I have a new favorite rental car company in Hawaii and it’s Avis. Recently, we rented cars from Avis on Oahu and Kauai. Both cars were very clean and best of all, they were roach-free.
Some of you may recall that I had a less than pleasant experience with Dollar Rent a Car in March. We had the complete opposite experience with Avis cars. We had requested low mileage cars in the hopes that maybe the cars would be cleaner and pest-free. So, we were nervous when the lowest mileage cars available had over 20,000 miles. Being experience Hawaii rental car connoisseurs, we knew how to look for bugs and we did search thoroughly. We found no bugs! 
When we returned our last car at Avis, I mentioned to the agent that we were glad that the car didn’t have any roaches. She told me that they have a proactive approach to preventing roach infested cars. They treat the cars when the first arrive and watch and listen for the need to retreat them. Kudos to Avis!
Note: I should probably make sure you know that I am not affiliated with Avis in any way. I am not compensated in any form for this post.
Sheila Beal
6 comments
When we visited Oahu we rented from I want to say Budget and had absolutely no issues. Yeah!!!
Was there a “Roach Motel” under the seat? 😉 Just Kidding!
@ Debo Hobo – nice to hear you had a pleasant experience with Budget!
@ Dave – teehee….no roach motel that I saw. 🙂
Seriously, we were THRILLED that we weren’t driving roach mobiles this time. We thought our last rental car in Hawaii (on the Big Island) was fine until more than half way through the vacation, an inch-long roach popped out of the glove box in broad daylight. Then we started looking for them….and it was easy to find them. LOTS AND LOTS OF THEM. Driving at night was particularly disturbing.
All they do to treat the cars is spray a huge amount of insecticide all over the place. The stuff is deadly and I get ill from it very quickly.
In my experience new cars are the worst. They probably treat them when they are purchased, so I usually go for the older ones.
We rented an avis car last summer, and had no problem with roaches!
I just found out about the problem, and happily remembered our CLEAN, roach-free car. ;]