{"id":11499,"date":"2026-03-09T09:31:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T16:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/?p=11499"},"modified":"2026-03-09T09:31:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T16:31:08","slug":"routes-car-rental-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/2026\/03\/09\/routes-car-rental-scam\/","title":{"rendered":"Routes Car Rental Scam"},"content":{"rendered":"

TL;DR<\/strong>: Routes Car Rental and NextCar Car Rental in FLL (Fort Lauderdale Airport) are scammers. The $160 car rental that I reserved on Expedia.com was going to be $405 because of a bunch of junk fees. And they wasted 2 hours of my time trying to scam me.<\/p>\n

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Boring details:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I arrived at FLL airport and waited 10 minutes for the shuttle bus.<\/p>\n

At the car center, there was a counter with maybe 5 stations but none were manned. There were two booths in the corner with video screens.<\/p>\n

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There were two couples ahead of me. In the booth on the left, they disagreed with the agent a few times, then at the 30 minute mark (!!!) they got disconnected. They repeatedly kept trying to reconnect but each time, the agent couldn’t hear them (in retrospect, I think that was just a tactic). Later, at the 2 hour (!!!!!!) mark, as I was leaving, I chatted with them and they said they were busy trying to get their money back and get out of there.<\/p>\n

In the booth on the right, I overheard that the rate had gone up because he was late to pick up the car. To be sure, it was 7:15 am and he was scheduled to pick up the car at 6 am. Incensed, he abandoned the process; he told me he was going back to the airport to get a car.<\/p>\n

I got into the booth at about the 1 hr mark. Mind you, there had been only 2 people in front of me and there were 2 video chat terminals! (I had just gotten off a red-eye flight and what should have been red flags were only showing as yellow in my brain)<\/p>\n

The rental process was going smoothly, if slowly, until 20 minutes into the process. The agent told me that I would be charged extra because I was late to pick the car. I explained that I had not been late, I had been waiting just outside the booth for over an hour. “My flight arrived at 5:53am, my reservation was for 6am. And I was standing here at 6:30. I know that no one else has taken my car because I’ve been standing here the whole time!” She wouldn’t budge. She also told me I would be charged $10.99\/day for using a credit card. I stared at her as hard as I could through the crappy video chat connection. My $160 rental was now $405. I patiently and kindly explained that she was full of shit and I’d have to leave if this is how it was. Not budging one bit, I walked out, having wasted 2 hours of my life.<\/p>\n

On my way out, I chatted 2 other groups that had been waiting in this dingy satellite rental center. They were both having big problem. I bailed and caught the shuttle bus back to the airport!<\/p>\n

At Enterprise car rental, there were about 15 people in front of me and 4 agents. I got worried but then the line was quick beautifully quick. I was in front of an agent in less than 10 minutes, and I was sitting in a great car in another 10. They quoted me $435 for the car (just $25 more than the scammers) and I consented immediately! I had some discount possibilities but I was just so happy to get a car quickly, I had no interest in nickel and diming them!<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TL;DR: Routes Car Rental and NextCar Car Rental in FLL (Fort Lauderdale Airport) are scammers. The $160 car rental that I reserved on Expedia.com was going to be $405 because of a bunch of junk fees. And they wasted 2 hours of my time trying to scam me.   Boring details: I arrived at FLL […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11503,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11499\/revisions\/11503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}