Santa Marta Car Hire

Pros: The car broke after 2 hours of use. Left indicator didnt work, drivers dook didnt look. We rang up and the team was unhelpful - we had to make an arranged time to change the car, miles from where we were! A nightmare, basically. Never using Avis again. + Service at collection was slow, rude, rubbish

Cons: Everything

"We Try Harder´´ their motto, but this is it NOT true.

Pros: How easy it was to arrange for the online rental. We will try to avoid using Avis again. They need to streamline the checkout process.

Cons: Twice we rented Avis Cars in International Airports in Colombia. What a mistake Santa Marta & Bogota- very long check out process, especially when compared to our Colombian experience with Localiza Santa Marta - The Nissan March car we were given was substandard to other rental cars that we have had. (After market radio, lots of dings, missing hubcap, made a squeaky noise- we feared it might break down. Santa Marta - At check out we had to defend that it was being returned exactly as we received it. Apparently there were traffic cones missing.- Bogota -1 hr. 45 min. time period between checking in at reservation time at the Avis Counter and actually driving the car from the lot Bogota - tacky paint, and no wet paint signs, at the Avis counter. I got paint on my shirt sleeve. Bogota - Bad check-int instructions were given at Check-out, so it made check out longer and more complicated.

Pros: The employees were amiable

Cons: the difficulty in getting to rental company from airport. trying to coordinate the drop-off with no airport Avis office there being up charged for the rental

Cons: There is no AVIS station at the Santa Marta Airport. I had to drive to the city to pick up my car. No explanation, no word of excuse. The dropoff was set to be the airport. The AVIS employee showed up with 1 hour delay.

Did not have a car for us

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.

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.