E-Z Rent-a-car experiences?

Booking logistics for the honeymoon, and E-Z is about half the cost of other places, but I'm totally unfamiliar with them. No place has great reviews, and E-Z definitely also has positive ones... Nothing that screams that this place is awful. I don't rent cars very often, and it usually goes okay, but is occasionally a minor fiasco.

I do not want any fiascos on my honeymoon.

But I also don't want to unnecessarily double the cost of a nine-day rental because I didn't even look into the place that won on price so handily. I'd feel a bit goofy throwing away $300 because a name I recognized made me feel better, when I don't even really have a name I prefer.

Anybody have experience with them?

As someone who rents a fair number of cars per year I'd stick with the big national chains if you wants to minimize risk. They may only be mediocre but they're usually pretty good sorting out issues if/when they appear.

In my experience, all of the major brands suck pretty much equally. You may get a good counter jockey in some places that know how best to navigate the system but on the average, they all view the reservation as them reserving a customer rather than you reserving a car. Only ones that will usually reserve the car you booked is avis/budget. The others will just rent it to someone else that walks up and let you sit and wait while your car is "being brought over from another location" or is "being serviced".

Yep, used them many times. They're far cheaper. Another big plus is that since they aren't a huge national brand, the line at the counter is much shorter. I'm in, get my car, and I'm out. Never had an issue. Sometimes the cars I've had are 2 years old instead of brand new, but who cares?

Highly recommend them.

My experience (with MANY many rentals) is that Hertz is the best by far, but the most expensive by far as well. I use National and never have an issue, they are great and lower cost than Hertz. Every national low cost provider (Dollar, Thrifty, etc) suck as bad as they can suck. The cars are a crap shoot but their service is consistently horrible. Avoid at all costs. Local budget providers are also a crap-shoot, most domestic ones are total crap and I avoid like the plague.

I have used E-Z in the Caribbean before, mostly because there are no other options, and I will say that I had no issues at all. Keep in mind that they are on Island time like any other business South of Miami. I waited 45 min for a car at the airport once and tried to complain, but that was just how long it took for Jimmy to drive my Jimmy (we laughed) from the other side of the island. He then bought us a drink and a conch salad, so we adjusted pretty quickly.

While I don't want to be reckless with our time, we'll be there for nine days, and if we chew an hour with a mishandled car, it won't be the end of the world. My initial post was late and tired, and ~$300 was the difference per week; at a week and a half it's between $400 and $500... I just can't chuck that kind of money into avoiding a minor wrinkle that might not even occur. That's approaching next season's autocross tires!

I think we'll be in a mindset to ponder island time while it gets sorted if needs be

I just hope they're okay to deal with while we're dealing with it, or of course that things just work.

Thanks for the input!

Thought I ought to follow up!

We totally rented a car from E-Z.

They failed to reserve the Jeep, we, uh, reserved, so we wound up in a Hyundai Santa Fe, which I pretty much hated. I have a special distaste for any white SUV. Anyhow, it got us where we were going.

They had two clerks working, and about four parties got off the same shuttle bus with us. It took us about an hour and a half to get sorted. Twenty minutes of that was my turn to get the added insurance hard sell wherein they make it clear that if anything happens to this vehicle, I'll be billed for the damage, for the time the car is out of commission, and oh yeah, it can take *weeks* to ship a replacement part from the mainland. They also strongly suggested that even your really good credit card or personal insurance that might cover damage probably won't cover the out of commission penalty.

I couldn't bring myself to spend the $300 or so on insurance which would have made the rental about the same price as one of the other agencies.

Mercifully, we managed to avoid any damage to the car, and it was trouble-free during our stay, and dropping it off was much less painful.

I don't know how to summarize. I want to say I wouldn't touch them again with a ten-foot pole. OTOH, it's hard to say it wasn't worth an extra hour in line to save $300. It just made the whole transaction feel so crappy, and left a terrible taste in my mouth. Maybe next time I'll check ahead with my insurance and/or credit card so I can shut them up more quickly (at least if it really would be covered).

Also, my math probably doesn't exactly work out, but at this point I'm not going back to sort out the details. I'm pretty sure that the end difference was a minimum of $300 for our 10-ish days of car rental.

I think we rented a Wrangler Unlimited from E-Z when we went to St. John.  Picked it up on St. Thomas and took the ferry.  Had it a week.  It was pretty new and shiny and exactly what we asked for.  Had no problems at either end of the transaction.

We did EZ in Denver last time I was there for work and between the 75 minute wait for the shuttle bus and the 90 minutes it took for us (the second people in line off that bus) to actually get to our car we were an hour late for our meeting. I will never make that mistake again.