If you have any kind of non-emergency problem during your rental, it's literally impossible to reach a human being by phone. I'm not talking about the middle of the night, no matter what time you call there's nobody there. The phone system says it will connect you to a representative but it rings and rings and nobody answers, it just hangs up on you. I tried every combination and permutation of phone prompts and all of them ended up with them hanging up on me. So I'm driving around in "reduced power mode" with the check engine light on. Not exactly an ideal situation. If their website is working and you don't have any issues with the vehicle, Dollar (a.k.a Hertz) is probably ok. Heaven help you if you do have any kind of issue cuz there's nobody there to help you. read more

Dollar Car Rental - Hope you like going slow. - Car Rental Near Me - Clearwater, Florida

Well, the shuttle finally picked us up. Drove us to the hotel where the rental desk is located. It was pretty sketchy. The employee didn't even apologize for the delay. Got the car. I've seen worse rentals, but this one isn't that great, either. Cosmetic scratches and dings. 52,000 miles. I suspect that Dollar picked it up from some other rental company after they were done with it. I really wouldn't rent from these guys again. Pricing was cheap, but I'm not sure that the pickup hassle was worth it. read more

I flew in to PIE, my flight was delayed so I called the 800 to verify that the agency would still be open. I was assured that they would be. They weren't and I was stranded at 12:30 am. Thankfully, another company was able to take care of me. Other agencies said, "they do this all the time." I will never consider using Dollar rental again. read more

Horrible. Never will I rent from them again. Made a reservation for a truck at my hotel location. when I went to pick up the guy said that he "couldn't" get a truck. Then sent me all the way to the Tampa airport in a loaner to get my truck. By the time I reached the counter they told me that they had no trucks and I was getting a small compact SUV. Wasted 3 hours of time. Reservation is basically pointless. Save your time and money elsewhere. read more

This place is in the back of a Holiday Inn near PIE. Been to this place several times in the past couple of years to get a car because it was cheaper than renting directly from TPA. There was 2 ppl working the counter and 2 ppl cleaning out the cars. Seems like this franchise have different owners now. Also Hertz bought dollar so now the hold on my cc says hertz. No problems. No upsell. Didn't have to show insurance card to refuse ins. Was able to get car from here and return at tampa airport which is all that I can ask for. read more

WOW - craziest organization I have ever seen. NOT WORTH THE DISCOUNT. When I arrived on Wed afternoon, the guy at the counter was RUDE, GRUMPY, and should have been unemployed. Refused to assist the lady ahead of me in line b/c she had the wrong card. He grunted maybe 10 words at me. On rerun, couldn't find anyone to help me. Finally found someone and they came from same training program as guy on Wed. read more

Let me start by saying I love Dollar and use them a lot. However, I will never use this location ever again! The Dollar counter is off site at a nearby Holiday Inn. You have to wait for a minivan to pick you up. Once you get to the hotel, you walk through the backsite pool area, with your luggage, to get to the small counter in the back of the hotel. The vehicle was actually a Hertz SUV! It's GPS would always come on and say "welcome to Hertz"! Drop off was the same way, through the pool. Because of a wait, we had to wait for the shuttle, which was 5 people full to return before we could be transported....which caused us delays at the airport. I will be using Enterprise or one of the other few On Site car rentals next time at PIE....even though Dollar is cheaper. read more

I was able to call ahead and change my reservation. I met the desk clerk and he was courteous and helpful. For a small little place, I was in and out in less than 7 minutes. I will use their services again and they made me feel good about my decision to use this rental agency. read more

Pros: Cheaper than most to rent vehicles and to return to other airports. Cons: When you confirm they fail to tell you that the location is quite a distance from the airport. We rented a mid sized car and the representative tried to convince us that a 'Ford Fiesta' was a mid-sized car (this is only true if you are a family of gnomes). We had to wait another 1/2 hour while a mid sized car was cleaned. Really don't understand the rationale as there were plenty of mid sized cars in their lot. Manager really didn't seem to want to be there. Might be a good idea to get off of your personal computer and to at least pretend that you care about guests. Will pay the additional money and use Enterprise next time. Also, they are the only company we have used that charges extra for a spouse to drive. read more

We recently rented a car for a week from Dollar car rental in St Petersburg at the Holiday Inn location. Their price was significantly lower than the other car rental places which did give me a bit of a sense of humor. We flew into St Pete via Allegiant. The other car rental places have little desks in the terminal. Dollar has a phone on a computer board which one calls when you have your luggage and you need a pick up. The employee said they would be there in 5 minutes. This is not my first rodeo. I knew it would take longer. We waited about 30 minutes. Some other people also came and waited with us on the sidewalk at the end of the terminal. When the van did arrive there were too many people to fit into one van. One other woman and I were left standing outside the terminal with the luggage. I stood there adding up dollar signs I had not paid for the convenience of walking across a parking lot and getting into the car. She on the other hand was NOT a happy camper. She did not care if the rental contract cost less. My husband went in the van to go to Holiday Inn. He was back surprisingly quickly - maybe 15-20 minutes. The car was fine. The only problem was that my husband did not know to ask where we returned the car one week later BEFORE the agency opened. It took 20 phone calls over the course of the week to find someone to answer the phone. Fortunately, the day before we left, I finally got through and I was told to return the car to Hertz parking lot. It seems that the only problem Dollar has is the lack of staffing. The phone number is a pre-recorded message which promptly hangs up after it is completed. The van was too small for the number of clients at arrival. All of these problems could easily be solved with a few more employees. Would we rent from them again? Yes. But, be aware of some of the issues and plan to ask all questions up front. read more

This place has got to be the worst customer service. Poor phone customer service. Person didnt even introduce themselves, i mean who does that. Had to ask the persona name (Adrian) i am speaking with, worst of all was speaking a different language while i was on the line i mean who knows he could of talk s*it while i was the line. Was put on hold for a long period. Couldnt even give a me a deal on rental due to the lack of vehicles he had. I honestly have never been treated like this ever. Adrian you have the worst customer service and i dont know why you working there if you cant treat customers with courtesy. read more

Shady company!! First time renter with Dollar through Southwest Vacations. Fee charged at the end was 1.5 times total amount prepaid through Southwest. Wasn't clear that the total charges would be this much. I'm a long time renter through Avis and can say I'm sticking with what works. Very, very shady. read more

Don't use this company! We had to pay almost $100 for less than $7 worth of tolls. We rented a car from them at the Tampa Airport. They asked us about buying the unlimited toll service. We told them that we did not need it. He asked where we were going and we said Winter Haven. He said that he travels there all the time and there were three tolls each way and there was no way to pay the tolls that it was all electronic. They would take a picture the license plate and then we would be charged the tolls plus $15 per each booth. The trip to Winter Haven would cost us over $120. We bought the toll package and found two tolls on the way to Winter Haven both had places to pay the less than $2.00 worth of tolls. We went through the SunPass Lane as instructed by the Dollar attendant. We called Dollar about this and found their customer service to be less than helpful. They said there was nothing they could do, we would have to go back to the airport before our trip ended to take of it? We requested to speak to a supervisor and they said none was available and someone would call us. We did not get a call and I called back. This person told us we could go to any Dollar to take care of it and would have a supervisor call us. We went to another Dollar and they would not help us either. Never heard from a supervisor. When we dropped our car off at the airport, she did say she would take the unlimited toll service off out bill. We would still be charged the $15 fee for each toll we went through the SunPass Lane. She said they were charged the fee by the toll company (this is not true the Sun Pass website says the vendors retain the administrative fee charged). She said a manager would call me. You guessed it; no manager called! Save your money and lots of frustration do not us Dollar or their sister companies Hertz and Thrifty. read more

I rented in Orlando and dropped at Clearwater St Pete (PIE). The rental process and the car were fine. However their administrative charges for Pay By Plate are outrageous. My 8 tolls are almost the price of the rental! Before rent understand what your alternatives are. $112.94 for about $10 in tolls. I would fully expect to administrative fees but this is outrageous. read more

Rented a vehicle online to be picked up at St. Pete airport. Our flight landed at 6:40 pm so I confirmed the reservation for 7:00 pm. We landed, got our baggage and headed for the rental counters. There is no Dollar booth at the counter so we went outside to get the shuttle to take us to our car. There was no shuttle, so we waited patiently with another couple that were having the same problem. After about 10 minutes we called the number that was on our reservation and the recording said that they closed at 7:00 pm. Great. We called again and used the selection that contacted the shuttle operator. It said he would be back to the phone in 5 minutes and please leave a message. I did, multiple times. Meanwhile my wife called the 800 number, and they put her on hold for 15 minutes. Then they transferred her to another operator. That operator called the local number and then said they are closed, all she could do would be to cancel our reservation but sorry, we were out of luck. Great! We went back into the terminal and asked other rental car companies for a rental, but they were all out, except for a mini van for over $1000 dollars for the 4 days we needed it. We finally spotted a shuttle for Ace Car Rental and he found that they had a car for us, 3 times the cost of our original reservation with Dollar but we had no choice. We also found out that Dollar has a really bad reputation for doing this to people in St. Pete. We will never give them business again. read more

Run! We have used this location twice and both times we had issues. The first time I used dollar was because I was able to take my rental across the border to Canada. Unfortunately it had a bad tire and I spent my whole trip looking for spots to put air in the tire. If I wanted to worry about car maintenance while traveling from Florida to Nova Scotia with a car full of kids ,I could have drove my own vehicle. The second time we prepurchased online because it was supposed to be cheaper. IT'S NOT! We live local and should not be charged extra for airport travel but if you prepay you will be charged multiple times for extras like (international fees?).The customer service couldn't care at the least. When we hit traffic and wasn't sure if we would make it in time the told us we would be charged $180. if we are 5 minutes late. So we paid the fee and kept for the extra day. But as we went to return our car the next day we spent a hour first waiting for someone to show up and then for the customer service to take care of another customer who had just walked in and decided he didn't want a tag from another state. The man never apologized for any of it and couldn't care a less. Then to top it off this is located in a area that is known for prostitution and we had a crackhead harassing us in the parking lot. Please do yourself a favor...go elsewhere! read more

Although less expensive rates, when I arrived at the airport shuttle area, I called for pick-up and was placed on hold for over 15 minutes. I was then told a shuttle would be there to pick me up in 5-10 minutes. After another 20 minutes passed, no one showed up so I called again and was told someone would be there to pick me up in 5-10 minutes. An hour had passed from my waiting at the shuttle area until someone finally picked me up. When I arrived at the service counter, it took awhile to assign me a vehicle. I opened the car and there was a very strong odor of smoke and the seats were badly stained. I went back to the counter and had a considerable wait to get reassigned to another car. The total wait from arrival at the airport shuttle area to the time I could be on my way was 1 1/2 hours. The exterior windows and interior were not particularly clean. I am now hesitant to rent from that location again. read more

HORRIBLE COMPANY!! My fiance and I reserved a car at Dollar Car Rental in the Tampa International Airport on December 4, 2014 for 8 days. When the clerk went over the list of options, we had to initial for each if we accepted or declined. When asked about purchasing the Loss Damage Waiver we declined and verbally stated that we did not want ANY additional insurance as our personal auto insurance would cover any costs. We signed at the end and went on our way. Unfortunately, we did not look closely enough at the bill. The clerk charged us $200+ dollars for Loss Damage coverage, more than double the initial agreement!! When we called to ask about the additional charges we were told that we signed the bill and there was nothing they would do about it. Additionally, the car's exterior was scratched badly, which we had them acknowledge and sign for before leaving and the interior was filthy with dust and dirt all over the interior. Very disappointing experience. Lesson learned. read more