In february 2011, I rented a time bomb from Thrifty Car Rentals. I thought I was renting a car, that was what I booked, but Thrifty fooled me. After the first 200 kilometers the car started to fail, and my wife and I had a tough time for 15 days!

I was with my wife in Portugal and decided to rent a car with Thrifty to go to Spain. Our road trip started on a cold rainy day of winter, and the first thing to fail was the air conditioning. Have you tried to drive a car when it's cold outside without air conditioning? Well, the windshield gets dangerously foggy, and the only way to fix this is by opening the window. Thank god I was in Spain and not in Canada. It was "only" 9ºC outside. Blood doesn't freeze at this temperature.

But that was only the beginning...

The next day I noticed that one of the tires was flat, so I filled it up. But that tire was actually loosing air, permanently and gradually, so I had to do that everyday for two weeks. And the reason is because Thrifty doesn't offer assistance to their clients in Spain, even though I was only 200 kilometers away from their closest agency.

They didn't offer (or accepted, after I asked) to send me a replacement car. Instead, they told me I should fix their vehicle myself!

When I finally got back to Lisbon and expressed my discontent, they didn't care much, and just offered a miserable 20% discount, as a deal to get rid of me. The amount would be refunded directly to my credit card account.

And that's when I was fooled again. I should have known they would never reimburse me. They were only trying to get rid of a complaining client before another sucker came in to burn his money away with them.

But I was still hopeful, trusting on the company and thinking that was an isolated problem when, one month later, I sent an e-mail through their website, at Thrifty.com explaining what happened. Few days later they confirmed my fear when I read their answer saying that was not their problem and I should deal straight with their agency at Lisbon. As if Thrifty Portugal, at Lisbon, was not really Thrifty.

It's really disappointing. I recommend this company to be a (bad) case of study for business schools around the world.

I have posted a video on YouTube showing my experience, at:

http://youtu.be/xZplcXlghyA