Monday, July 20, 2009

Roadfood junkie Travel Tip

Roadfood junkie loved Texas and South Padre Island. It is a great place to go for a vacation and really good roadfood. The prices and service are exceptional, there are always specials to be found. Tons of places to eatout at, satisfying most hungry vacationers.

A car rental misadventure.
You need to get there. We flew into Huston, Tx from Detroit. Our travel arrangements were made through a local travel agent whom we had never dealt with before. A return flight that included a rental car(Alamo) for two weeks. May have to pay some local taxes. Sounded good, we had used Alamo rental before in Florida.

Alamo Car rental gouged us.
We were shocked to find those local taxes added up to $219.20. They really weren’t taxes, more like additional expenses that we had never been told about.
Customer Facility Charge $3,00 per day = $42.
Alamo busing recovery fee.(shuttle to kisok) 4.49
Concession recoup fee @ 11% 45.59
Vehicle License cost recover 2.34 per day 32.76
Motor Vehicle retail tax 10% 47.48
Harris Sports Auth tax 5% 23.74
Fuel service option 23.14 (this one I agree with- fuel)

3 months after returning I got another charge of $35 supposedly for a violation which I have no recollection of. Thanks to Visa they refused payment.

Roadfood junkie Travel tips.
Call Visa or other(credit card company) and advise them of your travel plans; When leaving and when returning. Tell them to accept no further charges from the travel destination upon your return.

Know complete details of rental agreement; the taxes, hidden or otherwise.

Know your Travel agent, get all travel details up front. Dot the i’s and cross the t’s. Beware! when the agent say’s there may be an extra charge. They should know all the details of your destination. Ours told us it was a couple hour drive from Houston to South Padre. It was a six hours drive with no stopping in between.

Unfortunately, the travel agent and Alamo Rental has lost our business forever.

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