Just curious if anyone else has had a bad experience with Dan Dooley rentals (especially the one out of Shannon Airport)?
We recently rented a car from there for a week. We paid full coverage for the vehicle. Basically they gave us a car that someone had wrecked the back wheel rims on and they tried to patch the tires with a tube! My husband, who is pretty good with fixing cars, etc. couldn't believe any mechanic would knowingly fix bent rims with a tube (a mechanic in Killarney actually told us this is illegal in Ireland!). Anyway, we made it to Killarney and then one of our tires went flat (thank God, it didn't break down in the countryside, i guess). We called AA, it was Saturday night and the guy said he really couldn't do anything for us since he had no rims, there would be nothing open on Sunday to help us, and he feared we would have a hard time getting the rims replaced anywhere we went due to the fact that the rental car is not a common one in ireland and that sort of item would be hard to find!! So, there went our plans for the Ring of Kerry the next day since we didn't have a working car to drive (we had a donut but we couldn't drive the Ring with that and no spare tire!). Dan Dooley's did not have an 800 number we could call and we did not have a calling card. We finally bought a calling card the next day but turns out the gas station misunderstood what we were asking for and instead gave us a number that would put minutes on a cell phone (which we did not have). When we finally were able to get ahold of Dan Dooleys at Shannon that night we were pretty angry (that was after speaking with the mechanic who told us about the tubes being illegal). My husband requested a new car be brought to us (we paid full coverage and no one could help us!) and the lady told us she would call us the next morning. Well, the next morning she tells us we are on our own and if we don't like it, we can take it up with the head office (shes says its the drivers responsibility to fix any tire problems and they would reimburse us, which we would have gladly done but tires were pretty much unfixable). We drive to another well known mechanic in the area who actually calls the two largest Mercedes (the type of rental car we have) dealerships in Ireland--Tralee and Dublin. NEITHER of them have rims and both said we would have to order them from out of the country to get them!!! Can you believe this??
Anyway, that is when we call the head office in Limerick for Dan Dooley and explain our situation. The lady had us drive to Kerry Airport and we received a new car there but the hassle and time wasted trying to fix the problem was absoluetly ridiculous! We are going to take it up with their corporate office and Aer Lingus now that we are home and complain.
The bad thing is, there is really no way we could have seen the damage on the rims unless they remove the hubcaps which are clamped on to the wheels with some plastic tie thingy (you'd actually have to cut that off with scissors or something to see under the hubcap). We never would have demanded to check that anyway since we trusted Dan Dooley's to give us an efficient car. Once the hubcaps were removed; however, you could visibly see that the rims had been bent--thats how bad the damage was!
Anyway, just wondering if anyone else has a horror story or if we were just really unlucky!
Thanks,
Renae