San Jose - Monterey - Santa Barbara - Los Angeles - Las Vegas - West Yellowstone - Reno - San Franci

I used it to take the California driving test. The additional fee is slightly higher than Thrifty, but they all use Hertz cars.

It's okay, arrived at a good time with not many people in line

I have rented cars abroad dozens of times, but this was my first time with Dollar and it was a terrible experience. 1. This was my second time driving on Highway 1, and I specifically rented a classic American Mustang convertible. When I arrived at the store, they told me there were no cars available. One staff member said the same car model was oversold by six, so basically, I couldn't get it. They offered me an upgrade but wanted to charge me an extra $160. WTF? 2. I reluctantly decided to take a Fusion, but then there was another problem. My credit card authorization for the deposit failed. Neither my wife nor I could use three different credit cards successfully. (Later, another staff member retried, but it still failed). So, I had to call my friend in California to use his license and ID to rent the car, which took another half hour. 3. After getting back in line and waiting for my friend to redo the process, the second staff member finally gave me a free upgrade to a Jaguar XE. However, the whole process took an hour and a half, causing us to miss the most important scenic spot, Big Sur (we planned to catch the sunset there), which was the biggest regret of this trip. Overall, Dollar has a car shortage and oversells, has slow service, rude staff, and their credit card machines inexplicably fail (I must note that this was the only company where my credit card had issues during my entire US trip, everything else went smoothly). This affected our trip, and the experience was horrible!

Our flight arrived in San Jose at 9:40 PM. The car rental location is directly across the street from the airport, very convenient with all major rental companies in one place. Possibly because it was late, the line for picking up the car was short. However, there was no Ford FOCUS available as originally booked, and the counter didn't inform us in advance. We were told to choose from the available cars when we got there. There were only a few Mitsubishis and Chevrolets, all quite small. We eventually chose a Mitsubishi. The car was in decent condition but had a very loud engine noise, not sure why.

Like: Helpful counter folks. Price was very good.
Dislike: Not overly excited by the Chevy car, although it was new. Not your fault.