The car rental industry is a big business.  Just about everyone that travels needs a rental car and when it comes to customer satisfaction and customer service, there are companies out there that truly care and there are some companies out there that truly don’t care about the customer.  We did some browsing online and tallied up some votes for the worst and best car rental companies online.  Let’s start with the worst car rental company:

The worst:  Payless Car Rental

Upon doing a lot of research on review websites, I found Payless Car Rental to be the absolutely worst car rental company out there.   Even though it’s not a nationwide chain, they do have a lot of locations located in major cities such as Phoenix and San Jose.  Here’s what we found online about this company –

• There are countless complaints about the awful customer service.  Here’s a complaint letter that sums up a lot of people’s problems.
• The RipOffReport has over 25 rip off reports (which is high) on the website about how people were given lemon cars, how they were charged unwanted fees, and how their company is very misleading when it comes to charging fees to their credit card.
• RateItAll has over 39 reviews for this awful company.  While RateItAll allows you go give positive reviews as well.  I counted up the positive reviews and there are 0!  They received less than a 1.25 out of 5.  This is horrible for this website.
• Epinions, generally known for a lot of positive reviews actually rated this company just as bad at the RateItAll website.  Once again, this website gave the company a poor 1 and 1/2 start, which is very poor for opinions online.  If you can’t get good reviews here, you’re doing something wrong.

The main thing I noticed about this company is that they tend to give you the worst cars in the world and proceed to pass the fees onto you that you’re unaware of.  If you’re looking to get a cheap rate, you’ll find it here but beware, you get what you pay for.

The best:  Avis Car Rental

Now that all the negativity is out of my system, let’s write about the best car rental company online.  After I viewed a couple websites online, I found Avis to be the best for the value, customer service, and the car dependability.

• According to RateItAll, Avis recieved the best rating out of all the car rental companies online.  They recieved over 3 stars!  This is a very good thing to have considering most of RateItAll’s reviews are generally negative.
• On Epinions, Avis once again shined with a 3 1/2 star out of 5 stars.  Reviews on here were mostly positive ranging from “being honest” to the easy check in process.
• Now, we don’t want to have a biased post about Avis but honestly, it was hard to find bad things about this company.  I did a research on the RipOffReport and only found 1 rip off report!  This is so small considering it’s a nationwide chain. 

If you want to rent a car, I would defintely give Avis a look.  There are so many great companies out there that I can’t focus on but there are awful car rental companies out there as well like Payless.  If you know of any other’s that we should steer clear of, make sure you contact me or leave a comment!