Advantage Rent-A-Car

Love. Love. Love. Love this company. Every time I come into this place I’m greeted with the friendliest people and this trip I got a free managers upgrade. The check in process was quick and painless even with the long line they had. Getting to my car was just as fast and getting on the road from check out was done in less than 10 mins. Their prices are soo much better than the big named brands. Only thing when you return your car, the way the airport has it setup most off the car rentals have one drop off spot and a main shuttle that doesn’t come around very often so you may need to walk over to the airline check in counter. The gentleman who checked my car in was nice enough to give me a lift to the airline counter because I had a little one and tons of luggage’s. I was so appreciative.

Sub Zero would be too good for this car rental company. I arranged a car in FT Meyers. After waiting in line for an hour the car was basked will stall cigar smoke and 30 minutes later we got a new car. I declined when asked additional insurance and when I signed the agreement it was hidden in the approval form. Discovered later in the day I called multiple times and never got a response. So in the morning I drove back and went to return the car. While I purchased a full tank of gas for the week the only miles I put on was to and from the airport. The customer service agent said that they would credit based on the contract as signed. Trying to get clarity and indicating that had they answered the phone it wont be returning the car, I raised my voice and while no one but the two agents and me were there they call the policy and had me removed from the property for disturbing the peace and trespassing.
Being a 70 year old senior on the boards of several national charities and only guilty of trying to garner the type of customer service one could reasonably expect. Never have I experienced such poor service and embarrassing treatment. Filed a complaint with the company and after 7 weeks they are still to busy to reply. I guess I will go away but as I spread the word I wont be forgotten
Went back to the airport and was in and out of enterprise in 5 minutes and at a price that was better than DISADVANTAGE car rental.
My advise don’t go to this car rental company even if they give it to you for free… the hidden costs and deceptive ways of treating the consumer make the experience a nightmare

Don’t use this company! They are so unhelpful and rude. Avoid them at all costs. They only know how to say no and refuse to help.

Hawaii is tourist central so there is no surprise that the rental car companies are always flooded.
Advantage is poorly marked at the airport but if you follow all of the signs to the Rental Cars look out for a shuttle with a lot of company stickies on it because that is the one to take you to the main rental car area with Advantage.
There was a line at Advantage & it took us about 30 minutes to get to the front. I booked the car with my boyfriend’s credit card but since I was the driver, I had to use my credit card. There is an additional fee for multiple drivers. You can opt to prepay for the gas or fill up the tank yourself but if you do not fill up to the F line they can charge you double per gallon used to fill it up to the F line.
We got a Volkswagen Passat & it was fine & clean. You have to fill out any marks or dents you see on a form & you just drop off the original in a box & keep a copy. This was really sketched because there was no one there to help us or look over the car with us to make sure everything was accounted for.
When we returned the car, someone quickly observed the car & the mileage & we were off to go.

Even with a reservation prepaid online. They made me wait in line twice because i was 50 min early to pick up appt time. Rude about it too. Do not rent from here!!!

I would leave 0 stars if I could. I rented a van a couple weeks ago and it went dead on me 3 times while I was on vacation and I had to deal with roadside assistance each time to get it jumped. Advantage customer service was absolutely no help to me and I couldn’t get a human to answer my phone calls EVER! I had to take a $ 200 cab ride to a tour I had reservations for because the van completely died on my last day of vacation. I am trying to get a reimbursement from Advantage and they are completely ignoring my calls! Nadine is the person I am supposed to be talking to at the HNL advantage office and she refuses to call me back. They also blamed the valet guy and said he left the headlights on. I only drove it during the day, so that is complete BS!
DON’T EVER RENT A CAR FROM ADVANTAGE!!!

My brother’s family rented his car for a week and I helped research rates. Was super-​hesitant to book this place b/​c of the low reviews, but their prices were the most competitive. We went with it, and to our surprise, no hassle, good service at the counter, and a NICE new car (less than 2k miles) black Hyundai Santa Fe, super-​clean, spacious and smooth ride– impressed.
It’s a little confusing to find the counter entrance at the airport, but experience was fine. Don’t buy into reviews so quickly… They had the best rates by far, and a great car! Satisfied, would use them again!

We went with Advantage for the cheap car. But it didn’t end up being cheap. The customer service isn’t great and their instructions were bad from the beginning. Then we dropped the car off with less than 1 gallon from full and they charged us $ 15 to fill it after saying we didn’t have a recipt so they couldn’t trust we filled it up. Pay a little more for a professional company.

So here’s the deal…
It seems like there is a reoccurring theme of dirty cars. If you can get past that, this place is awesome. They outbid on Expedia by a hundred dollars for the next competitor (that’s SUV from Advantage and Compact from everyone else) so the price is outstanding. The staff was beyond friendly. I approached them friendly and they reciprocated. So those people who complain of customer service… Maybe don’t be a asshole.
The car ended up smelling like cigarette smoke so that’s where they lose a star. Again, you pay for what you get, but in the fairness of reviewing I can’t give them a perfect score.
Best part, they upgraded me to a mid sized SUV for free… So maybe if I hadn’t gotten upgraded the car woulda smelled like roses. We’ll never know.
To close this out, remember the totality of the experience. You are paying bottom dollar, the car is most likely not gold plated.

so let’s talk Advantage at HNL… for the most part, renting a car shouldn’t be so time and effort consuming.
So before our Hawaii trip, I researched fares months in advance for a rental to use on the island. Note: You get a more affordable rate if you google ‘rental cars in Honolulu’ rather than just searching rates on websites.
…so we fly in to HNL and the first thing to do after baggage claim is pick up our rental car. ADVANTAGE is located accross the street from baggage claim D thru G (kinda inconvenient if you’ve flown into HNL).
anyways, we had to walk over there because I was led to believe that ADVANTAGE did NOT have a shuttle to transport to their office because the phone number is NOT a direct line to the office desk (so theres NO real help right away, just a call center and alot of press 1, press 2, etc AND the message system ACTUALLY STATES «there is no shuttle») so we walked over to the office (5min walk but seems longer if u have ur luggage with you)!
.i get to the desk and ask about the shuttle service and ‘Lori’ at the desk tells me there IS?! I let her know bout the answering message.
so we do the paperwork on the rental and then have to take the elevator up to the 3^rd flior to actually pick up the vehicle. I am used to handing an attendant the papers and we do a quick inspect together but on this pick up, there was no attendant present, i did my own inspection, attendent shows up a few minutes later and i just hand her the paperwork and that was it?!
*so the real wtf happened after returning the vehicle. we followed the signage at the airport to where to drop the rental off, there was a key drop box labeled but i gave the keys to the attendant instead (who was a lil old lady who just accepted the keys and nothing else, not even a thank you and no sign off).
upon flying back home, we ended up getting a few voicemails asking when we were dropping the car and some messages saying about extending the reservation. after a couple days phone tag and an XTRA CHARGE, we finally spoke with someone from cust service, exchanged some emails, got our xtra charge refunded. oh and did i mention after 3 days somebody from the HNL office finally calls us back to address the voicemails we left and our concerns AND she did not understand the full story in the first place!!!
here’s a tip: Hawaii Advantage staff is sorta laid back so as the ‘renter’ make sure YOU double check their work just to save the headache, if any. inspect the car, have staff actually sing ur reciept, physically talk to the attendants
overall, not a ‘terrible experience’ to rent from here but the close out sucked! …its the little things

There is no advantage to Advantage. Maybe this is unreasonable of me, but I expect that a rental car agency at an airport is used to flight delays, and knows how to handle them. Advantage Rental Cars handles delays by giving your reserved car to another customer. Then they wanted me to either wait until someone else returned a car in the class I requested or pay to upgrade to a larger class. No thanks. I walked to the Budget Rental Car counter and got a car without a reservation. Budget was also out of compact cars, so they gave me an SUV at a compact price. Score 1 for Budget. Advantage, I won’t be back.

We were nervous to rent from Advantage, but our experience was perfectly fine. Checkout was fast and easy, and the return process went smoothly — no unexpected charges. We did refuel close to the airport and vacuum the interior, per the suggestions of other reviewers. My only complaint is that the seats of the convertible we rented were stained — but I figure that’s what you get from a budget car company.

I had a really great experience here: There was no wait when we arrived at the counter; I got a free upgrade to an SUV; Accessing the vehicle and leaving the airport was a breeze. I was in Hawaii for a week but once this car rental reached the 6^th day, the price doubled. Literally, the per day cost during the weekend was more than the entire week so I returned it early.
Having this car made my trip so much more awesome, I explored all of Oahu!

This place should be called DISadvantage rental cars! Dirty and stained drivers seat. The inside was sticky. They charge 50 bucks to allow your spouse to drive the car too whereas it’s free of charge at other rental places.
We reserved a standard car and received a mini van
It’s less expensive than other companies but not sure the savings are worth driving a filthy car.
We will pay a little more from another company next time we rent a car.

No line, I’ve been waiting for over an hour. They got me a car, went upstairs, key didn’t work. They told me to wait up there and they’ll get another. Never came back. Now I’m waiting down here in the line for help again.
They really need to fire that Alex kid (I think that’s his name). He hates his job and shows it immediately to customers.

This place deserves zero stars. Unfriendly customer service. Cars alignment was off. Worst of all — the smell in the car. Every time we got in the car we gagged. It’s not a human smell like BO or anything like that. It’s this terrible awful overwhelming smell of what the body odor of tropical fruit would smell like — I can’t really explain how horrid it is. We have had the car for four days and roll the windows down every time we drive and it still smells just awful. The smell was present when we got the car but after the hassle of the rental process, we didn’t want to talk to their customer service agent again and hoped the smell would go away. I think it might be their cleaning agents or air freshener.
Important to know — take any rental car shuttle as they are all at one counter. We waited through five cycles of seeing every other shuttle until an advantage one finally came just to see that we could have taken any of them.

We booked a full-​sized car for 6 days for $ 200.73 during our trip to Honolulu and was disappointed with the experience. I felt like we were making out like a bandit because our 4 day car rental in Chicago was $ 230 and this was 6 days for $ 200 but $ 200 was not our end cost.
The airport does not have good signage of how to get to the rental car facility (not Advantage’s problem) but the rental facilities are LITERALLY 50 yrds from the van pick up location so I suggest you walk if you don’t have a lot of luggage.
The place was packed so we got in line (the pic posted by another user is very accurate). The desk agent was pleasant but was pushy about extra options and upgrades. The Boy was driving and he requested the minimum coverage for the in house insurance and declined the rest. We were given the keys and told to «self evaluate» the car for damage (WTF?) and also told to «check under the front bumper because people miss that area and you could be charged for that damage». We were charged the $ 200 for the rental AND a $ 200 deposit that would be refunded once we returned the car. What?
The car itself was nice, was a newer Mazda 6 and got great gas mileage. We had some hiccups with the push button start (they forgot to tell us the security measures to bypass the anti-​theft) but once we got the hang of it we were ok.
We came back to the facility to drop the car off on Sunday night and pulled up to the return area and waited. And waited. And waited. There were 6 empty cars (including ours) waiting to be returned so we started walking to the front shuttle area. An employee came out to check in with us (finally) and we said we weren’t sure what we were supposed to do to return the car. He took the keys and directed us to the shuttle.
Once the trip was complete, we noticed how much we were actually charged for the rental and it was not $ 200. The Boy had requested minimum insurance coverage which was $ 25 per day, an extra $ 150! We were also charged for another form of insurance that he did not request, the type if you hit someone you are covered if they sue you, which was another $ 75! We used the same minimum coverage for our Chicago rental through Budget and were charged $ 13 per day, $ 13 vs $ 25 is a big difference for minimum coverage.
Our total charges for the 6 day rental were over double what our reservation suggested and were pretty ridiculous considering we returned a perfect car. Save your $$ and your time and rent from a major company.

Smh… Absolutely awful. Expect to wait after almost an hour for your shuttle after being on a 5 hour flight. The customer service associate was very rude and charged us the wrong total and gave us this banged up car that looked like it was involved high speed chase through very narrow streets.
Terrible terrible terrible experience would never save a buck to deal with this nonsense again. Go to hertz and Alamo etc.

We reserved a standard size car at the Honolulu Airport location (that said similar to a Hyundai Accent online), as the week prior we had had a brand new Volkswagen Jetta with leather and all the bells and whistles for $ 100 cheaper than this car.
The car at Advantage ended up being a MINI VAN– The car smelt like rotten eggs and had water stains on the seats– also sounded abnormally loud like something was wrong with it. We then returned the car and the manager asked us to see a different car that may suit us– gave me the keys and I walked out to it and drove it back up thinking it would be a «trade» of sorts as she didn’t specify and then told me it would be an ADDITIONAL $ 105. She also seemed annoyed that I had driven it from the end of the lot to the station, ridiculous. We said no way, got refunded and went to ENTERPRISE.
We then got a brand new Ford Fusion, leather with all the bells and whistles for LESS and way better customer service. We will never deal with Advantage again.
I recommend ALAMO or ENTERPRISE, we used Alamo the first time and they were fantastic as well as Enterprise the second.

Advantage Rent a Car
5 STARS
Great Experience at Honolulu Airport
Renting a car always makes me nervous, based on past experiences with less than ethical companies. Working with Advantage was easy and professional from start to finish. We rented online directly from the Advantage web site. A full size car was less expensive than any other company. Pick up at the Honolulu was fast and efficient. Check in was swift. The car was new and very roomy. We had the car for a week and when we returned it, the service once again was friendly and first class as we were whisked to the airport. Will definitely use Advantage again and I recommend them to you! Thanks Advantage for showing us that a car rental can be easy and have integrity. PS: They offered a way to pay for the full tank of gas up front. If you decide not to bring the car back empty and instead fill it yourself, your money is refunded. Way to go Advantage.