Complaint Review: Sixt Rent A Car

Howdy folks,  I am the former franchise owner of Sixt Rent a car in Austin, Texas.  I am here to tell you my story of how Sixt Rent A Car cheated me and my husband out of our wealth, our dignity and our success. 

It all began when we were online, I believe it was Auto Rental News website that Sixt was advertising their bullshit franchise opportunities, I should have known something was up when a few minutes later I got a call from the EVP of Sixt Franchise in Florida, we chatted about 30 minutes or so, all he did was pump it up and sell the glitz and glam of the brand, I think he used the word “Prestigious” which let me tell you folks nothing is prestigious about Sixt Rent A Car and I mean nothing. Ya know If I had know his compensations package was heavily weighed on selling franchise locations I would have been more guarded and much more curious of their success in the states.  A few weeks went by and the EVP flew out to Austin to meet with me, I can remember sitting down with him at the Salt Lick BBQ for a dinner meeting, this is where the lies, cheating and deceit began.  This Heartless guy presented me with these fancy brochures with the “Sixt look” it was exactly what he had described over the phone, he went on to tell me that it would be just like Avis,  and besides why wouldn’t you want to drive luxury and pay economy.  

Sixt sold us on their incredible buying power on premium German cars and then turned around took that promise away by sending us to the local dealerships to pay premium prices.  I recently found out that BMW itself was shocked, that unlike other rental car franchises sixt did not pass along any saving to their franchise owners. Now how could I believe the quote “why drive a ford fusion when you can drive a Mercedes for the same price” when only Sixt has that pricing power. 

The EVP touted how Sixt would change the US rental car market and that their prestigious brand could compete with the majors such as Avis Budget, Hertz, Enterprise and the like, just to be clear they are nothing like the majors in more ways that I could possibly tell you.   Now… at the time of these conversations I had been an agency operator with Avis Budget Group, I had been with these guys and represented a truly prestigious brand for about 13 years or so.  I had multiple locations including Austin, San Antonio and San Francisco all top performing multi-million dollar locations with record margins. Well then Sixt comes along with their promises that they knew what they were doing, that it would be just like working with Avis Budget Group just a different brand.  After doing my do-diligence and qualify with Sixt to be a franchisee “mind you they had strict requirements to become a franchisee” I assume they believed their own nonsense about how prestigious their brand was because that’s the only thing I can come up with. 

My company was solid, credit was great, cash flow was always good never any issues to speak of; most importantly I had 13 years of experience in car rental, 13 years folks.  I believe you could have had all the experience in the world but with Sixt’s business model, broken a*s software, no franchise support and no deals on cars as promised, there was no way in hell could you survive I don’t care who you are.  This is why 9 out of 12 Airport franchises are already out of business, Sixt doesn’t give a darn.

You see most of the franchises in the United States have dried up, gone bankrupt and closed down with the exception of the few that Sixt themselves operates.   I believe they had no Idea what the hell they were doing in the United States market so they picked out experienced car rental operators learned off the backs of their many years of hard work and experience only to turn around and strip them  of their lifetime wealth to create the infrastructure in America.  Sixt is the single worst business decision I have ever or will ever make in my lifetime. I believe that nearly every single franchise owner to date in the United States feels the same about this company.  The damage that they have caused is catastrophic.

To keep things on the shorter side and not bore any of you all, I signed my franchise agreement in October two thousand thirteen on the Sixt promise of success, like a fool I gave up my 13 year history and success with Avis Budget Group.  Soon after signing, the capitalizing of the companies began, the build out of the locations which might I add cost me over a 100 grand, the support they had promised wasn’t there, come to think of it they didn’t even have the Sixt plans for us. They wanted us to take step by step pictures of the Regine Sixt’s sacred wall to see how we did it so they could copy it. This over engineered multiple coats of lacquer orange monstrosity which had zero function other than paying homage to Regine Sixt’s ego cost me fourty thousand dollars, I had to buy another one for my second location another fourty thousand dollars gone. We had to pay through the nose to get to an acceptable level of “Sixt” look.  This is what sixt worked on, instead of a operable model and working software. The image was one more important that competence; this is the Sixt way, Flash, Lies, Marketing, Image, Lawyers over substance. This was a big eye opener for me, as the promises they had made were already turning into lies.  Moving on to fleet, what a crock of s**t I had specifically asked in the very beginning how and where do we source fleet from?  They sent me a short spread sheet of several companies that would lease vehicles, many of these vendors will never do business with sixt again because of tens of millions of dollars lost through the American franchises who lost everything because of the lies and deceit. I was shocked because I was told that they had such deep ties and connections with the manufacturers that fleet pricing wouldn’t be a problem.  Well folks it actually turned out to be a gigantic problem, let’s just say I had no choice but to overpay for fleet.

So like an idiot I ordered cars, 2 million dollars’ worth of cars, you see here’s the problem at this point once you’re in, buckle up because you’re in.

July 2014 is when we finally opened after several months of issues with Sixt not understanding the us market and this so called “endorsement” with the insurance companies, this affected other franchises as well because Sixt clearly had no idea what they were doing. They were just making it up as they went along.  So after getting through that mess with them we finally opened our doors.

Reservations were starting to build, I was out marketing to my network of folks, past and future customers.  The software that we used was supposed to be state of the art turned out to be a 10 year old Mozilla browser in German no wonder they pride themselves on the lowest cost of IT while their competitors spend money to have a decent software, well again another promise from the Sixt family of liars, it was constantly frozen, signature pads didn’t work, reports weren’t understandable,  never could track the money we showed we were making money but we weren’t because they were wrong, how in the hell can you run a business if you don’t have the right software to run it with?  You just can’t.  I mean it was the worst software I have ever came across. Erich Sixt knew the software was s**t, but once a con man always a con man.

One of the worst parts of the Sixt scam was they never told us that they were going to keep our prepaid rental money to fund their own corporate business, talk about highway robbery. They did not to tell us that they were going to hold our money from us from the day the customer prepaid until a month and a half after the car is returned, folks that means Sixt could keep my money from my sale for over a year; this enormous loss of cash flow is why owning an American Sixt Franchise sucked. This clearly shows that they’re corporate business was all they cared about and we were just standing in line at the slaughter house.   ! Oh and I can’t possibly forget this, maybe a month or so after we opened we got a contract with Ft Hood in Killeen Texas to fleet a foreign government soldiers while they were here training.  I think it like 30 cars or something like that, I had given my bid and then Sixt turns right around cancels that bid then offers them something much cheaper with all insurance included, like really Sixt corporate just put 400k of liability on my shoulders without even asking, then they turned it into a direct bill account which is nearly the same as a prepay meaning I would be out 30 cars for 30 days, and then wait another 30 or more days to get paid on them.   By starving us from our cash flow we had no chance of success, our pockets are only so deep.  Anytime Sixt USA needed money I was told they just pick up the phone and it’s in the account the next day.  We as American small business owners don’t have the luxury of a phone call for foreign money.

If it wasn’t holding our prepay money, it was Sixt “losing” our cars, letting them sit and not renting them.  I had to pay to get my own d**n cars back after they made us start doing one ways, hell I had one that was sitting in LA for god knows how long with no revenue on it.  With our cars trapped on Sixt’s lot generating no revenue how can we rent them from our lots? We were promised that our cars would be taken care of and rented and not left to sit, well folks that’s another lie!  If you’re not renting cars you’re not making money. 

Then that brings us to what we in the industry call the DNR “do not rent list”  this is a list of customers who abuse rental cars, keep them for extended periods of time without paying for them, effectively just bad customers that cost us our profits.  This is a perfect example of another reason Sixt was not prepared for the United States.  We lost so many cars due to not having the support of Sixt and their due-diligence in the market an experienced rental car company would have such a list, all the other major rental cars companies do.    I could have saved thousands in repossessions, chargebacks, transportation fees and damage repairs.  This sickens me and is just another example of the disaster they created.

My life was amazing before I became just another of victim of the Sixt franchise death machine; after all most of my sixt franchise friends have the same story to tell. I had well over a million dollars, had just married the love of my life a few months prior and was looking forward to a profitable and amazing experience as one of the first Sixt franchises in America.  We were going to start a family and thought that everything we were told about sixt was the truth and it was going to be great.  Of course we were not able to take on the financial responsibilities of a little one running around the house, expanding our family was a dream of ours and they crushed it.  Sixt took all my money through incompetence and brutality. Month after month we tried to fix the problems that they caused. We had an article in Auto Rental News in July 2014 and there have been other articles in that very same magazine of other franchises,  ask those franchise how they are doing now.  Ha I can tell you…. Their devestated.  This company didn’t just betray me, but it betrayed my family, my employees, my investors, my vendors and my friends.  It broke my heart to have to lay off my assistant that was 8 months pregnant right before she gave birth to her child, she was like family to us.   This story is common among the other franchise owners in the US. We all tell each other the stories of horror which only owning a Sixt franchise could know.

So my perfect life was shattered by the lies from Germany. I was living the American dream, my own business that was profitable before Sixt, a home, nice cars, a loving husband and the thought of expanding us two to us three a family.  Instead I went from being a millionaire to losing my food stamps last month and owning broken hearing aids that I can’t afford to fix.  I lost my home, cars, health insurance, I lost 16 years of making the right move making the right decision having the discipline to be successful. My health has suffered drastically with strokes, high blood pressure, thoughts of suicide, I don’t sleep I have emotional breakdowns daily.  I re-live this story every day in my head, every day!

You see I don’t have one of those fancy degrees to fall back on.  I had blood sweat and tears building my companies all to have Sixt rent a car rip this from me in the most violent way possible.  They broke me and then fought me with attorneys, I spent nearly 200k fighting them to wind up with a s**t a*s settlement.  I will never forget Johannes telling me in his German accent “We ah,  will give you 100k if you stop the suit”, I told him no, I told him I needed  2.25mm he laughed and said you will spend a million dollars fighting me you will never win.  Shame on the Sixt family for making lies and threats the Sixt way. 

I wish that I had never heard of this terrible company with a horrible model and deadly outcomes.  I wish they would’ve disclosed just how morally bankrupt and nasty they truly were before I invested my life savings.  Maybe if other franchise buyers hear this, Erich Sixt will have one less victim and a little less money to add to his billions. 

Check out the website that is dedicated to saving other americans from this horrible company. 

www.Carrentalscandal.com