Melbourne Car Hire

Pros: Friendly staff

Cons: The surcharges should’ve been known at the beginning. There were many hidden fees that showed up on the final invoice that wasn’t explains. Also, the location was hard to find since they were a part of hertz — this caused many confusion.

Pros: Bad services

Pros: Car seemed to handle fine and in general no issues.

Cons: I don't understand why the site is listed as Firefly but absolutely nothing in my reservation or the literature indicated it was actually a Hertz. When I arrived at the destination, nothing in the Hertz office displayed "Firefly" so this created unnecessary confusion as I searched unnecessarily for the Firefly office. My check-out and check-in to the rental agency seemed to take longer than necessary. At check-out, I was assigned a car after being processed for awhile and then as I was about to head to my car, the agent realized my car was actually not available so needed to reassign me. She was incredibly gracious and apologetic but after traveling from overseas for 30 hours, I really wanted to get in my car ASAP to get to my final destination, another hour drive away. Then when I arrived to drop-off the car, the guy inspecting the car told me that I needed to go to a second location to complete the transaction but wouldn't explain why. (Normally you get your receipt car side and can go.) I had to walk to another location and speak to an agent who basically kept me waiting to provide a receipt. Again, everyone I dealt with was polite but it seemed like the processes took longer than necessary and kept me unnecessarily delayed. On the return, I had a flight to catch and found myself running late because of the extraneous run-around. The car I was assigned was the ugliest shade of neon green - horrible to look at and frankly everyone who saw me with it commented on how atrocious it was. I'm not fussed about car aesthetics normally but this one was a doozy. From a positive perspective, the car was easy to spot from a mile away. Literally. The GPS system I rented which cost almost as much as the car rental (ridiculous!) had a functionality where it would shut itself off if it sensed the car was turned off. For some odd reason, from time-to-time in the middle of my trip, it would decide it needed to shut down. This was frustrating and a bit scary to try to correct mid-drive. The remote for the key was very difficult to read. It was black with raised print reading Lock or Unlock. At night, it was impossible to read - I needed to use the glow from my phone for reading light. If there had been an Alarm button (which often comes with car remotes), it could've been a disaster. Terrible design!