is not easy to do in Sicily. They do not care. Perhaps they will start to take notice when their business is impacted by negative reviews. Discovercars is better.
Worthless
Worthless, piece of shit company. Everything seems to work well, but they provide you with unviable options.
As a Dutch person, I only have initials on my credit card(not a full name). This was mentioned somewhere in the terms of the supplier.
Since I paid with the same credit card (with initials) I wasn’t aware of any issues. The booking was completed and confirmed. At the counter in the airport I got a big ‘no’ and that was it. No help from the supplier nor Rentalcars.
They proposed an partial refund, which made them 200 euros without providing me anything. As this is a known issue at Rentalcars, it is a perverse incentive to do nothing about it. They are making money nonetheless.
I had a very disappointing experience…
I had a very disappointing experience with Rentalcars.
I booked a car for my friend using my Rentalcars account, but the reservation was issued in my name as the main driver. At the Sixt counter, they explained that they could not hand over the vehicle because the main driver's name on the voucher did not match my friend. They also clearly told me that if Rentalcars changed the main driver's name on the voucher, they would be able to release the car.
After spending a long time trying to reach Rentalcars customer service, they refused to help or make this simple change. All they needed to do was update the voucher with the correct main driver's name, but they didn't.
As a result, we couldn't collect the car, and I lost €170 for a booking that could have been resolved with a simple correction. Very poor customer service and no willingness to help.
I will never use that platform to rent a car anymore.
I rented a car through Rentalcars from…
I rented a car through Rentalcars from Europcar. I received the terms and conditions via email from Rentalcars, stating that a Mastercard was an accepted card. Upon arrival to pick up the car, I was turned away by Europcar, even though I met the conditions provided by Rentalcars and i had coverage. It turned out that Europcar’s and Rentalcars’ terms were not entirely the same, and I was left without a car. I refused to pay extra. After a disappointing experience and upon returning from my holiday, I contacted Rentalcars to get a refund. However, they chose to refund only 4 days of the rental instead of 6. I wrote to them several times and provided documentation, but their customer service was completely incompetent and failed to address the issue. After contacting them repeatedly over the course of a month, I gave up, having suffered a loss of just over 500 DKK due to an error on their part. I will never use them, or their sister company, Booking.com again
Terrible experience renting a car in Cancun
Rented a car in Cancun through RentalCars.com. The Terms and Conditions provided to me clearly stated that TPL insurance was included in the cost of the rental; when we arrived to Mexico, the Hertz staff member declined this and forced us to buy insurance coverage or else they would not release the car to us. RentalCars.com would not reimburse me and said I need to talk to Hertz; Hertz is saying I need to go to RentalCars.com. Neither company wants to take accountability for the T&Cs THEY PROVIDED AND HOUSED ON THEIR SITE. It's ridiculous, and now customer service is ignoring me. Avoid this company at all costs - they are a bunch of crooks!
avoid this company like the plague
avoid this company like the plague. they will ruin your vacation. I booked a car through them to be waiting in Porto airport portugal. a rep was supposed to meet at the meeting point - no rep. the number to call - disconnected. after waiting two hours the rental car live chat tried calling the rep with no answer and told me they would process a refund after i send them pictures of the meeting point with no-one there. there was no assistance in securing another rental. now out of pocket and no rental. since emailing the photos - no correspondence. i used to regularly use rentalcars.com... now i would sooner walk. terrible company, terrible service, terrible communication... i wish i could give less than one star! thank you rentalcars for ruining my trip!!!!... and still no refund or communication of any kind.
**Worst car rental experience we have…
Worst car rental experience we have ever had
I would give Rentalcars.com zero stars if I could. We booked an automatic car in Mykonos well in advance because we always drive automatic vehicles and knew the island roads would be challenging. Our flight was delayed due to circumstances completely outside our control, and when we arrived we were told that our car had been cancelled and given to someone else.
What makes this even worse is that our voucher did not clearly state that a delay of around 59 minutes would result in the cancellation of our booking. We had no reason to believe that a short flight delay would mean losing a fully paid reservation.
The customer service was appalling. An agent named Nick was extremely rude, dismissive, and showed no empathy whatsoever. We were left waiting for 2.5 hours in the middle of the night with our children, exhausted after travelling, while no one offered a reasonable solution.
Eventually, instead of the automatic car we had paid for, we were given a manual car. This was incredibly difficult and stressful because we do not drive manual cars regularly, and Mykonos has narrow, steep, and challenging roads. The replacement was not an equivalent alternative and significantly affected our holiday.
To make matters worse, we were told that no refund would be provided because the original booking had been cancelled, even though the delay was not our fault. We had paid for a service that was not delivered.
What was particularly upsetting was that we saw other passengers from the same delayed flight receiving their cars, while we were denied ours. The difference in treatment was impossible to ignore, and it left us feeling that we had been treated unfairly and possibly discriminated against.
Rentalcars.com failed us at every stage: poor communication, inflexible policies, unacceptable customer service, and no accountability. I will never use this company again and would strongly advise others to avoid booking through them, especially if you are travelling with children or relying on an automatic vehicle reservation.
Booked a car via Booking.com in Israel
Booked a car via Booking.com in Israel. Received a car with a broken central screen, wasted 3.5 hours of my vacation swapping it. Upon return, Budget Israel fraudulently kept $268.69 USD from my deposit for a fake $150 'special wash' and illegal fees. Booking.com Aftercare (Ticket xXNJo7) washed their hands and refused to protect a Genius Level 3 customer. Horrible service and lack of customer protection.
Thanks Robin
I had an excellent experience with Robin
Robin understood and anticipated my needs, making the whole process smooth and stress-free. The support and customer service were outstanding—professional, friendly, and genuinely helpful from start to finish.
Overall, this experience has reinforced my confidence and I will definitely continue to use their services in the future. Thank you, Robin, for the exceptional support!
Rentalcars.com stole the payment I made…
Rentalcars.com stole the payment I made for the car booking. I was late for a pickup, which is my fault. The agent at the desk at the car Rental showed my that no payment had been made from Rentalscars.com to their company, and that a lot of cars were available. AVOID at all cost. I told an agent from Rentalcars.com that I didn't mind paying for a late fee, but they took all the money, so I didn't get a refund, and the rental company didn't get a payment.
Paid for a rental - no car
Paid for a rental, when i arrived to start the rental i was asked to pay again by the provider as they hadn't been paid by Rentalcars. I ended up having to pay again for the car, and now getting no help or assistance in receiving a refund from rentalcars.com. I'd avoid entirely as i don't know how im going to get my money back.
The Trustpilot Experience
Anyone can write a Trustpilot review. People who write reviews have ownership to edit or delete them at any time, and they’ll be displayed as long as an account is active.
We use dedicated people and clever technology to safeguard our platform. Find out how we combat fake reviews.
Learn about Trustpilot’s review process.
Here are 8 tips for writing great reviews.
Verification can help ensure real people are writing the reviews you read on Trustpilot.
Offering incentives for reviews or asking for them selectively can bias the TrustScore, which goes against our guidelines.








