6 months ago
During a 15-day Southwest road trip starting from Las Vegas on February 8th, our rental Bronco Sport developed a severe metallic engine rattle while in a remote area of Arizona. On February 23rd, after a diagnostic call, Alamo Roadside explicitly directed us to this St. George Airport counter—150 miles away—specifically for a safety exchange. To comply with these safety instructions, we were forced to abandon our planned visits to Zion and Bryce Canyon. The encounter at this desk was a fiasco. It began with a large, tall employee who dismissively told us he couldn’t help and walked off before we could even explain the mechanical issue. Inside, a female employee claiming to be the manager was immediately hostile, sneeringly asking if we were mechanics and accusing us of "trashing" the car based solely on the other employee’s word. Neither would listen to the engine or even look under the hood. When the male employee finally inspected the car, he ignored the mechanical danger to obsess over standard desert dust and dry gravel on the floorboards in a vehicle issued without mats. The behavior turned bizarrely personal: he questioned our "integrity" and asked if we had daughters to imply we were mistreating the staff, despite our attempts to remain professional and simply get their names—which they refused to provide. When we did not back down, he threatened to call the police and have us trespassed from the airport property. They ultimately claimed no replacement was available and told us to drive the defective car back to Las Vegas. Immediately upon leaving the airport, we pulled over to record the loud metallic chattering (attached) to document the safety issue they refused to acknowledge. Upon arrival at the Las Vegas Airport, the staff there saw no evidence of misuse, explicitly stated the car looked exactly as expected after two weeks in the desert, and provided a replacement immediately. This branch prioritizes personal insults and intimidation over customer safety and basic service.
