Complaint Review: SoCal RV Rentals

 SoCAL RV Rentals seems pretty shameless in giving poor service, and having a disregard for their customers needs, concerns, or even safety.  It is highly reccomended that you go somewhere else for an RV rental or off-road-vehicle rental, because their manner is unprofessional and unfriendly.

The biggest issue with SoCAL RV Rentals is their obvious unwillingness to communicate with customers directly in person.  This became a big problem when dealing with the retrieval of a $1,000 security deposit.  To date, the deposit has never been recovered.

In this case, 2 atv's were rented for 24 hrs. Each atv required it's own $500 deposit for damages.  The deposit form was totally indescriptive, and basically useless. It mentions nothing of your liability or the process used to determine youre retrieval of the deposit. 

The pre-rental inspection was a sham.  Both atv's were positioned awkwardly on a trailer before you're given a chance to look the vehicle over thoroughly.  They were butted up next to eachother and strapped down heavily, giving you little advantage to look over the entire vehicle.  Meanwhile you can't help but feel rushed through the process...perhaps that's because the entire hour and a half process actually eats into your rental time that your paying for.

So then they just hand you a clipboard with a virtually blank piece of paper and tell you to write down anything you see....which isn't so easy when both vehicles have extensive damages to begin with, such as cracked plastic, various scuffs, dings, splits and seperations in the plastic kit.  Some parts are clearly not factory, they seem like used replacements with previous damages, etc.  But it seemed ok because afterall, they are off-road-vehicles.  You expect some wear and tear on them, especially with rentals. 

What we didn't expect was that when it came time to inspect the vehicles upon their return, it was admitted that there was a slight mishap with one of the vehicles.  It sustained some minor cosmetic damages, but nothing that seemed too extensive, just some plastic pieces that were already damaged to begin with.

We hoped that the guys at SoCal RV Rentals would be reasonable and negotiate the damages and their cost professionally, but it was apparent that they were prety eager to just boot us out of there, without giving us a proper documention of the damages, with no pictures, with no mechanic's estimates.  We were told theyd get back to us about the deposit.

4 days went by with no word from anyone at SoCAL RV Rentals.  we called and called to talk to the owner, but he had his receptionist tell us that he was on the phone every time we called, promising to call back, but he never did.

on the 5th day that we were waiting to hear something back from the owner, he had his receptionist contact us.  She said that damages between the two vehicles was estimated at around $3000 and insisted that we pay the balance.  This of course, is without providing one shred of evidence that there was any damage caused at all.  Just her word, I guess.

It is clear that SoCAL RV Rentals is eager to take advantage of a customer's deposit, lack of control or awareness in such situations, and makes it hard for you to get anywhere as they dodge your calls and toss a secretary in your way every time you attempt to resolve an issue.

To date, we have not received any official estimates, or any personal contact with the owner.  They kept the enture deposit for their own and created a pretty negative interuption to our vacation.  We had a great time overall, but we certainly regret takinig our chances with SoCal RV Rentals, they operated in almost a criminal fashion and it has left us feeling somewhat victimized.

But what can you expect from a company who doesn't even hitch their trailer to your truck in a legal and safe manner? Yeah, they never connected the brake lights on their trailer to my truck, so the whole trip we hauled a trailer on the highway with no brake lights or turn signals.  They also failed to properly connect the trailer's safety chains to my truck, they just loosely clipped them to some flimsy piece of my chassis that wasn't even meant to be load-bearing. How unsafe, unprofessional and illegitamate are these guys at SoCAL RV Rentals!  Expect more reports about them in the future.