Rental Vehicles in Wellington

18th January 2011
We rented a van from Pawkeys for 10 days in Jan 2011 and overall were dissatisfied with the experience. The vehicle provided was acceptable, a 1999 Toyota Estima minivan with 130,000kms on the odometer being rented at $120/day seemed a little expensive based upon my past rental history, but it was convenient and the rental decision was made by my mother who never searched around very much due to time constraints. During our trip we encountered 2 flat tyres. The first was speculatively blamed by the nice repairman at Beaurepaires in Te Puke on overinflation of the tyre leading to a leak in the valve. The remaining three good tyres were all inflated to over 50psi. This cost us $30 to repair, we kept the receipt thinking that this would be covered by Pawkeys. Later in the trip we got another flat tyre. This time the tyre was not repairable due to the fact that the leak was coming from an old repair that had failed. The other nice man at Bearepaires (this time in Taupo) showed me the tyre and the flap of rubber peeling up from the old repair inside it. There was no charge for this service and they put the spare on (kudos to Beaurepaires in Taupo!) Other than these incidents which I blame on overinflation and a bad repair of an old tyre, the vehicle was fine. When we returned it we were surprised to find a $240 charge for damage to the hood from a stone (damage that I did not notice and Pawkeys were unable to show me) and no remuneration for the tyre repairs that we had undertaken. I've been renting cars for business for over 10 years, in several countries. I can't recall a time when I've needed one tyre repair, let alone two. I'm quite disappointed that on a $1200 rental, Pawkeys would stick us with a $30 tyre repair bill and $240 for damage that we have no evidence to verify. Also, in all these years of rentals, I don't think I've ever had any additional charges for damage that I was unaware of, and definitely none that I wasn't informed of in advance. I'm sure that Hertz/Avis/National/Dollar/AutoEurope/Enterprise and others from whom I have rented would be able to confirm and provide evidence of the damage and have notified us in advance of a damage charge. I'm also sure they would reimburse for tyre damage, especially given the type of repairs we had to undertake. The strange thing about the additional $240 cahrge was that when we asked about it when we saw it on the rental charge, it was part of a single charge of $1440, not one charge of $1200 for rental and one of $240 for damage, and the person we initially spoke to at Pawkeys told us we were being charged for 12 days of rental at $120/day rather than 10 days. The $240 was initially stated to us as being for 2 extra days' rental, which we never had. A subsequent phone call to clarify what was going on was when we were told that the $240 was actually for "damage" and not additional days. It all seems a little fishy to me. Pawkey's, if you read this, hopefully you'll learn that there's more to business than an extra $30 for tyre repair and a few dollars of suspicious damage repair. On a $1200 contract, I'd expect a little better treatment. I'll be telling all my friends and anyone else I know to be wary when considering renting from Pawkeys.