When an apparently defective tire on our Thrifty rental car had a side wall blowout on the highway and the spare had dangerous-looking grooves in it (due to being stored too tightly pressed against the car underbody), three calls to Thrifty for roadside assistance resulted in no help at all.  In fact, we were told that the optional rental insurance doesn't cover tires, even when it's a defect in the tire.  We were told to replace the tire ourselves.

The following day, I checked with Hertz, Avis, Alamo, and National.  All say that they would have helped us.

With this information, another call to Thrifty resulted in profuse apologies and assurance that Thrifty's policy is to provide roadside assistance 24/7.   But no one could explain why our first three phone calls (including conversations with at least five different Thrifty employees) produced results completely contrary.

When we turned the car in with the spare on it we had to complete an Accident Report and the clerk demanded our insurance information as if we'd caused the problem.

What baffles me is this:  As an individual, if I have a flat tire for any reason, I call the roadside assistance related to my tires' Road Hazard Warranty.  However, the warranty in the rental car was for Goodrich tires and our rental had Goodyear tires on it.

Surely a company the size of Thrifty has either standard Road Hazard Warranties on their tires or a very good relationship with Goodyear (etc.) to cover defects and road hazard damage on their tires?

Today we reported the problem to Thrifty's "Customer Car Care" number (1-800-334-1705) and they apologized and suggested that there may be some compensation for the problems that we had.  (We ended up calling AAA who helped us within 30 minutes and we arrived home exhausted, upset, and stressed from our vacation at about 4 a.m. having had to drive very slowly and on back roads using a "donut" spare.)

In the future, I'd rent from Avis.  Their representative gave me the most confident reply that, with or without optional insurance, Avis supports their cars bumper-to-bumper, 24/7.

Eibhlin MacIntosh, artgrrl@hotmail.com