Thrifty Car & Van Rental

Rented a van. Was offered brand new one. The team were good throughout checkout and check in process. Made the process easy and straight forward.

Did a large van that worked well. However really not always the cheapest - worth shopping around.

Be careful about this company. When you pickup your car, you have to CAREFULLY check each individual rim. They will charge you 85 pounds per scratch (

Treat is as lottery. They are slightly cheaper from competitors, but.. well, what's the use if you can't even get the car. You may have read other reviews mentioning documentation. I'll add another one. They are, indeed, very fussy regarding documentations. As a background, I'm an international student, so it wasn't all that clear which sets of documentation I would need (resident vs international). Just to be on the safe side, I printed my bank statement and tenancy agreement as proofs. Well, guess what? They refused these and insisted that any documentation needs to be dated within 7 days (it wasn't mentioned at all before) and if I couldn't provide gas/utility bill mentioned in the example then I would need a letter stamped by university, and they keep repeating I have read their T&C* so I should understand these. Good god.. I have no clue why tenancy agreement wouldn't count, isn't it, literally, a proof of residency? Now, I understand that they are probably just trying to limit their risk exposure of loss/whatever as this branch owned (instead of leased) the cars. But from customer standpoint it is an absolutely ridiculous experience. It's very close to Christmas, thus, I can't even procure the letter as college office has been closed, and what's even more important is, the holiday for kids will be ruined now. Obviously they don't care a bit about these customer issues. Wonderful. *to add salt to the wound, their T&C said that if they declined the documentation, then online pre-booking payment cannot be refunded. I seriously wonder if this is how they make their money. Also, to cancel booking (or in my case, making serious complaints), you have to call the main office with a very long queue line, can't even do it from the branch.

I have rented with this particular branch on multiple occasions for about a year, so feel well-placed to be able to leave this review. I must admit, after seeing the other negative Google reviews I was initially quite apprehensive about renting from this branch. However, I have never had any issues with this Thrifty branch and my experiences have been overwhelmingly positive. Matt and Mohammed, in particular, have always been helpful and pleasant to deal with. I believe the reason underlying many of the negative reviews is that this branch requires more supporting document than the most other companies and many customers either skim through the email specifying the required documentation, or don't read it altogether. I did ask what the reason was for requiring so many documents and I was told that it was related to the fact that the branch owns all of the cars it rents out (as opposed to leasing them, which other companies to). In my opinion, the minimal amount of extra effort it takes to collect these documents is justified given how much cheaper this branch is compared to other car rental companies in Oxford. Bottom line: the staff here are friendly and helpful and I have had nothing but a positive experience in renting from Thrifty. However, it's important to read the e-mail which specifies what documents are required. One suggestion for improvement would be to emphasise this information in bold to ensure that it isn't overlooked.