Beware Avis car rental Argentina!

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Hi fellow travellers - So, OK, I am using this blogspot not so much as a way to keep in touch with friends and family, but more to warn fellow travellers of very poor service and outright dodgy companies. That way, travellers don't get ripped off or suffer poor service - and if we all share this kind of information, we can put disreputable businesses out of business (or at least hurt their profits) and prevent as many of us as possible from having a poor travelling experience.

The first company is Avis car hire, Argentina. This is a truly attrocious and unprofessional company and their behaviour will certainly tarnish the international Avis brand. When we booked the car in Buenos Aires, my partner and I were promised that, if the car broke down on our three week trip around Patagonia (starting and returning to San Rafael in the wonderful wine region), we would have a replacement car within two days. The reality was very different and as we only had just over three weeks to make the three week trip, no amount of free days at the end would make a difference to being stuck in one of the most expensive towns in Argentina (Bariloche).

The car began having mechanical problems half way through our trip, after the underside of the car unavoidably hit a rock in the middle of the road at night. I managed to drive the car for half a day to an Avis office in Bariloche and after handing it into the office there, we were told every day that the car would be fixed and available "tomorrow" - this went on for six days and we ran up a large hotel bill waiting for the car to be fixed. We were not compensated for the hotel expenses (we would not have normally incurred these as we were camping in the national parks - either free or very cheaply) and were offered 6 free days at the end of the trip with the same car, which was no good as a) the car was still very faulty after is was supposedly fixed and returned to us and b) we had a plane to catch in Santiago, Chile, just two days after our original "return by" date - still with 2000 km of our trip to go!

The car was already defective in many ways when we originally took possession of it - however, it was a case of "either take this one or have nothing", so were forced to have a car with a flat spare tyre, a driver's side window that fell out when we tried to wind down the window, a faulty windscreen wiper and a CD player that wouldn't eject our CDs. After the car was returned to us from the garage, we barely had time to get the car back to its drop off point and it stalled at low revs for the last 1000km! Avis still charged us the full amount and were not interested at all in negotiating a discount based on the car being faulty to begin with, breach of contract with their broken promise of a replacement car, the cost of staying in Bariloche for a week waiting for the car to be fixed - and being led on that it would be ready "the next day" and finally they continued to charge us the full amount for the final days of us racing to get the car back in time, missing much of our planned itinery in a car that was still stalling at low revs/ speed.

I can thoroughly recommend no-one rents a car from Avis and that they consider the many other companies available - at very similar prices - and get it in writing that there will be a replacement car for you if anything goes wrong - we just had this verbally agreed with us - and so they could very easily go back on their word - which they did. Car hiring is notoriously dangerous when travelling anyway, but of course in parts of the world like Patagonia, where public transport is almost non-existant, it is a risk we felt was worth taking - but it was an expensive mistake choosing Avis.

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