E are a group of 5 young people from Austria, who wanted to discover some parts of Canada (mostly the area between Vancouver and Calgary) by renting an RV. We finally chose an RV (Deluxe Class C 29’-30’) at Alldrive. The agreed rent was CAD$ 4649, 25 for the RV, an additional kilometer package and a loss damage waiver including also a one way fee for the time of 21st of July to 1st of August.
During this trip some problems with the RV occurred which we told Alldrive by phone. One of the main complaints was that the generator was not working correct. Another thing was that the fridge always froze our food because it seemed not to work properly.
When we finally returned the RV We were told to enter the building to talk with Heinz, the apparently responsible person at Calgary. When we told him about our complaints he merely said that we had never booked a generator, that only certain RV's had them in addition and that we were lucky to enjoy a generator for free for a couple of days! But, even if the generator was “for free” we would have to pay the costs for the repair in case we caused a damage.
As far as our problems with the fridge were concerned he told us we should have switched it off. Interestingly he never told us that when phoning him at the Alldrive office. Thus he dismissed us, disappeared in his office and closed the door behind him leaving us with the secretary. At this point it should be mentioned that so far most of our communication with Alldrive had been in German, this being our mother tongue and Alldrive being the company especially advertising their German service. Heinz actually was German and had spoken in German with us.
Since we felt we've been treated in a very unfair and demeaning manner we refused to accept the dismissal and decided to wait and not to sign any final rental agreements until the situation was clarified.
After a couple of minutes he came out again and started to speak in English! We were barely able to follow him, but it turned out he wouldn't have the slightest insight or understanding for our situation and all the bothers we had to go through. He in fact insisted that we now had to leave the building and threatened to call the police. He even threatened us to not offer a transfer to our hotel because this is also “only an additional free service”. So we tried to calm down the situation and left the building, not disregarding to mention that we would go public and not hesitate to get help from third parties as this kind of treatment of tourists and clients is not acceptable.
Interestingly after this day when we tried to reach Heinz in his office he always was in a meeting or not available. After lots of telephone calls and excuses from Alldrive we finally had to leave Canada. Home again we received a fax which told us that there was no reduction of our security deposit and no damages were charged. So we decided to wait for a chargeback of the money. Suddenly after a few weeks a new fax came which tolt us that about the half (!) of our security deposit would be taken away for repairings, not telling us exactly which.
To be informed about the whole story, all our complaints and especially the bad treatment at Alldrive i will attach a document with all the details. Please do not publish the original agreements on the internet. The text can be freely copied.
We at least expected a compensation for our spoiled holiday and the non working RV which we paid a lot of money for. Instead we got a reduction of our security deposit and a very unfriendly treatment at the Alldrive office.
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