This has been one of the worst travel experiences of my life.

To make matters worse, this happened during our honeymoon and too often took the focus off celebrating our relationship. The following is a recount of all our issues we had with their vehicles since we stepped foot in New Zealand.

We returned the first car after the first night solely because we didn’t feel safe driving it to our hotel from the airport. It smelled. The windshield was smeared and affected the visibility especially during the rain. I couldn’t read the instrument panel because of moisture that had fogged up inside the panel. This also led to their staff not noticing the gas tank wasn’t full as I had to put in $35 worth of gas when I returned it after my one trip to our hotel and back.

After we arrived at our hotel, we coordinated switching out the car via email with the support staff. They seemed helpful as they gave us a make and model to switch out the next day. Unfortunately, they didn’t communicate that with the branch and it took 2 hours on site to get a new vehicle.

The second vehicle we received was better but not by much. It also had limited visibility of the instrument panel but we took it to get our trip under way. During the course of the trip we discovered that the A/C unit only worked periodically. The brakes need servicing and make a god awful, embarrassing shriek throughout the journey. Never failed to make the noise when pulling up to a hotel valet as we caught the attention of everybody in ear shot. It was quite embarrassing. Finally, the car didn’t start one morning. We called the AA number and the technician came out and discovered our key fob battery had died. He didn’t have a replacement so he rigged two batteries together that could barely get the car started. I ended up having to purchase the correct battery later on because we were so worried the car was going to leave us stranded.

I returned the vehicle a day early. I got $150US for my troubles.

Reviewed 11 months ago