Revealed: Hire car horror stories

Whether it’s taking the iconic Route 66 in the US, navigating the windy, narrow roads of Europe, speeding down Germany’s Autobahn, or exploring our own backyard, road trip holidays have always been popular.

While driving your own car is sometimes possible, often on these holidays, a rental car is needed to get you and your family from A to B.

For the most part, hire cars are reliable and straightforward to use, making them a popular choice for road trips or when travelling interstate or internationally. However, nothing is without its faults, and hiring a rental car is no exception: three Australian drivers share their rental car horror stories, experiences that may have you thinking twice before booking your next rental.

“My wife and I hired a car in northern NSW years ago. This wasn’t anything new; we often opted to rent cars on holidays so we could do things at our own pace, and nothing of note had ever really occurred, so we definitely weren’t expecting what happened.

As we were driving, not long after picking up the car that evening from the chain’s airport office, we noticed ants on the dashboard and the car's control centre. Because it was hot earlier in the day, we thought someone who had the car before us must have had something sticky or sweet, and they were just after that, so we wiped the ants off, wiped the dash at a service station and continued on.

The next morning, as we got into the car, there were more ants – not a lot, but still noticeably more. I wiped them off again.

As we drove out of our hotel car park and turned on the air conditioning, though, it was clear there was a bigger issue – with ants crawling out of the air conditioning vents like some scene from a sci-fi movie; I swear there must have been hundreds. While I didn’t look, I’m assuming there was a nest somewhere.

We returned the car, received an upgrade and a huge apology.”

“My partner and I had planned our road trip through the US for years. We were following parts of Historic Route 66 and other highways to visit Las Vegas and Los Angeles, and to explore canyons and walking trails along the way.

Our hire car, a Chevrolet SUV, was rented through a well-known hire car chain with good reviews, so we were pretty confident as we hit the road.

Somewhere in the desert, a few hours out of Vegas, where we had picked up the car, we found ourselves by the side of the highway with a car that had just given up. 

It was super-hot; there weren’t many people driving by, and for two people whose first trip was overseas, it was a lot.

Not being ‘car people’, my partner and I called the rental car company, which had to send someone out to inspect and retrieve the car, and someone else to bring us back to the office. We had to wait over five hours in the heat for them to arrive, and by the time we had gone back to the office and been allocated a new car, we were tired, grumpy and had lost our entire day.”

“My friend and I decided to do a road trip from Sydney to the Gold Coast one summer. We were on our break from uni and didn’t own a car, so we decided to hire one from a cheaper car rental company so we could beach-hop up the coast and finish the trip with a week in Goldie.

About five days into our journey, we decided we needed to give the car a bit of a clean out – there was sand everywhere, not to mention empty plastic water bottles and snack wrappers. We parked in an empty bay at the servo and started cleaning it out. I was reaching under the passenger seat to retrieve a chip packet when I felt something rubbery. Pulling it out, to my horror, I saw a condom. Not only that, but it was also very clearly used.

I screamed in horror, sprinted to the bathroom, and washed my hands for a solid ten minutes. It was so disgusting. Clearly, the rental car company hadn’t done a very good job cleaning the car before we got it.

We called the car rental company to complain, but they didn't seem to care much, only offering a weak apology, and that was it. Neither of us has ever used that company again.”