I would STRONGLY urge everyone to NEVER rent a vehicle from Viajero Rent A Car in Manila,…read morePhilippines. I travel internationally many times a year (both for buisness and pleasure) and this is the absolute worst experience I've ever had with a car rental company. Here is a copy of the email that I sent to Viajero Rent A Car on April 9, 2018, which was several days after returning from a 35 day vacation in the Philippines. I will try to a PDF file of Viajero's email replies to me. They always say they're doing something but it's been more than a month now and still NOTHING has been done. Please see my email of April 9, 2018 below:
To Whom It May Concern:
It's unfortunate that I have to write this email this evening, but I feel I have no choice in order to make you aware of how extremely unsatisfied I was with my Viajero Rent-A-Car rental.
I have travelled to Philippines on many occasions in the past 9 years, but have always rented from Hertz Car Rental, located at NAIA. For this particular vacation, I decided to try another company. I found Economy Car Rentals (www.economycarrentals.com) and the price seemed reasonable so I decided to rent with them, which ultimately led me to Viajero Rent-A-Car.
On March 2, 2018, at approximately 1PM, we arrived at NAIA and were given a Toyota Innova. The car looked very old, as there were numerous scrapes, bumps, dents, lots of scratches on every side of the car and the 4 tires were in horrible condition. The driver's seat had a very big rip in the leather, and there were many, many dirty stains/markings all over the roof inside the car. Norman, my Filipino travel companion and I were quite surprised at how poor and in such bad shape the car looked. We received the car with very little gas in the tank, as the dial was on 'E' (or empty). The very first thing we had to do was drive to a diesel station to fill with diesel. I have rented vehicles all around the world in the past and have always received a rental vehicle that had a full tank of fuel.
On March 5, 2018 at approximately 7-8PM, we were driving from Calamba City, Laguna to Nagcarlan, Laguna, when the brakes on the car started to act a little strangely. While trying to stop at a busy intersection, I pushed on the brakes, but the brakes did not work and the brake pedal went directly to the floor. I had to quickly pump the brakes many times for the brakes to eventually work. This was an extremely scary situation, as this could have caused a terrible traffic accident, which could have killed Norman, his parents, his sister and myself. Immediately following this incident, the brakes seemed to work ok again. However, after driving approximately 5KM further, the same thing happened again. At this point, we immediately parked the car on the side of the highway and contacted the on-call telephone number at Viajero Rent-A-Car. Someone answered the call and took our information as to what was wrong and where we were located. The employee called us back very quickly and asked us if we could contact a towing truck to have it towed to a garage. I'm sorry, but as a customer travelling in a foreign country, I should not have to be the one to go through the inconvenience to research and find a towing company. My travel companion, Norman, contacted a good friend of his from Nagcarlan, Laguna, and we found out there were no towing companies in Nagcarlan, Laguna, and that the closest towing company was in San Pablo City, Laguna. We contacted Viajero again to inform them that it wasn't possible. Initially, we were told to leave the car on the side of the highway (in a safe place) and that someone would pick up the car tomorrow (March 6, 2018). The employee kept asking me if the car was parked in a safe place. I kept saying that I didn't know the place, so I couldn't verify if the place was safe. We left the car, hired a cab (another expense for me), and were driven back to our residence in Nagcarlan, Laguna. Later that night (March 5, 2018 still), we got a call from Viajero Rent-A-Car that they were going to send us another vehicle (Toyota HiAce) and that someone would be by sometime tonight/early morning to swap the car. I assured him that this would be ok. At approximately 2-3AM on March 6, 2018, we got a call from Viajero that someone was outside the house so we got up and drove the Viajero employees to the Toyota Innova. We then drove the Toyota HiAce back home.
There is so much more to this email, but Yelp doesn't allow that many characters. If you want to see all of the email correspondance between Viajero and I, please contact me directly at jacobsdennis@hotmail.com, and I will send you everything. DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH VIAJERO!
