Practical Rent A Car

Beware! The owner is a man named Don. I called to arrange for a rental for 7/9/15 through 7/16/15. Don said he would have the car at the airport, in the public area on the night of 7/8 (when we were to arrive), with the keys above the visor and that he would meet my wife and I at our hotel the next morning to sign the papers. My instructions were to call upon arrival and he would identify the car. This sounded a bit odd but maybe that's the way a small business might do things in a smaller town, like Kalispell. On 7/8 I sent Don a text message with the details of our trip and asked for a confirmation which he did confirm. Our flight was 2 hours late so we arrived at 11:00 instead of 9:00 PM. I called Don's number several times but there was no answer. We took a taxi to our hotel, which cost $25.00. The next morning I called Don and he at first seemed a bit out of touch, expecting that we would be arriving the 9th instead of the 8th – so much for the confirmation, I thought to myself. He then went on to tell me how the car had been totaled and his office ransacked, he was having a horrible day, and that he would have to call me in a couple of hours to make arrangements. I told my wife this was beginning to sound like a Country Western song and I was uneasy with the whole thing. I asked the hotel manager what she knew of Practical Rent a Car and she knew nothing. More or less instinctively she called the number for the business and asked where they were located. Don answered and fired back the question “Why do you want to know!” to which she replied “because I have a couple who need a car” Much to our chagrin Don’s response was something along the line “I don’t appreciate you calling before normal business hours” and hung up. A couple of minutes later Don called me stating he did not appreciate me having somebody call and harass him and that I would have to find a rental somewhere else. My wife, the manager, and I sort of looked at each other, a bit bemused, having to admit this something of a memorable incident. At that my wife and I took the opportunity to see some of Kalispell and walked to Enterprise Rentals on the other side of town.

I have to give some sort of rating so I’ll give Don and Practical Rent a Car one star for originality.