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Summary: I tried to book a car at Routes Car Rental. They tried to more than double the price of the rental AND they sucked up 2 hours of my time. Now, they refuse to refund the $140 I paid for the failed reservation.

Also see my previous blog post Routes Car Rental Scam

Details: 
I used Expedia to reserve a car rental through Routes Car Rental at Fort Lauderdale. Expedia charged me $140.06. See reservation

At the car rental location, the Routes agent said she needed to charge me $240 more ($60/day) because I was late to pick up the car. but I have an audio recording of our conversation where the agent acknowledges that I had been waiting in her line for over an hour to get the car. (start listening at 30:00, she admits my wait at 35:00) Note that the 1 hour line was a single other customer that was arguing with the agent for an hour about the exact thing I ended up arguing about! Listen:

(It is legal for me to make this recording because the video conference station I was standing at had a sign saying that I may be recorded. Since I stood there and gave permission to be recorded, both sides of the conversation are allowed to be recorded)

The Routes agent also said she would charge me $43.96 ($10.99 a day) for me to decline the collision damage waiver. In their insanely long terms and conditions, that stipulation is definitely not present! Go ahead and read the contract here (right-click open it properly) (I highlighted “CDW” for you). The contract does say that it will charge an insane $99.96 per day for a CDW. It also says under the “Insurance” heading, “Collision Damage Waiver (CDW) may be declined if your credit card offers equivalent coverage. This option is only available when the rental is paid at the counter using the same credit card that was used for prepayment on the website”, which I did.

The Routes agent also said that I would not be charged (at 37:00 in the recording) though listening to it, her response is full of double-speak, spoken with a smile.

• I witnessed 3 other potential customers get dicked around in the same way! (Listen to the other people in the background of my audio recording, above!)
• I ended up spending 2 full hours at the rental office, waiting for and then talking to an agent. (notice how my audio recording is over 40 minutes long! That was just part of my conversation with the agent!!!
• For reference, I went back to Enterprise car rental in the airport and spent a total of 10 minutes waiting for an agent and being served, and was charged $435 for a fine car. Enterprise’s Expedia price was $350 but I was so glad to just get out of the airport, I had no interest in nickel-and-diming them!

The Routes agent told me that she handled all of the calls for Routes Car Rental, NextCar, Mex, and Advantage Car Rental. I assume these companies are as shady as Routes.