Lax Rent-A-Car

I was a bit discombobulated to arrive here and find that there was a sign on the door that said to come around back. I did and found an employee working in a garage. He didn’t have any information about my reservation, but had plenty of trucks (none of which had the Penske logo, but eh, didn’t hurt me at all) and gave me exactly what I wanted. No attempted upsell on insurance either! I asked about how to return the truck if I came back after closing, and he explained I could park in the back of the nearby hotel parking lot, but also gave me his number to call if I was going to be back just a little late.
I had a little trouble figuring out how to lower the truck lift when I got to my apartment, but called and the trick was explained. For some reason you have to have the ignition on and flip a switch in the cab. Would’ve been nice to be told in the first place, but hey, everyone makes mistakes.
I got the truck back right on time. The guy said his boss would email me the receipt the next day. And he did. And it was exactly what I had agreed to online in the first place.
This was certainly one of the better overall experiences I’ve had renting a truck. There were a couple of red flags where I could see problems could potentially arise, but I didn’t personally have any.

While the company themselves were utter c**p (and Penske gave us compensation) — the one good employee we encountered was amazing. he is wasted there — offered us advice on the car carrier and help attach this for us. Can’t thank him enough.

Recently I went to the zoo and I decided to rent a car from this place so I went in and everything good I got the van and from there I went to pick up my family so we can head out so right around midway to the zoo I was going just shy above 45mph and the van starts shaking really bad that it will slow down the van so then I was gonna pull over but I noticed it stopped so I was ok that’s good so I keeped going and I notice that it will only shake when I go above 45mph now remember I’m in the freeway everybody honking because I was going to slow and causing traffic cuz I had to go 4mph so as I arrive to the zoo I had my buddy that’s a professional mechanic he found out the it had a bad alignment on the car and it had broken cooling fan and a motor mount was broken so I had to call a toe truck just to be safe and left me In front of my apartment complex so from there I took the van back and told them the situation and this ass wholes said «oh ok thanks for letting us know so we can fix it for the next customer because that’s very dangerous» TF not even a sorry cuz it was dangerous or a discount or my money for the toe truck I had to pay out of my pocket … Screw this place … My advice is to go somewhere else screw this place … Wish I can give it no stars at all

This place is on top of their game! Bob and his staff were incredibly helpful and genuinely interested in providing good customer service. We were accommodated and doing business with LAX Rent A Car was a pleasant reminder of why it is better to go with a small business rather than a chain company. Our rental was clean and had a fresh car smell; we were able to drive the far distance that we needed with no problems; there were NO hidden charges. What you see is what you get: great functioning cars and professional service. The owner Bob is a great businessman and I would HIGHLY recommend this place.

The best car rental ever, I did it with a Nissan, the car was excellent and the price was quite reasonable. I am happy that I found a reliable nice company to rent my cars fro,. Thanks Bob and your associates.

The entire world had aligned itself between me and a 15-​passenger van that I needed to take a group of people on a night trip to Joshua Tree national park to catch the apex of the perseid meteor shower.
Everyone else was sold out due to some race or event that was going on the weekend of April 21, or they simply refused to rent me a van for one day (night) even at their relatively high prices. Little did they know that I was about to travel 375 miles (175 miles over the standard daily limit of 200 miles for single-​day rentals).
I was hesitant to rent a van from Lax Rent-​A-​Car after reading the 2 negative reviews here, but Mike confirmed my reservation without a fuss and he didn’t even blink an eye when I mentioned the fact I was only renting the van for a day to go to Joshua Tree.
Everything seemed too good to be true, so I didn’t allow myself to feel optimistic about the fact that I was renting the van I wanted at such a low rate, for one day, all the way to Joshua Tree.
Once I got there, I had to wait a little but it was nothing excessive. We did the walk-​around vehicle inspection to catalogue any damage already present on the van. They had to put in a fourth row of seats since I was going to be carrying the full capacity of people.
The van had no issues at all. Shifting was smooth, the engine had plenty of power, the tires looked new. I was really worried at first since I was taking the van out so far. But once we got back in one piece, I slowly came to the realization that I had just rented the perfect van. It wasn’t a new van, but it worked, it got the job done, it got great mileage for it’s size, all at a great rate.
The other places I looked at charged 35 cents a mile for anything over 200 miles. Lax Rent-​A-​Car was less!
I highly recommend this place. Waiting 10 – 15 minutes won’t kill you. And if you can’t do a little contingency planning ahead of time to account for delays, that’s too bad.

Ok… so got up early to return a rented Penske truck… showed up about 7:50am on a Monday and the place was closed… so I waited til 8am … still closed… about 8:15am I phoned Penske and they informed me that they open at 8am and that they will contact someone to find out what was going on. I was told that he is five minutes away. So after about another 20 minutes someone arrives.
During our wait someone else had shown up to return a car. So when we went in to check our truck in we were told that he needed to leave and take the people returning the car to the airport… and that we would have to wait outside til he returned… huh? are you kidding… so after about another 25 minutes he returned and finally checked or truck in.
Bottom line… these guys need to be managed a little better. This is definitely a black mark on my Penske «return» experience. And there would be no way that I would deal business with these guys at all. I’m glad we just had to drop off the truck to them…

Avoid this place at all costs. We rented a 12-​passenger van and it completely died. When we called «Bob» from the side of the road he dismissively said to «wait 10 minutes and try again». We had it towed ourselves from Oceanside all the way to Hollywood. However Bob could care less about the inconvenience. Turns out the van had a bad alternator, yet Bob waited weeks to issue a discount, and it wasn’t even for the full amount.