Short story: STAY AWAY. Long story: we had problem after problem with Dawn’s rental. We rented Dawn’s van for 4 nights at $275/night for a total of almost $1600 after fees and insurance. You would think that this would pay for some basics like a full water tank but think again. When we picked up, the van was given to us with an empty water tank, empty propane tank, battery at less than 25% charge, gas half full. This is where the fun began. 1) During orientation, we were told that there was something wrong with the water gauge in the tank, that the tank itself was almost full and just needed a “bit of a top off”, so stop at the store for a few gallons of water and we’d be good to go. That was lie #1. Come to find out a couple hours into our trip when we’re already out of the city in the middle of nowhere that there was nothing wrong with the gauge at all. Now picture yourself on the first day of vacation parked on the side of the road at a rest stop with nothing but 2 1-gallon jugs of water, a beer bong funnel (because no filling hose was provided with this van) and a public restroom with sinks too small to fit a jug of water under and your task is to fill a completely empty 30 gallon tank so you can have running water for the night. FUN! 2) We were given no propane with this rental. Again, during orientation, we were told that we could easily find a station to fill up on once we hit the road. That was lie #2. We had A LOT of trouble finding a station who could fill our propane, to the point that we weren’t able to fill up for our first night at all. What that meant for us is a cold December night of no heat nor hot water and nothing but the flimsy blanket that was provided and ALL of our layers to sleep in. Fortunately, we had changed our plans from going to Sequoia to doing a drive up the coast, because plan A would have been outright dangerous instead of uncomfortable and inconvenient. 3) The battery sucked AND it was given to us almost empty which meant that no matter what we did to charge it up (keep the van in the sun all day), the fullest we could ever get it to was 40%. Try boiling a basic pot of water and there goes the van’s battery for the day. It got to the point where we were doing everything we were told (charge the solar panels all day, unplug everything, turn everything off while driving, don’t cook at night) but still dealing with power outages EVERY. SINGLE. NIGHT. We ended up cooking only twice the whole trip and spending every evening in complete darkness and a stupid low battery warning beeping incessantly at us. Not exactly the wonderful nights of relaxation we had envisioned. We even tried checking ourselves into an RV park so that we could plug into A/C to charge up the battery in order to have heat for the night. But surprise, surprise, the van came with NO power cord. We were told (lie #3) that we could simply borrow one from the park, or go to the store to buy one. What do you think happened there? RV park did not have the cord and all 3 stores we tried (Home Depot, Harbor Freight, Tractor Supply Company) did not carry the very unique power cord that this van needs – not only did we waste $40 staying at the RV park that night for nothing, we wasted an hour and a half driving around all over the place trying to find this special power cord that you have to special order. 4) 2 days into our trip and apparently this van is also not well-maintained. After googling the light that came on during the last stretch of our drive, it turns out that it was low on BlueDEF and we would have to go to Autozone to refill it or the engine would eventually crap out on us. At this point, I’m wondering how I got suckered into paying $1600 just so I can borrow this lemon and do the owner the favor of maintaining the car for her. We decided then that this van was just not worth our energy, and after refilling it ourselves with BlueDEF, we made our way home and returned it a night earlier than we had paid for. 5) Cherry on top: even after ALL of these problems, I was not about to run off angrily and write a bad review without giving the owner the opportunity to make things right. I contacted Zoe our coordinator and explained to her everything we had been through. Zoe was very understanding (she’s the reason we didn’t leave a 1 star review) and said that she would talk to Dawn about it and see if we could get a night comped for all of our troubles. I thought this was reasonable enough, especially given that we returned the van a night early anyway. Zoe for her part apologized to us and gave us about $100 back as reimbursement for our out-of-pocket expenses we had to pay for water (+hose), propane, ½ tank gas and BlueDEF and said she would get right back to us as soon as she had a chance to talk to Dawn. This is when the mysterious “international traveling” started. Dawn seemed to be on a round the world trip that incapacitated her from talking to Zoe for a solid 10 days after we had this initial discussion with her because we kept hearing that “Dawn is on a flight right now and I’ll probably be able to talk to her tonight but you know with the time difference and everything, it’s real challenging, etc, etc, etc”. Dawn still hasn’t found the time to respond to us whatsoever. Pretty sure you would call that being ghosted. BUT, let me say that, during her busy world travels, Dawn HAS found the time to lower her nightly rate from $275 to $189 very shortly after our rental experience with her. Kinda burns considering that at this new rate, 4 nights would cost more than $400 less than I paid for my rental, but she’s not willing to do anything at all when it comes to owning up to a terrible rental experience. Seriously, the new rate might sound attractive, but it’s really, really not worth it. The pictures are cute and all, but that’s where the cuteness ends. There are tons of other vans on Outdoorsy and tons of independent van outlets in LA where you could get a better experience for a comparable price.
2 Photos submitted by Pearly L.