I'll be honest, our hiring of an RV from Cruise Canada is a story in parts. This is our departure story. We hired our RV from an independent party, who provided us with instructions for the collection of our RV, including the restriction that we could not pick it up on the day of arrival into Canada, being that we were travelling internationally. Fair enough, that makes sense, falling asleep at the wheel of a 24ft vehicle travelling at speed would be disastrous for anyone. It also stated that we must call the depot 24hrs in advance of our reservation, so we did this as well. When we did so, we were greeted with the most bemused response of 'why? your reservation is tomorrow.' err, because we were told to? Nevermind.
The following day, we are scratching our heads, trying to figure out out to get to the depot. On our tablet, we were struggling to find the depot location, but eventually located it, but the website comes with no instructions for how to get to the depot. The email we received includes tdriving instructions, but, given that we are hiring an RV, it would seem rather odd to hire a car as well?
That was not the only odd part. So, with no details on the Cruise Canada website, we tried to call the depot to get some advice from the people there on how to get to Bolton from downtown Toronto, only to be greeted with 'how would I know that?'. Last time I checked, YOU ARE A TRAVEL COMPANY. Any other vehicle hire company includes details on how to get to a location, not a clueless answer.
After arriving, we were a bit confused to be charged $700 dollars in tax. When we asked the girl serving us, she hadn't got a clue why, walked about a foot to her manager who, very clearly within earshot, said 'tell them it's tax, they have to pay it'. She walked a foot back, to repeat what he had said - no worries dear, 'they' heard good and fine the first time round. A lesson in manners would be recommended - nay, 3 or 4.
From there, it went from bad to worse. When we left the depot (after $130 taxi fare, thanks for picking somewhere completely out of the way!), we discovered that the hot water wasn't working, and neither were the electricals. Upon some investigation, my heating engineer partner eventually located the heater, only to find it hadn't even been commissioned i.e. when we switched the hot water on, the hot water tank was being heated while empty, as the water hadn't been switched on. This, by the way, was all behind sealed units that technically we were not supposed to access. The manual that came with the RV was useless, as the instructions didn't match the unit we had. I'll get onto that shortly. Whilst investigating, we tried to call the Travellers Assistance, got cut off and never heard from them again (correction, not til we called them back only to be told that they hadn't got round to calling as they were too busy). We also tried to contact the depot to talk to the mechanic who guided us around the van in the first place, only to be told that the receptionist was too busy to talk to us. Over an hour later, the manager calls us back (not the mechanic, as requested) - rather late in my book, considering we had been stuck on the side of the highway at the time all of this was happening. When told we had resolved the problems, we were basically informed that we must have misunderstood what we were told:
1) the van was ready to go (no, it really wasn't - I will also note the kits we paid for on top of the rental were not in the van and had to be fetched after we did a quick check)
2) there was an inverter in the system that would mean the electrics would work without a shoreline - nope, no inverter. I can't make inverter up, I don't even know what one is, but I was told very clearly that I had one.
Oh yeah and forget an apology, that wouldn't be necessary as it was a miscommuncation. Right.
Cruise Canada documentation is nothing but poor - one manual for their whole fleet of RVs, irrespective of size. The information in it doesn't correspond - which is a little distrubing when you get to the list of fines for damaged or missing items - especially when the kits you are supplied with don't correspond with the manual. We didn't get a checklist when we left Toronto, and naturally freaked out when seeing that we would be fined for items we never had in the first place.
So yeah - Cruise Canada (Toronto), you get one star because you had a nice mechanic who, despite feeding us inaccurate info about our vehicle was the best part of the depot. Your staff are otherwise rude and clueless and there is no danger of a chance we would hire an RV from you again. read more