We recently took a trip and one of our stops was in Denver. We had planned on picking up a rental car at the airport and then driving to Kansas. This is the story of that trip…
The trip starts in Ontario, California. Everything was going as planned, Frontier Airlines got us there to Denver on time, with little turbulence and a very friendly staff.
Once on the ground in Denver, we found our way to the A-line train and went downtown for a couple of days. Those reviews will be in a different article, this one is about the rental car situation.
When we were done having our fun in downtown Denver, we caught the A-line train back to the airport so that we could get the bus that takes you to the rental car places. While standing on the rental car bus pickup island, we saw many buses come and go, but none for Ace rent a car. After about 20 minutes of standing there, the bus driver pulled up and we hopped on. He was a nice gentleman. No problem with him, just the waiting time was kinda long.
The Ace rent a car location is quite a ways from the actual airport terminal. I believe it is the furthest away rental car place in the general airport area. Given the price we had secured through Orbitz, it didn’t really bother me too much that it was taking a while to get there.
When we did finally get to the Ace rent a car building, we exited the bus looking forward to getting on the road. We walked inside only to find a whole bunch of signs everywhere saying that by renting from Ace rent a car “you agree to not leave the state of Colorado with the exception of Moab Utah“.
Honestly, I felt like we were being punked.
When we got up to the counter a guy named Darren helped us. Nice guy. I’ve got no problem with him. I asked him if it was actually for real that we could not take the vehicles outside of the state of Colorado, specifically that we could not go to Kansas. He informed us that taking the vehicle to Kansas would be a “big no-no”. He explained that Ace rent a car is a small company and that they don’t have any way to assist us should we go to Kansas with one of their vehicles and there would be an additional fine for doing so.
Darren mentioned to us that in the fine print terms and conditions part of the rental car reservation on Orbitz that all of this is explained. I’m sure I’m not the only person that doesn’t read every single line of a bunch of legal jargon when renting a car. It would have been a hell of a lot easier to just have put in the rental reservation price quote that it is a “geographically limited rental”. Of course this wasn’t the case and that’s why I ended up making the reservation.
For his part, Darren was a stand-up dude and understanding of our situation. Seems like we were not the first people to have this situation occur. I’m writing this to hopefully eliminate future situations. Darren actually helped us find a very affordable rental through Budget rent a car. He assured us that our reservation with Ace would drop off and there would be no charges. That part worked out fine.
The Budget rent a car review will come in a separate article. I got a few things (good and bad) to say about them, lol.
Moral of the story is, if it seems too good to be true, it is probably too good to be true. The fantastic price ace rent a car offers is awesome: if you have no plans on leaving the state of Colorado.
If you do have plans to go to Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico or other places – make plans with a different rental agency so that you don’t experience the same 2.5-hour delay that we ‘enjoyed’.
Bill and Jeney - vegetarian food, gardening, travel, music and photography 