Hi
Just wanted to give people the heads up on a campervan rental place I used called 'Trailmasters' who are based in Perth and Broome. I hired a campervan from them to travel from Perth to Darwin (excellent fun by the way!) part of their contract is that they take $5000 AU off your credit card as security when you hire the vehicle which they then refund a MONTH after you deliver the car back. Well we hit a kangaroo and therefore had to go through nightmare of finding quotes in Darwin but that was all sorted with a lot of nightmares before we left Oz on the 28th March. The company NEVER returned calls in fact with all the problems we had the General Manager never spoke to us in 2 months! So they really didn't help when we were trying to relax in WA.
Since then we have returned home and they still haven't paid us the best port of $3000 AU in fact our separate insurance company have paid us back quicker than they have. They also and bearing in mind its been 2 MONTHS have never returned a call when we leave messages or e-mailed so now we are having to go legal. Basically don't use this company, we told every hostel we stayed in up the West coast, they are totally unable to communicate and keep your deposit money until you have to instruct solicitors. There are loads of other companies who are really good use one of them!!!
In response to Kesuk, I have to say that we have had bad experience with the same company.
We recently hired a camper through Trailmasters and after a 2 week hire we were unable to contact the company throughout the whole hire period. Luckily we hadn't had any major mishaps but if we did have the misfortune to run into trouble then they would have been the last people on earth to offer assistance as they are unable to answer the phone or return calls once a camper has been hired. Once we reached Broome we decided to drop by the office to make contact but the Hayes St address had apparently been relocated to Archer St so we went to investigate but just found a closed down Trailmaster office there with a couple of vehicles dumped outside, so the company again was unreachable. Not encouraging when we were due to return the van in a couple of days time, we did managed to get hold of somebody in the perth office after a few more days to confirm the drop off of the vehicle but on the day nobody turned up to take the camper off our hands at the specified time. We had a flight to catch and after much persistance on the phone managed to get hold of someone who arranged for somebody to collect the vehicle. This was all done only as a result of our phoen call nobody had prearranged a pick up despite the fact we thought it had been organised at the start of the hire hence the fact we were given a drop off location and time! When the person colecting the vehicle eventually arrived they did not have a copy of any paper work on them and therefore unable to carry out the usual check-in and vehicle inspection that you'd expect t take place. We had to prompt the process by taking photos and getting them to sign our vehicle condition report to say no damage had occured.
We are no hoping they don't try to fraudulently get any money from our bond which is a whole new worry in itself. Although we didn't have any trouble with the vehicle itself the company is not professional and we are left concerned about our bond. For this reason I would urge people to never use this company. They may be cheap but the price may be paid elsewhere.
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