I've never had a problem with Avis, they usually update their fleet yearly. When we were in STT last year renovating our condo we rented a Jeep Comander for 2 months. I gave them a call when the oil light came on, they sent out a service tech with a new Jeep and brought ours back to the shop for the oil change. Over the past few years I have rented from all of the car companies at the airport and have never had a problem with any of them. When I book through Travelocity I just pick the one with the best price.

We rented from Avis last June. Initially we reserved a SUV, which was recommended seeing we were staying on St. John. When we arrived all they had was a minivan (with quite a few scratches I might add) to accomadate us. We took the van, after one day and a few slips and slides after some heavy rains, and not being able to get to our villa, we contacted Avis and they met us at the dock in St. John with a 4WD SUV. To make a long story short...we accidentally left our villa keys in the van and had to contact Avis again. Without hesitation, they sent them back with the captain of the passenger ferry and we retrieved them. What initially could have been considered a negative experience, they took the time and effort to correct any problems. We were not charged any extra fees and after getting a 4WD riding around the island was a breeze. As a matter of fact, we rented from Avis again this year, but this time from St. Croix airport and everything went without incident. Hope this helps. One last thing, if you reserve your car on-line make sure you call a day ahead to confirm. This may help alleviate future problems.

Thanks, this is somewhat reassuring!

Wolf,
You were blessed! I know that Avis does allow cars to STJ, but they do have a $1000 fee if they have to come to STJ to deal with any problems. Please ck up on this to make sure, but I am pretty positive this is the rule of thumb.

We were not charged anything extra probably because of the initial problem of erasing our reservation and then not having the vehicle we reserved available. We also did not get hotheaded and went directly to corporate, which was located on the mainland bypassing the middlemen.

WHATTTT???? Are you kidding? Am I understanding this right that you rent a car, the car has a defect through no fault of your own and you pay $1000 to have Avis come over and fix the problem or replace the car? Or is this only if you clearly neglected the car and caused the problem?

Largosgirl wrote:
WHATTTT???? Are you kidding? Am I understanding this right that you rent a car, the car has a defect through no fault of your own and you pay $1000 to have Avis come over and fix the problem or replace the car? Or is this only if you clearly neglected the car and caused the problem?

Don't get overly excited. The incidence of a rental car from STT breaking down on STJ is absolutely minimal, almost unheard of and the rental vehicles here aren't "Rent A Wrecks" although even the newest island cars quickly get dings and scrapes.

Understood, we've rented right on STJ several times but my question remains- should we be one of the "almost unheard" of events where the car breaks down due to no fault of ours, we have to shell out $1000? This is an absolute deal breaker for me for sure:-X

This is a little different subject, but I thought I would share. In June we rented a Jeep thru Amalie Car Rental in STT and I highly recommend them! They were waiting for US at the airport and again when we returned to the Airport for drop off! They were a little more in price, but definitely worth every penny! During our trip, we did put a scrape on the vehicle while trying to park (the space was small and the brick wall was closer than we thought!) We had not bought the extra insurance (they didn't even push it) So I called them to give them a head's up before our return date and they said no problem. After looking at the scrape, they said they would charge our credit card for the damage, then they would complete some paperwork and mail to us along with some pictures. They told us to then contact our credit card company and forward all of the information that they will be sending to us and the credit card company should refund our money! Well they were exactly correct! We got a full refund from our credit card company!! I was a little skeptical, because I have never heard of this before? I mean, why buy any extra insurance if the credit card company covers any damage to the vehicle?? Has anyone else ever had this happen before? Amalie is a private "Mom & Pop" rental company, and I wonder if one of the big rental companies would have handled this in the same way???

🙂 Nancy

I have no idea Larry but I'm happy for you. We did decide last night to bag the Avis idea and just spend the money to rent from Suttons again. A "free" car was looking great to me but this $1000 thing was a deal breaker to us, despite the rareness of bad events.