Alamo Rent A Car

Having rented from almost all the car rental companies, I’ve seen my share of good and poor service. Alamo, in general, still has a small company feel to it, while its partnership with National allows it to take the best of their practices and use them.
At this particular location, I had a very friendly incoming shuttle driver who took time to point out nice spots to see and food to try in St. Louis. She also made sure I had the correct address for my GPS on return.
Car rental companies are offsite at St. Louis airport, and Alamo is well located with easy in/​easy out access to 170.
I’ll come back to this one.

They are fast and efficient. A great selection of cars with a fair price. When I checked in they upgraded me to a larger car without me asking, for free. I love that you can prepay for your gas so you don’t have to worry about having to find a good price before returning your rental. Everyone was friendly ad helpful.

Consumer Beware! This company does not act in good faith when there is an issue! I rented a car from Alamo and was involved in an auto accident on my way to the hotel from their location. Not only did they charge me for the entire weekend even though I had the car for less than 1 hour, their damage recovery unit has been impossible to deal with. I provided Alamo with the at fault driver’s insurance information to file a claim. They contacted me months after saying the driver did not have valid insurance. My insurance was able to obtain a claim number, agent name, and phone number from the at fault driver’s insurance company. Then, Alamo changed their story saying they were under no obligation to file to a claim and I am now 100% responsible for the damages. Hello, Alamo, you have an insurance company willing to pay you! What is wrong with you!!!

Bus driver from airport to the facility was not a very good representation of the usual Alamo standard. I looked him right in the eyes entering his bus his little bus this morning and with a big smile said «Good Morning Sir». He looked at me like I had three heads, never spoke a word, turned, and sat in his drivers seat. Welcome to St Louis… not!!!

5 stars = process, service, price, car availability, customer service
2 stars = return & counter experience (from National side ONLY!!)
Went to St. Louis on a last minute emergency flight. Initially, my sister and I were going to get picked up from the airport and driven to our destination, which is about an hour from the STL. We arrived late and didn’t want to burden others so we went to the rental car counters at the airport and found Alamo to have the best deal at that late night hour.
The guy who wrote up the agreement was very pleasant. He explained the entire contract, told us exactly where to catch the shuttle, and how to select our own car when we got there. The transition was smooth. When we got to the rental lot, a young guy was out to assist people. Since it was so late, he allowed us to upgrade our car for the same price because of our luggage. That was perfect! We gave him a few extra dollars because the truck was super dirty with what looked like dried up soap, so he ran it through the wash before we pulled off. As we exited the gate, I gave my contract to the lady at the window. She directed us to the freeway and we were on our way. It’s great to see such good customer service from people when we go out of town. It is kind of unusual to get a smile or friendly conversation from people in L.A.
**As for the return, it was a smooth process until I went inside to pay. A lady on the National Rent-​a-​car side told me to step over and she’d help me because the two are linked. I wanted to pay the car in cash and remove the credit card I had on file. This could’ve been a 2 – 3 minute process if she was a bit more professional. She was busy running her mouth and jokingly getting smart with her male coworker while I was rushing to jump on the shuttle with my sister and nieces. After taking her sweet little time, I finally got my receipt and ran to the bus as my sister was getting off to see if I was done.

I’m going to do my best to be fair and give them 2-​stars, because the actual counter service (that I was not suppose to enter into based upon my online reservation was never supposed to happen). But the real story connects to the reason I stopped renting from them a couple years ago, and took my service to Enterprise. Here we go!
First, I made a reservation online like always and the type of reservation I made said, «Pay with your card ahead now, and when you get to the rental car location, go straight to pick your car, and go to exit, show them your online rental agreement and your done. When I got to the exit location, there was a very rude (White) police officer, ignoring the agreement I had and said, „you need to go inside to complete your reservation.“ I tried to show him my card and reservation ticket, he ignored me, spit out (and I do mean spit out), I’m a cop, trying to keep you people from stealing cars, so go to the counter. I go to the counter, and explained to the lady what just happened, she was nice, but there was nothing she could do. This happened when I arrived on 7÷11÷15 about 12:00 midnight. Oh yeah, the rental car bus driver told me, my husband and another couple to go right to the area where we pick out a car, and we’d get a free upgrade because the car we reserved was out. Mind you the couple, was older „White couple,“ they had the online reservation we had, and went straight out the gate with the same officer seconds before us. They was one car ahead of us. Now, again… The lady at the counter was told what just happened, and there was nothing she could do. Clearly we were treated different because of our color.
Note: I do believe racial tension is high in Missouri, and the experience I had just on this short visit proved it was all about my race. Oh, I am not finished.
My trip was over on ⁷⁄₁₅ visiting my ill father in Florissant, Missouri. So, I had to take the rental car back to the same location. My husband and I got out of the car, unloaded our bags and stood there to allow the young lady to check the car and give us a receipt. Then we went to the bus (in order to get to the airport), where we saw the bus driver speaking to another lady (white lady) very kindly, he even said goodbye and have a nice day to her. I mean, I thought we were about to have a great driver (whom I like to say nice things to and give a tip). So me and my hyper hello stopped and said, „Hi, are you going to the airport?“ He ignored my Hello, and said harshley, twice…“What airline, Lady What airline» real mean and stern. I’m thinking, how impersonal is this (btw is this the same man who was just so kind to the other lady as we were walking towards the bus).
He was just speaking to this lady so nicely and we walk up and he turns into THE DEVIL. His name was Wayne I believe the bus was #24. He was horrible to my husband and I, it ended up that we didn’t give him a tip because he didn’t even speak, he ignored us twice when we did NOT help us with our bags as they usually do when you’re getting on and off the bus. Guess what… There’s more… He avoided dropping us off at departure’s, and took us all the way around to baggage claim, which forced us to walk all over to get to the counter for our boarding passes, and I know he did it purposely. He was unruly, and treated us very disrespectfully.
Now, by no means are my husband and I racist, we both have mixed 2^nd generation mixed backgrounds and we live in a mostly white community in California. Many of our best friends are White, Filipino, Vietnamese, Latina and many other’s (all on my face-​book page) and we are happy to have it that way. But I was clearly treated as if I was a pea-​on at this Alamo, and it’s not the first time. Just this time, I new about « Unilocal» and was able to actually put it out so that people know that this customer service was horrible and I will not be going back this time until they assure me, that they’ve done some training in that area on customer service, race relations in the St. Louis area, especially when people have race problems that are so clear and precised.

Friendly service…
Wow!
The people working here are a super friendly bunch. Customer service is a 10!
Timely, quick service and super convenient. Location is great… minutes from the airport!
I would definitely choose Alamo STL when I come back to town!

I rented a car from this location over the weekend and had never dealt with this rental company before, but because of the phenomenal customer service giving to me by Rayshaun, I will be using Alamo from now on.

This is not about the location, this is about the national company.
I was traveling with my colleague. While we were in the trip with the car, his mother was hospitalized and declined within days. We drove the car to see her and on Tuesday the doctor told us she would die within 24 hours.
Obviously at this point we did not want to leave her.
I called Alamo corporate to see if there was any way we could extend our lease. They said it would be and additional 389 dollars to do so.
I told them the story, and that I am a good corporate customer, and that they could call the doctor, the hospital, or anything else they needed to prove my story. I offered to get them anything they needed in writing.
They refused.
I spoke with several (at least 6) people (only one spoke English, the rest spoke German and could not communicate well), and got the same answer about corporate policy over and over.
Instead of staying by her side, we had to drive 6 hours tonight to rerun the car to avoid the 389 dollar fee.
I am appalled. I will not rent from them again.
We are driving back to the hospital now, praying she hangs on until we are there. If not, I hope the «policy driven» company director cam sleep with himself after he has cost this family so much!

First off a warning: rental car return at this airport is confusing. I followed a rental car sign and was directed to a highway where i passed alamo’s rental building on the other side of the highway with no other sign on how to get to the other side of the highway. Thankfully i had plenty of time. Secondly, i was assigned a Chrysler 200. This was fine for four days until this morning when i left my hotel and pulled up up a red light. The car shut down for no reason whatsoever. I called the number in my rental agreement for help and followed the prompts for Alamo. Then i pressed the button for roadside assistance, and it transferred me to National. After a five minute hold, i explained to the woman what had happened and she gave me a different number for alamo roadside assistance. I called and after another ten minute wait — remember i am in the middle of an intersection broke down — she arranges for roadside. During this time a coworker came and took my luggage, and i had him try the ignition — and it worked (maybe it was the key?). Anyway beware. Roadside is terrible — getting to the return terminal os a bitch.

Between my experience at the Alamo in Manchester, NH last month and my experience today, I’m done with Alamo for good at this point. I posted about the NH experience and received a coupon to make up for it, which I appreciated. This time, I needed to extend my reservation because my flight was delayed so long that Southwest changed me to tomorrow — FOR FREE. Because Southwest cares about customer service. Alamo? Not so much. When I first called to extend, a nice woman told me since I had paid for a week but only used 5 days, I could extend for free. I then realized my new flight overlapped a work meeting. I called Southwest, who changed my flight for free and was very cool about it. I called Alamo to delay my return an extra 5 ½ hours thinking no big deal, I’m still not anywhere near 7 days (less than 6 ½). Instead I got: Okay, now you owe us 20% more on top of your original reservation. What the hell, Alamo? I asked to speak to a different customer service representative and was told that I was viewed as rebooking my entire transaction and that now it just so happens to be 20% more than it was when I picked up the car. Dear Alamo: get a clue. I’m going back to Hertz.

Alamo is really one of the worst car rental places around. I wasn’t really paying attention when I booked a bunch of work trips on Expedia and just chose the cheapest option, so I guess it is my bad and I got what I paid for, but ugh. From the incredibly incompetent check-​in to the crap selection of cars, it was all terrible. I went with a mid-​size, figuring that would be fine, but both times I had to choose cars, the only thing available was a Hyundai. Horrible, horrible, cheap cars. Then, when I had already made the reservation and selected to pay for the fuel ahead of time, the clerk kept reminding me to «top-​off» the tank before I came back. Ummm, are you not looking at the screen? You are charging me for the fuel already — I’m not going to top it off because I paid so I don’t have to. Then, on the second trip, I opted for a Garmin, but the thing was totally useless since it had not been updated on software in a while. Thankfully, I knew how to get to Belleville in general, but when I crossed the bridge to IL, the thing had me basically under water because the «new» bridge was not in its system. So glad I paid $ 11 a day for that useless thing.
The only good thing going for this place are the shuttle drivers who are very friendly, competent drivers and seem to enjoy their job. I’m never using Alamo again, though.

I was kindly greeted upon entering the office and helped immediately; the agent was friendly and very just overall awesome. This was the best experience I have had while renting a vehicle. I would definitely recommend Alamo to anyone looking for a no nonsense process, great rates and amazing service.

National is a great car rental company when their rates are in line with the others.
The best part is that you get off the shuttle and NO LINES!!!
Just pick a car in your category and drive off to the exit. If they are out of stock
in your category (happens a lot), you just get a nicer car… no problem!

Great car… Buick LaCrosse. Awesome for a road trip. This Alamo location has a shuttle service to and from the airport. Employees working the counter and the shuttle drivers are courteous and helpful. Thanks, Alamo… I will continue to recommend you guys in St. Louis.

Pretty impressed with this location. Normally you save time by going through the self-​service kiosk, but the staff here is pretty efficient. The shuttle drivers are friendly and help with your luggage. And the big kicker was that we found a car we were thinking about buying and thought this would be the perfect chance to test drive it. The yard attendant was nice enough to move several cars so we could get to it. Thanks

This was an alright experience. It wasn’t great, but nothing went terribly wrong either. It is not in the airport, so you must take a shuttle to get to their lot, which is fine. It seems to run frequently enough.
The office they take you to isn’t the cleanest in the world. Ladies, use the restroom at the airport before coming here. It is dingy and didn’t give the impression it was always thoroughly cleaned.
We rented a full-​size, but they only had a Chevy Impala. I really, really didn’t want that car, and besides it was not in a place we were sure we could take it. So we flagged someone down, who went to the detailing area and got us a nice, new Nissan Altima. That was very nice of her. I just wish it hadn’t taken almost 10 minutes to find her for assistance!
Oh, the kiosk for getting your keys… don’t bother. It’s faster to just wait in line, because that staff is efficient.

Due to multiple changes in my itinerary coming into St. Louis, I had forgotten that I had cancelled my 4 day Alamo rental and booked with Brand X for a shorter one day trip. However, I still had the original Alamo reservation in my calendar. So I hopped on the Alamo shuttle instead of Brand X, and when I arrived at the rental counter, the Alamo representative, Annie, could not find my reservation. It then dawned on me what I had done… I felt like an idiot and apologized profusely. She said, «No problem sir, we will give you a ride over there.» Needless to say, I was flabbergasted! The manager came out and told me that there were cars available, but since they offered and I had a reservation at Brand X (with SW points attached), I felt compelled to take her up on the offer to take me there. She got right into a vehicle and drove me about 3 miles to the Brand X location. Needless to say, Alamo has earned my loyalty from here on forward.

Rented a car over Christmas vacation but there was no sun and I left my sunglasses in the compartment between the visors. Melissa and Devin at Alamo lost and found were great, and managed to track down the car (no longer on the lot at Alamo), get my sunglasses and ship them to me in one piece. I received a THANK YOU card with the sunglasses thanking ME for my patience. I got them back, from STL to CA on the 4^th business day… which seems very FAST. GREAT CUSTOMER SERVICE!!! Good price on the car, too!

I was very happy with Alamo Rent-​a-​car. They had a huge selection of very nice cars. What I liked about Alamo that you were able to pick your own car. The only thing is that the cars were parked very close together, so it was difficult to get the car out. Otherwise our car, a Hyundai sonata was clean and in good condition. Also Alamo gives you a Great price for a nice car. I would definitely use Alamo rent-​a-​car again.