“False advertising is the use of
misleading, false, or unproven information to advertise products to consumers.”
(Deceptive Advertising Definition, Consumer.Laws.com). For example, to claim
that a certain product has health benefits, but it does not or is unproven.
Luckily, most countries have laws to protect consumers from this phenomenon.
However, some companies found ways around this, it is not false advertising by
definition, but still very deceptive and irritating.
As we are going to Los Angeles in a couple of days, we needed to rent a car. Which is a total pain in the ass to arrange. First of all, it seems like every company only offers you an acceptable price if you’re 25 or older. Why? Well, they think that if you turn 25 your driving skills magically improve, which I found a little strange. For example, imagine someone who is 23, and who has been driving in busy traffic since he got his driver’s license at age 17. Now compare this person to someone who is 25, but only got his driver’s license for a year and drives once every month. The one who is 25, clearly the worse driver of the two, pays less than half the price the 23-year-old must pay. Bad for the 23-year-old, and bad for the car company, as the 25-year-old probably has a higher chance of getting into an accident.
But this is not the point of the blog, just a tip. The point of this blog is how tedious and misleading the process of renting a car is. Most of the time, you’ll reserve a car without paying anything or giving credit card information, so you don’t pay until the pick-up of the car. Now keep this in mind when reading the following. First of all, there is the difference in price based on age. Almost all companies ask your age, but some don’t take that into consideration when showing you the “all-inclusive” price in the next screen. So, you’ll never know if you’ll have to pay extra at pick-up. Secondly, taxes are not always included and can add up in the end. Luckily, this is most of the time not much and showed in the end price, which was already “all-inclusive” at step 1, but fair enough. Finally, you have the insurance. The most misleading of them all, just because only one out of the 7 companies we looked at showed an option for insurance. No company ever showed how much the insurance would cost, because you need to pay this upon pick-up. This means that you’ll have no idea how much the car is actually going to cost for the days you’ve selected. Furthermore, insurance is most of the time also based on age, so another unexpected variable is coming into play.
Still car rentals are allowed with the price of $15 a day for a car, but when you actually come to the checkout screen, even without insurance, the car is $150 for 4 days. I’m not really good at math, but I still know that 4 times 15 is not 150. Renting a car is one of the worst experiences I’ve had in a long time, so please just give us the total price. It isn’t that hard right? Well, maybe you just like to piss people off.
As we are going to Los Angeles in a couple of days, we needed to rent a car. Which is a total pain in the ass to arrange. First of all, it seems like every company only offers you an acceptable price if you’re 25 or older. Why? Well, they think that if you turn 25 your driving skills magically improve, which I found a little strange. For example, imagine someone who is 23, and who has been driving in busy traffic since he got his driver’s license at age 17. Now compare this person to someone who is 25, but only got his driver’s license for a year and drives once every month. The one who is 25, clearly the worse driver of the two, pays less than half the price the 23-year-old must pay. Bad for the 23-year-old, and bad for the car company, as the 25-year-old probably has a higher chance of getting into an accident.
But this is not the point of the blog, just a tip. The point of this blog is how tedious and misleading the process of renting a car is. Most of the time, you’ll reserve a car without paying anything or giving credit card information, so you don’t pay until the pick-up of the car. Now keep this in mind when reading the following. First of all, there is the difference in price based on age. Almost all companies ask your age, but some don’t take that into consideration when showing you the “all-inclusive” price in the next screen. So, you’ll never know if you’ll have to pay extra at pick-up. Secondly, taxes are not always included and can add up in the end. Luckily, this is most of the time not much and showed in the end price, which was already “all-inclusive” at step 1, but fair enough. Finally, you have the insurance. The most misleading of them all, just because only one out of the 7 companies we looked at showed an option for insurance. No company ever showed how much the insurance would cost, because you need to pay this upon pick-up. This means that you’ll have no idea how much the car is actually going to cost for the days you’ve selected. Furthermore, insurance is most of the time also based on age, so another unexpected variable is coming into play.
Still car rentals are allowed with the price of $15 a day for a car, but when you actually come to the checkout screen, even without insurance, the car is $150 for 4 days. I’m not really good at math, but I still know that 4 times 15 is not 150. Renting a car is one of the worst experiences I’ve had in a long time, so please just give us the total price. It isn’t that hard right? Well, maybe you just like to piss people off.
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