USVI-On-Line

My son,daughter-in -law and two grandchildren are staying a week in St John in April. They have been asking me advice on whether to rent a car in St Thomas or St John. I can think of good reasons for both. Who has some advice???

I prefer to rent in St. Thomas. I have rented from Amalie twice and both times the Jeep had less than 1,000 miles on it. I also like the idea of being able to stop for groceries in St. Thomas (although we didn't on our last trip) and I like the idea of having a car for the entire last day of our trip. I think it would be inconvenient to return a Jeep at 10 a.m. in St. John if you have a later flight. Then you have to worry about carrying your bags around, etc.

If the two grandchildren are young and require car seats, my recommendation is to rent on STT. If they are older and out of car seats, then it's a toss up.

I greatly prefer STT for many reasons, but if the grandkids are in car seats, there is no question of going with STT. It isn't easy to use car seats in cabs on STT, so for safety reasons, STT is the only option.

Even if the grandkids are not in car seats, they will save money because once you have more than a couple people, taking the car ferry is less expensive (vs. the cost of cabs and the people ferry).

Just make sure where ever they rent from they get FWD

Planning my first visit in April. I reserved with budget in stt. A word of caution, budget stt has a website seperate from the normal budget website. If you use budget, make sure not to use the website specific to stt.....they charge a great deal more.

One reason for me to rent on St. John is that I wonder what will happen if there is a problem with the jeep. When this came up before on the forum someone said the STT rental company said they were on their own. I understand the advantages of renting on STT but I always worried about a jeep breakdown which we had one year on St John but the rental company was in Cruz Bay and arrived quickly.

what happens anywhere you rent a vehicle and it has a flat or breaks down? You call the # on the key chain and they send a guy. Not a mystery. Ask the rental agent and they will verify.

STT rental car company's make you get the car back to red hook for you to get it fixed

Tom, that wasn't the case with my parents. They had a really stinky Jeep (vomit maybe?), and then when the tire went flat, that was, it, they didn't want to be stuck with a Jeep that smelled bad and had no spare tire. I called Budget on STT and they brought over a replacement Jeep on the ferry, so my parents exchanged in Cruz Bay.

Just an FYI- when we had a flat on a rental from St Thomas, we put the spare on and took the original tire to the gas station in St John and they patched it for $6.00.

We rent on STJ for this reason:
We went to get into the jeep to meet our boat captain for the day and it would not start. My husband is a car guy so we took the battery out of our friends car and did something to get it to start and let it run for a bit.
We headed out from Rendezvous and at the switchback on the South Shore road, the battery died while I was driving. I managed to get it into a driveway and we called STJ Car Rental before they opened but Bobby was there. They drove to us with a new battery and we were on our way and still had 5 minutes to grab something quick from Deli Grotto before getting on the boat.

I know that the likelihood of something going wrong is small but I feel better knowing that I am taken care of if something does.

I almost wish someone would have a breakdown in an Amalie vehicle, so we'd know for sure what would happen. They're all new, though, and I've never heard of a breakdown. I have 100% confidence in the Amalie's customer service, though.
I have so much faith in them that last year, the week before our vacation, a mandate was passed that forbade STT rental vehicles on the ferry to STJ. I didn't cancel our reservation or make other arrangements. I was positive that in the end, they'd find a way to make it right. I worried, and wrote and called DeJhong, but I didn't look for another vehicle.

We are proof that renting on STT can potentially be a problem! Our last trip was a car rental nightmare and you really are on your own once you are on STJ. Our first car broke down and we had to pay to have it towed to Cruz Bay and taken back to STT--and the taxi back to our villa. The next morning my husband spent hours (and money!) going back to STT to get a new vehicle. That second car wouldn't start on occasion, including the morning we we headed to make our flight.

The STT company eventually (after we were home and I reviewed them on this site) made things better by refunding some portion of our rental fee to cover towing expenses and assured us that the very poor customer service we received while in need of help was an isolated incident. This definitely smoothed over some of the bad feelings we had but in the end we still lost money and countless hours of our trip dealing with car troubles.

The truth is, it's a gamble. You think it will never happen to you but, as you can see, it can happen! We would never dream of risking that situation again--stranded with young children and losing so much vacation time. We definitely booked a STJ company for our trip this year.

Has anyone ever used Avis?