Vacation in St. Kitts! Reserve a car, arrive, get a car. Simple right? Not if you use TDC Thrifty!
I had family come to visit in early 2019. They reserved a car to be picked up at noon from the airport. They arrived late at about 1:30ish, but normal for plane passengers. We found the TDC Thrifty office tucked away in a corner in the departure lounge with the hours clearly posted from noon until 0 pm (see photo). No one was to be found, despite a sign in the window declaring it “open”
So let’s call the number on the window. Well it rings, but all it does is ring a phone inside the empty office. No one at the airport can find the staff. Being a local resident, I had other contacts and began to call TDC downtown. After 2 calls downtown and almost an hour later, someone from TDC Thrifty shows up.
Does he talk to us? Say he is sorry? Anything? Nope. He walks right past us bringing with him some other dude who needed help too. He proceeded to help him while completely ignoring us.
Finally after helping the other guy, he tells us “no cars at the airport”. So I ask him is he really telling me that a car was reserved, and after waiting an hour for him to show up, that there really was no car for us.
“There are no cars at the airport. Settle down mister.”
No apparent intent to care or issue any apology at all. I told him that I would take them down town and we would get a car from their downtown or storage location.
“No cars downtown”.
So now I have to comprehend being made to wait an hour for someone to even show, and that even then, no car is available.
TDC Thrifty “resolved” this by sending the renters in a taxi to the beach to wait until sometime later to wait for a car to become available. Meanwhile, the renters clock for paying for the car has been running since noon.
5:12 PM – TDC Thrifty just called me to inform that there would be no car today, but “we gonna try tomorrow”.
11:00 AM NEXT DAY – Finally TDC Thrifty has arrived with a car, almost exactly 24 hours later. It arrived with a flat tire, but that isn’t their fault and they had a full size spare and changed it immediately. The car given is at least 2 classes smaller than the one that was reserved. A free upgrade was promised, but so far we still have a 3 cylinder Suzuki Celerio instead of the mid size sedan that was reserved. They did give my guests a steep discount though and knocked off several hundred dollars from the initial rental rate. An upgrade was promised as well, but it has yet to appear.
At this point I guess we can consider this more or less “resolved”. However this does not change the original fact – a car was reserved and a car was not available. When delivered a full day later, the car was two classes smaller. Th initial handling of this incident was handled extremely poorly. With that statement I am being generous and kind.
After reading all the horrible reviews for TDC Thrifty on the internet I told them that they were probably one offs. But apparently this is just par for the course for TDC Thrifty.
To anyone wishing to rent a car in St Kitts. Save yourself the hassle and call Bullseye instead. They are professionals, but unfortunately had no cars at the time we needed one. But at least Bullseye told us they didn’t have any cars available, and did not confirm a reservation for a non existent car.