Santa Marta Car Hire

Cons: No office or personnel present when I arrived at the specified drop-off location.

Cons: I was able to get a reservation for a car that was listed at the SMR or Santa Marta Airport in Colombia. I took a cab to pick it up with my Colombian friend only to find the agency was BACk by our hotel. Upon arriving 32 minutes late for the 9 AM reservation I found them closing up the AVIS shop! Upon entering I found that I had to return the car BEFORE my requested return of 5 PM and was to have it back at 1 PM! ALL of this was NOT on the reservation and no mention of the early closure of the shop. This wrecked the day with my lady friend. In addition I got charged the $ 9 for the Alliance insurance. GET IT TOGETHER! WOW Rick ((((((

Cons: Everything. The lady that works there Lina Cruz was disgustingly rude! i booked a car 1 day before pickup, i rang and gave my confirmation number and they confirmed everything was fine. 1 hour before pickup Lina calls me and advised me that the car is no longer available and if i want another car i need to pay an extra $300 on top of the $100 which i had booked the car for.....just for 2 days........I went in to talk with her Lina Cruz was rude to my face and extremely rude to my partner. she was no help at all, she advised now they no longer have any more cars for me, i asked to talk to her manager and conveniently her manager was not available!!

Cons: The car was a wreck with big scratches all over and it was lacking features which are now common on most cars even the cheapest. We thought about returning it several times but since it still took us from point A to point B, we preferred spending our time discovering the country instead. However, the drop-off was a nightmare. The employee at Santa Marta came up with new (tiny) scratches in the most random places and made us call the Cartagena office to explain it wasn't our fault. They said they will review all pictures of the car to determine whether it was caused by us with no apologies for the inconvenience. This whole thing took close to an hour, making us rush for our plane. We had substantially better service with Localiza for our rental between Bogota and Medellin, even though they are not international players. Avoid Avis.

Cons: I booked the car through kayak, when we came to pick it up the adress given was wrong and the Avis shop was not in santa Marta but in rodadero, 30 min away. when we came to Pick it up they said we had to call first to confirm the car and didn't have a car for us. I had a booking confirmation via email and no way of knowing that we had to call as well to confirm. After about 45 min discussion they all of a sudden had a car but only if we could bring it back the next morning at 10am. The car was fine to drive during the day but at night the shaded windows were so dark that you could barely see the road, I was very scared driving like that. Also the control panel (where you see how fast u drive) was so blinding that I had to cover it with a book to be able to drive.