Rentalcars.com just scammed me over $2100

Hi guys, I had a terrible experience with Rentalcars.com for my 13 days’ car rental (Over $2100) and lead me to think if they are a real scam.

1. There was a change of flight and arrival time by Singapore Airlines. Thus we contacted Rentalcars.com a few days earlier and asked if it was possible to pick up the car late. Rentealcars.com provided me with car supplier's contact details to liaise with. They had also helped me email them to inform about this late pickup. 2. The car supplier was well informed and thus a late collection arrangement had been made in advance. On the day of collection, I reached the car supplier outlet and my car was there for collection. However, upon checking their system, they found out that they were not able to process this booking given the reason that "booking site" had marked it as "no show", and the payment was held back by the "booking site".

3. I contacted Rentalcars.com on the spot immediately, initially they asked me to rebook on rentalcars.com, but there was no extra vehicle available as the last car was reserved/locked under my previous booking. After negotiation, their customer service staff agreed that I could book with the same car supplier there directly and call them again after that for a refund since it’s not my fault. (They should have voice record on this)

4. After I got the car, I contacted rentalcars.com, they told me that I could only appeal this case after 13 days when my rental ends. This was a bit weird and I requested to settle this earlier, but they refused and told me that it’s their policy and nothing else can be done.

5. After my trip, I contacted rentalcars.com again. They told me it would take 28 days for them to “investigate” and at the end I don’t think they had done any investigation, but simply replied me with a template email that no refund can be granted as I didn’t arrive on time.

6. I had tried to argue that we had well informed all the relevant parties in advance (we have emails as proofs, in fact, rentalcars.com had even help us email car supplier), now they just claimed that they could not honor the booking due to late arrival? And they ignored the fact that their staff had verbally agreed on the refund if I still booked the same vehicle for the same period from the same car supplier. Unfortunately, all our reasonable arguments were simply ignored by them.

At such, I begin to seriously think if Rentalcars.com is a real scam. if they do not allow late pickup, why did they ask us to contact suppliers to make any special arrangement? They should inform us to cancel and rebook instead. (when we first contacted them, it’s still within free cancellation period.) And after that, they lied to customers and tried to deliberately delay the refund process so we would miss out the credit card dispute deadline. I can’t believe a huge company like rentalcars.com need to commit this kind of scam.. And as a victim we do not know if there is anything else we can do to claim back the loss.