I recently had something happen that quite frankly shocked me. Six of us came down to spend a week on St. John. We needed a larger vehicle to accommodate everyone and their luggage so I did something I've never done...rented from a company I've never rented from before with no airport office. When we arrived a representative picked me up and took me to their office. We discussed insurance and apparently none of the car rental companies provide insurance any more (we ran into this on St. John also). At some point I told the woman that I had been coming to the VI for exactly 40 years and at one time lived on St. John so I knew my way around and was quite comfortable driving on island.
The vehicle was a fairly new Dodge Durango. I could tell it was a recent model but it was dinged up from one end to the other, with literally dozens of dings/scratches/dents and the front spoiler had been ripped off. Someone had attempted to conceal all the damage by using touch up paint to hide them but they were all very obvious. It would have taken all day to mark them on the small diagram. I wasn't worried about causing any damage myself as we would be staying at Emerald Beach on both ends of the trip and only using the vehicle to go to and from the airport & ferry at Crowne Bay.
After dropping everyone at the airport I went to the rental office closeby to return the car. Of course someone went out to check the car for damage and came back in and said "someone hit your car". I told them exactly where we had been, that I was the only driver and that car was never out of my sight except the night before at the hotel and it was parked in such a way that no one could have bumped it on that side. I asked her how she could tell that it was a recent ding and she said "I know". I needed to get to the airport and wasn't in any mood for an argument so I had their driver take me. She said she would be in touch. A week went by and I called 4 times over several days only to be told "our estimator has not had a chance to look at it." This concerned me as I couldn't see why an "estimator" would need to look at a nickel size door ding. No one would ever call me back but they did charge $450 on my credit card. When I called to complain about the excessive amount she said "Don't you have insurance". I said that indeed I do but this would be just under my $500 deductible. So we had the same Durango for less than 48 hours, didn't even used enough gas to move the needle, spent almost $500 including tips for their drivers, and they add-on an additional $450 for damage that was already there. I've heard about this kind of thing happening but when it happened to me I was literally speechless. That's the kind of thing that turns visitors off and certainly I will never use that company again. We always rent a vehicle from one of the airport car rental agencies but this time we needed something larger. We do this for our own convenience and to not be at the mercy of the taxi drivers. Next time I'll save the $950 and go the taxi route. A little inconvenience would be worth it.
Anyone else have a similar experience?