We decided to rent an RV to do a cross-country one-way trip because we wanted to try to limit how much exposure we had to the pandemic. Cruise America was the only platform that I could find that would give us the ability to pick up in one location and drop off on another and not break the bank. Initially I called and got a quote but I couldn't book my reservation because the Navy takes forever to make their decisions.
By the time I finally had my dates and locations nailed down, the quote that I had was vastly different from what I ended up having to pay but by that point I had no choice. I also had put some time into going to the local cruise America location and the place I thought I was picking up my RV was actually fully booked and we ended up having to drive 3 hours round trip just to pick up my RV.
Once at the actual location however the lady at the desk for reservations was super friendly and was helpful in getting us to our rig. Outside, the unit was totally filthy and we had to do a walk-through which was difficult because it had so much dirt and grime on it. Inside it was also pretty dirty and the fridge and freezer smell like something had died in there. They did however spray the freezer and fridge down with something that smelled like orange before we left.
Once we got our RV to our house to load it up, we realized that there were some serious issues with the unit. The biggest issue was that the back area of the RV didn't lock correctly actually it didn't lock at all which was a huge issue because we depended on that area for a lot of our storage of our items. After that we found out that we could not test our low pressure gas because the unit was missing some fuse pieces in the fuse box, which is a pretty big safety issue. A couple days later we also started having issues with our water tank and then the main door to the RV started having issues with locking and unlocking as well.
I spent a significant amount of time on the phone with the lady from this location trying to problem-solve and she was very friendly but did not have a whole lot of workarounds. We then spent hours literally on the phone waiting for renters assistance with corporate cruise America and left them countless messages and they promised to call us back however we literally had none of our issues fixed or troubleshooted our entire time.
The rig itself is not in great shape, including lots of dents and dings on the outside, a completely dented bumper, areas where it's held together by what looks like caulking, and significant wear and tear on edges and bumper areas inside the cabin. If we had an opportunity to do something else I definitely would have but we had to make do with the options that we had which was basically just this.
I feel like the unit should have been better inspected by the team at this location before we took it on the road and they should have either fixed this unit or given us one that actually worked and for that I'm unhappy with them. Renting this RV was very expensive and what quality we got for this was definitely not reflected in the price of the rental. I can only hope that when we return it to the receiving location, that they help offset some of our inconveniences with a price adjustment. read more