Complaint Review: El Monte RV

I don't trust El Monte RV. I just came back from a fun trip to Yosemite. I rented an RV from El Monte RV in Van Nuys, CA. This location is convenient for us.

Before the trip we lined up the RV for 6 days on their website. When I went to pick it up, the rental was for 7 days. The manager, Rick, was trying to make me believe there wasn't anything that could be done about the extra day. I didn't believe him. He wasn't acting honest.

Rick pretended to help me out by pulling some tricks with mileage to make me think I was getting a break on the miles to make up for the extra day. These tricks would have amounted to 4 cents a mile for the miles over my 50 free miles per day. I would have to drive 5000 extra miles to make up the one extra day rental at a cost of 29 cents per mile.

I started thinking about canceling the booking, which would have meant I would lose $150.00 and would have been worth it, Rick was suddenly able to change the 7-day rental into a 6-day rental. At the same time they fussed with the mile calculation, more about this later.

The RV I was given to rent had scratches and marks and dirty rims and missing hubcaps and stained carpet. According to the sheet with all of these marks and dings and my signature, there were two hubcaps on the front wheels. Bring a camera on this part of the rental, more about this later.

My trip to Yosemite was great, if you go, try to stay in Yosemite instead of the towns outside, it is still a long trip in.

On my return of the RV they said I lost two hubcaps and dented the slide out step. I couldn't remember whether there were hubcaps to begin with, but the sheet I signed says there were two on the front wheels and that step was always dented, I even pointed it out to begin with.

I didn't take the hubcaps off and all I did was normal driving. If the hubcaps fell off while I was driving, then they put on hubcaps that can't stay on, or they were put on in such a way for them to fall off. I tried to argue this point. How can normal driving knock off not one, but two hubcaps in a 900-mile trip? This RV had 85000 miles how many hubcaps has this RV had? I had to buy new hubcaps, which they have on a rate sheet hanging on the wall. That cost $70.00, I looked this up it is a good price for hubcaps.

As far as the dented step, it was listed on the check out sheet all along, but they didn't see it on the sheet. I had to argue here until they found the note about the dent.

I forgot about the gas, I caught this before I left their lot. The check out sheet said it was a full tank. It is a small point, but it wasn't full it was around 7/8, but you know what they do when you come back is squeeze in as much gas as they can and charge $6.00 per gallon, right now gas is $4.30 per gallon. This still goes to my point about trusting El Monte RV.

At this point I was very leery about El Monte RV and Rick the manager. Rick started to remind me of a used car salesman. Which gets me to the part about the miles. I had to look over my final bill. I don't usually, but they made me believe I was being cheated. It turned out I was being cheated. I was supposed to have 50 free miles per day. They tried to bill me for every mile. This ended up being another negotiation to fix. "Oh, this is because you rented on the Internet..." They credited me for the 300 miles that I was due.

Was I ripped off? I did have to buy two new hubcaps. But if I took what they were dishing, I would have spent and extra $300.00 over the $1700.00 rental. Thats right it cost $1700.00 to rent a 32-foot RV for 6 days and thats before you buy gas and a place to park it... I had to force them not to rip me off.

I will probably rent an RV again, but I won't use El Monte RV.
Thank you for reading my story. Thank you for letting me post my story.

Daniel_white
Van Nuys, California
U.S.A.