Avoid Sunbird Holidays Car Rentals

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TLawler

Avoid Sunbird Holidays Car Rentals

Post by TLawler »

We rented a car this past week (Aug 2013) for a few days from Sunbird Holidays Car Rental and were not treated well by Ulli, the owner/operator. This company was recommended by a local merchant in Bucco Bay and we called Ulli to arrange the car. I specifically asked her how much per day in TT and was told 280TT per day. When we arrived to do the paperwork, somehow the rate changed to 303TT per day. Ulli tried to explain using some imaginary conversion factor and stating that the daily rate was clearly noted on her website (that I had not seen). I find it unbelievable that since the US-to-TT exchange rate has been steady for the past 3-4 years and she has been operating for more than 15 years, she still cannot quote her own currency correctly. I should have walked away then since most reputable merchants would have honored their quoted rate, but we accepted the higher rate and departed with the car.

We finished with the rental and showed up about 1 ½ hours early only to find a locked house and no answer from the doorbell. I called several times on both her cell phone and house number and neither was answered. Obviously that would have been a problem if we had car trouble or needed some urgent help. So we sat in the car in the pouring rain for almost an hour watching a healthy family of rats feed out of her garbage bin. Not my idea of how to spend time on a holiday in Tobago!

Once she finally called us back, we found out that she was in the back of the house in a meeting. Rather than apologize for being unreachable, she was extremely upset that we had returned the car early. While she drove us back to our pickup area, she continued ranting on and on at how inconsiderate we were to expect her to drop everything to attend to us and suggested that we should have driven around for 1 ½ hours and returned the car on time rather than inconvenience her in this way.

We stayed in Tobago for more than a month and found this country full of gracious, kind people. I would suggest that someone looking to rent a car look at the many options available elsewhere. Judging from Ulli’s attitude, I can only assume that she would also be much happier not being inconvenienced by paying customers!

Tom -visiting tourist
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