Deepak Gopalakrishnan

Review of Pacific Car Rentals

N.B : This issue was resolved amicably and the cha...

N.B : This issue was resolved amicably and the charges were settled!

This incident happened at their West Hastings Street location but they are the same management and the same guy is in charge shuttling between these two locations.

Here is an account of my experience with them: (I am a frequent traveler for the past 10 years as part of my work)

Staying at the Marriott Pinnacle Hotel, I rented a car from them for the sake of convenience since they are located within the same premises for a day. On my return, I parked the car on the Marriott hotel drive way in front of their location at 3:00 AM the following day in perfect condition. I get a call from Pacific Car Rental @ 11:00 AM mentioning there is a flat tire. I am still in possession of the rental at that time. I was offered a spare tire change and was initially told that they will fix the tire and charge me. Finally they stated that the tire is irreparable, charged me for the price of a new tire based on an online Canadian tire quote apart from charging me for tire mounting charges; road-side assistance for a total of $ 319.19 above my actual rental charges for a day. They said not to worry and asked me to claim from insurance as they have been doing this for a long time. The car was fine while dropping off and I felt slightly suspicious right from the start. Since I was busy traveling, I thought the insurance company would take care of the issue. Finally my rental insurance through my credit card said that since it did not involve collision and also based on my report wherein I stated that the car was fine while dropping off and did not notice any tire damage, they rejected the claim. Since I was suspicious from the start, I asked the rental company to produce the actual tire invoice since they retracted from their initial statement of just fixing the tire. After two weeks and couple of reminders they sent me a forged invoice from Canadian tire wherein the information like car make and model, tire size , date etc... were poorly photo-shopped. I checked with Canadian tire for the authenticity of the invoice and they came back saying it has discrepancies and even mentioned that there were two tire sizes on the same line item I.e., they photo-shopped one tire size and left the other one in a hurry.The tire mounting invoice was forged too. When I mentioned my findings, they quickly apologized and quickly pulled another online quote and refunded a part of the difference.

Based on couple of events which has taken place since then, makes me believe that the tire was simply fixed and was not replaced as they initially claimed. This whole thing could have very well been a setup and they are that kind of people who can pull such a thing.