I picked up the car from San Francisco Airport and drove along Highway 1 to Monterey, Santa Barbara,

Highly satisfied

Simple procedures, quick and convenient drop-off.

I booked a Grand Cherokee but got a Nissan instead. The quoted price was over $3500, but I was charged an additional $200 for a one-way rental fee.

We initially chose Dollar because they had the lowest prices, likely due to a big promotional event. This made the place quite crowded, and we had to wait almost two hours in line for our turn. The representative who assisted us was a Chinese-speaking person, which made us feel at ease, but he was very persuasive in selling additional services. Although we had already purchased comprehensive insurance that included roadside assistance when we booked from home, the clerk mentioned that the assistance might only cover towing for 5-10 miles. This made it hard to decide on the spot, and for an additional $7 per day, we decided to purchase it. He also sold us a full-tank gas option, saying it would be convenient to return the car with an empty tank since gas prices in California were high. Perhaps due to the long wait and feeling hungry, we ended up buying this service too, adding another $89 to our bill. In hindsight, it wasn't really necessary, as we had to carefully plan our refueling to take advantage of this offer. When it was time to choose a car, most of the options were gone because of the crowd, and we couldn't get the Chevrolet Suburban LS SUV we wanted. We spent another half hour in the parking lot and eventually settled for a Nissan SUV. We had six people and a lot of luggage, so we had to fold down one of the rear seats to fit our 28-inch suitcase. Returning the car was similar; with our additional shopping bags, we had to fold down the third row completely to fit two 28-inch suitcases, two 24-inch suitcases, and one 20-inch suitcase, plus several large backpacks. It was a bit crowded with two adults and two children in the second row, but fortunately, the hotel was close to the airport drop-off point.

Would not use Dollar again. Alamo are better. The car had a built in Sat Nav which they didn't advise us of so we paid for extra for a Sat Nav at almost $10 a day including tax which we didn't need. Got stuck in traffic so returned the car 2hrs later than specified and ended up paying for another day hire.