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Written by Nikki Solano

Nikki is the CEO of Pura Vida! eh? Inc. (Costa Rica Discounts), and the author of the guidebooks Moon Costa Rica (2019, 2021, 2023, and 2025 editions) and Moon Best of Costa Rica (2022 edition) from Moon Travel Guides. Together with her Costa Rican husband, Ricky, she operates the Costa Rica Travel Blog, created the online community DIY Costa Rica, built the Costa Rica Destination Tool, oversees the brand-new (summer 2023) Costa Rica Travel Shop, and designed the Costa Rica Trip Planning 101 E-Course. Also, Nikki wrote the Costa Rica cover feature for Wanderlust Magazine's sustainability-focused Travel Green List issue, showcased Costa Rica destinations and experiences on Rick Steves' Monday Night Travel show and podcast/radio show, and served as the Costa Rica Destination Editor for Essentialist, a luxury travel brand. Want to show your appreciation for her free article below? Thank Nikki here. ❤️️

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For you. For free.

Looking for Costa Rica car rental discounts? We’ve got em’! Check out our FREE COSTA RICA DISCOUNT CODES page for details. Con mucho gusto (you’re welcome) and pura vida!

Cutthroat competition and car rental scams in Costa Rica

Wherever a line can be drawn, inevitably someone will cross it.

The subjective process of going too far and crossing lines is no stranger to business operations. In fact, the value of some companies is determined by it. We like to think that most businesses play by the rules and within moral lines, but we all know that a few operate however is most advantageous to them. As business owners, Ricky and I play so neatly by the rules that we’ve surely been taken for as suckers by some competitors, and that’s okay. The truth is, we would rather be taken for by others than be the ones doing the taking. Call us old-fashioned (we like the term “humble”), but our teeth just aren’t sharp enough to bite in this dog-eat-dog world we all live in.

Even in the paradisiacal land of pura vida, competition is fierce. We address competition within Costa Rica’s tourism industry in our blog post: Tourism Competition In Costa Rica: The Haters Gonna Hate, Hate, Hate, But We’re Gonna Shake It Off, but we raise the topic in this post, too, for a reason: competition is a major player in the game of Costa Rica car rental scams; it drives car rental agencies to try to one-up one another and fuels a few to resort to some pretty shady—albeit legal—practices in order to get the job done.

The process of renting a car in Costa Rica is an area of Costa Rica trip planning that’s shrouded by doubt. Travelers regularly contact us with all kinds of inquiries about Costa Rica’s car rental processes, including questions about rental costs, hidden fees, and insurance. We also receive tons of inquiries about Costa Rica car rental scams because it’s a known fact that they exist. Most travelers, like you (we assume), want to dodge those hazards like Frogger crossing the road. Luckily, we have tons of experience renting cars in Costa Rica, helping travelers rent a car in Costa Rica, and chatting with past travelers who had positive and negative car rental experiences in Costa Rica, so we’re qualified to help you maneuver the madness and make it to the other side. Familiarize yourself with our tips below to learn how to protect yourself from Costa Rica car rental scams.

To learn how to protect yourself from Costa Rica vacation package scams, don’t miss our related blog post:

5 Red Flags To Look Out For When Buying A Costa Rica Vacation Package

Costa Rica car rental scams: Beware of low rental quotes

Does it sound too good to be true? Let’s determine if it is.

Costa Rica car rental agencies compete with one another by offering attractive car rental rates. A common Costa Rica car rental scam involves the advertisement of incredibly low rental rates to catch the attention of prospective renters. Who wouldn’t want to secure a rental car at a fraction of the cost available through other agencies? Someone who knows better, that’s who.

When you encounter a car rental company that advertises extremely low rates, the company may have something to hide, such as an additional cost that can be applied to the rental reservation during your trip but that isn’t required to be disclosed in advance (i.e., at the time the reservation is made).

Imagine you’ve just arrived in Costa Rica, and you’re excited to pick up your rental car and hit the road when a representative from a car rental agency kindly informs you that the total cost of the car you’re about to rent is significantly higher than the rental quote you received. That moment can be downright devastating, not to mention vacation-altering, if your trip budget is already tight. It can also be a waste of precious travel time, if you end up arguing with the representative or searching for an alternative vehicle through a different agency. If you do what most travelers do in this situation, you’ll sign the rental contract that’s in front of you and chalk the extra costs up to what you wish you knew before you came to Costa Rica.

Avoid this Costa Rica car rental scam by ensuring that the car rental quote you receive reflects the final cost of the reservation. If a car rental company says that they cannot provide you with a final cost until you decide which insurance(s) you’d like to include with the rental, an action that typically takes place at the rental counter on the day you pick-up the car, ask for the details and the prices of the various insurance options so you can decide on one or more of them in advance, then have the car rental company recalculate the rental quote and confirm that it reflects the final cost of the reservation with your chosen insurance(s) included.

Learn which taxes and fees are mandatory and which are optional.

This isn’t an easy task to accomplish because you may receive conflicting definitions of “mandatory” from competing car rental companies. That fact alone seems suspicious, doesn’t it? Some car rental agencies will charge partial taxes and fees in their online rental rates, enough to be able to state in the reservation’s fine print that “taxes and fees are included”, even if the rate doesn’t include all taxes and fees. Is that behavior sneaky? We think so, and it’s quite common. Some small, local car rental agencies do it and lots of highly recognizable, online third-party booking websites do it. (You know, the big guys that sell airfare, hotels, vacation packages, and car rentals.)

Avoid this Costa Rica car rental scam by paying special attention to whether the rental quote you receive includes all taxes and fees. If the quote doesn’t explicitly state that it does, or a representative from the car rental agency cannot confirm that it does, be aware that additional taxes and fees may be tacked onto the reservation total when you’re in Costa Rica.

Below is a list of taxes and fees that can be applied on top of Costa Rica car rental quotes. The list is non-exhaustive, but it’s a good starting point for knowing what to look out for when you review the details of a car rental quote. Note that not all of the below taxes and fees apply to every car rental reservation; applicable taxes and fees vary by reservation and may be waived in certain situations.

• Insurance fees (more information on these below)
• Sales tax
• Vehicle pick-up fee
• Vehicle pick-up airport fee
• Vehicle return fee
• Vehicle late return fee
• Vehicle refueling fee (gas top-up)
• License plate fee
• Additional driver fee
• Roadside assistance fee
• Smoke damage fee
• GPS rental fee
• Child car seat rental fee
• Roof rack and/or canasta (storage bin) rental fee
• Cell phone rental fee and/or cell phone usage fee

Costa Rica car rental scams: Beware of car rental insurance

For complete information about Costa Rica car rental insurance, don’t miss our related blog post:

Costa Rica Car Rental Insurance Information

Is Costa Rica car rental insurance a scam?

Costa Rica car rental insurance is a twisted web. While it’s tempting to give in to the entanglement and not fight your way through, that’s how you’ll end up a victim in the mess. If you don’t free yourself, there’s a good chance you’ll find yourself standing at a rental desk, ready to pick up a car, and completely blindsided by the whopping “mandatory insurance” cost that you’ve just been informed must be added to your bill.

To be clear: we don’t consider Costa Rica car rental insurance to be a scam. We do, however, consider the insurance-related actions of some car rental agencies to be incredibly shady, like when they opt not to disclose all mandatory insurance fees during the rental quote or reservation process, only to apply those fees later, upon vehicle pick up, when you have little choice but to accept the charges.

Brush up on your knowledge of Costa Rica car rental insurance.

As we detail in our related post, Costa Rica Car Rental Insurance Information, several car insurance types and terms are cited in Costa Rica. If you’ve read our insurance-related article, you already know what constitutes “mandatory insurance” and how the phrase can be broken down into two parts: insurance that is mandatory to buy in Costa Rica and insurance that is mandatory to have in Costa Rica but can be purchased in your home country.

Here’s where the sly creep in and insurance-related Costa Rica car rental scams are born: some car rental agencies elect not to include the cost of both parts of mandatory insurance in their rental quotes or reservation totals. Instead, their prices only include the cost of one of two parts of mandatory insurance, leaving it up to the consumer to figure out that the cost of the other part is missing. If you’re thinking that shouldn’t be your job, and that all car rental agencies should have transparent pricing, you’re absolutely right. And, if you’re wondering why several car rental agencies (Costa Rican agencies and international agencies alike) run this scam, the short answer is: “because they can.” It isn’t illegal for car rental agencies to do it, they’re simply banking on your disregard for details.

Now that you know that some Costa Rica car rental agencies willingly withhold mandatory costs from quotes and reservations, the way to avoid this Costa Rica car rental scam is to make sure any price totals you receive from a car rental agency include both parts of mandatory insurance. Sometimes a car rental agency will choose not to automatically include both parts in their rates, which is okay and not a direct indication of a scam, provided the agency is upfront about the omission. Costa Rica rental car scams exist when an agency doesn’t automatically include both parts of mandatory insurance in their rates while misleading renters into believing that they do.

More specifically, look for Costa Rica car rental agencies that define “mandatory insurance” as CDW insurance or LDW insurance. Since these insurance types tend to include both parts of mandatory insurance, agencies that reference either one are more likely to provide prices that won’t change down the road.

If, throughout your research, you don’t know what kind of insurance a particular Costa Rica car rental company includes in its rental rates, ask the company. Most will say that mandatory insurance is included, but we hope you’ve learned from this blog post to go one step further and ask whether both parts of mandatory insurance are included. See our related blog post: Costa Rica Car Rental Insurance Information for a breakdown of mandatory insurance parts and other insurance-related details.

Our recommendation above (“beware of low rental quotes”) also applies to insurance.

Omitting part of the cost of mandatory insurance from rental quotes helps car rental agencies appear to offer a great deal. That’s why car rental agencies run insurance-related scams in the first place, to capture the attention of travelers and seduce them with low rental rates.

We gravitate toward car rental agencies with higher advertised rental rates because that’s often a sign that the car rental agency is being upfront and honest about its insurance inclusions. It’s usually the people who are lured in by low rental rates who end up paying the most for their rental car overall, after the surprise expense of additional mandatory insurance is factored in.

Costa Rica car rental scams: Beware of car categories and classes

Learn which model of vehicle you have reserved.

If you were dining at a restaurant and the waiter said the dish of the day was “meat,” would that be enough to sell you on the meal? Probably not, and for good reason: you want to know exactly what you’ll get before you commit to paying for it. The same theory applies to Costa Rica car rentals. The assumption that travelers are content to order a car according to its category or class, not its exact model, is another type of Costa Rica car rental scam.

In our opinion, categorizing offers without detailing them is the lazy man’s way of doing business. It leaves deals open-ended so companies can act according to what best suits them, not what best suits their consumers. With respect to Costa Rica car rental reservations, if you’ve only been guaranteed a vehicle within a particular category or class, car rental agencies can give you whichever vehicle they happen to have available within that category/class, including vehicles they’ve swapped in at the last minute to best suit inventory availability, and not necessarily the car you want or need for your trip.

Do the below vehicle categories/classes look familiar to you?

• Economy vehicle
• Compact vehicle
• Compact SUV vehicle
• Mid-size SUV vehicle
• Intermediate SUV vehicle
• Full-size SUV vehicle
• Premium SUV vehicle

You may have come across the above terms if you’ve started to research Costa Rica car rental options. Here’s our beef with them: If, for example, you reserve and pay for a vehicle in the “intermediate SUV vehicle” category/class and you receive a car model that actually falls within the lower-quality, less-expensive “mid-size SUV vehicle” category/class, how would you know? Since the breakdown of rental car categories/classes isn’t regulated, each car rental agency decides which vehicle models fall into each category/class. To make things worse, vehicle model categorization varies across car rental agencies in Costa Rica. A car considered an “intermediate SUV vehicle” by one agency could be defined as a “mid-size SUV vehicle” by another.

Avoid this Costa Rica car rental scam by reserving a car through a rental agency that advertises vehicle models, not vehicle categories and classes. These types of rental agencies can be hard to come by; more and more agencies, at least in Costa Rica, have turned to the use of vehicle categories/classes as opposed to vehicle models over the last decade so. Ideally, the rental agency you decide to rent through will confirm, in writing, the exact vehicle model of car that you’ll receive. If they won’t guarantee a particular model, get them to confirm, in writing, which car models in their fleet fall within the vehicle category/class you’ve reserved. This way, you can limit the range of vehicle models you’re guaranteed to get, and, if you’re given a different model when you pick up the car, you’ll have written proof that you were promised something different.

Watch out for “or similar” exclamations.

Don’t be fooled by phrases like “vehicle X, or similar”. The “or similar” add-on gives car rental agencies an out. The text can make or break your understanding of the actual vehicle you’ll end up with, not to mention the strength of your argument if you aren’t thrilled with the car you get. If your car rental quote or reservation includes the dreaded “or similar” words, follow our advice in the paragraph above and have the rental agency confirm, in writing, car which models in their fleet fall within the “or similar” realm.

Learn the year of the vehicle, as well as whether the year plays a role in car valuation and pricing.

When you discuss with a car rental agency which models are included in particular categories/classes, ask for the years of the vehicles. Doing so isn’t just smart practice to ensure you don’t receive an old junker, it’s an important step in understanding how car rental agencies assign value to their fleet.

We once rented a car through a Costa Rican rental agency that explained that they factor in the vehicle’s year when categorizing cars. According to that company, smaller and newer vehicles were valued higher and charged at higher rental rates than larger vehicles from a few years prior. Not all car rental agencies in Costa Rica operate according to the same valuation (some assign a higher value to larger vehicles with newer features despite being several years old), so it’s a good idea to ask how vehicles are ranked, so you can understand what you’re getting if you must commit to a category/class.

If you know the model of car you are renting, go one step further and ask for the license plate number.

After you have reserved your preferred car (or car category/class, if applicable), request a copy of the license plate number or vehicle number from the car rental agency. Several car rental agencies in Costa Rica won’t provide this information because they won’t decide which vehicle you’ll get until shortly before you pick it up (although not ideal, we don’t consider this practice to be a scam), but the information is worth asking for anyway. If you receive it, you’ll have a decreased chance of receiving a vehicle that isn’t up to par on the day you pick it up because the exact vehicle you receive will be prepped and ready for you. In other words, it will be less likely that you’ll receive a car that was either returned late by its previous renter (and may not have been properly serviced prior to you picking it up) or was borrowed at the last minute (and may actually be a car on loan from another rental agency due to overbooking).

Consider whether the vehicle’s model will affect your rental agreement’s fine print.

Rental cars in Costa Rica don’t just differ according to their make, model, size, and transmission type. The type of car you get can also change your rental agreement’s fine print. Some types of vehicles require additional insurance to be purchased or insurance to be sold at a higher rate, and in some cases, some types of vehicles don’t qualify for certain types of insurance. Though this information may not change your rental decision, it’s important to know ahead of time to avoid surprises at the rental counter the day you pick up the car.

Costa Rica car rental scams: Beware of previous vehicle damage

Upon picking up your rental car, you’ll probably be asked to walk around the vehicle, usually alongside a representative from the rental agency, to look for preexisting scratches, dents, and dings. If you aren’t invited to do this walk-around, make sure you ask for it, and if it isn’t allowed, insist on it. Also, make sure the representative accurately and sufficiently reports any preexisting damage on the rental agreement so there’s no debating you caused it during your time with the car. Some Costa Rica car rental agencies in Costa Rica will take photos of the vehicle as you inspect it, so there’s visual proof of the vehicle’s condition at the time you assume responsibility for it. If they don’t, and even if they do, you can snap your own shots for your own records.

It goes without saying that you should check for marks all around the body of the car, but don’t forget to check the bumper, tires, interior, trunk, roof, and safety kit (for missing parts) too. If you fail to spot and record something on the formal rental agreement, the car rental agency can hold you accountable for it later.

Costa Rica car rental scams: Beware of international vehicle rental agencies

More than half of the complaints that travelers make about Costa Rica car rental scams are against well-known international car rental companies. While we understand that many foreigners are drawn to highly recognizable brands, the fact is, international companies are less familiar with car rental operations in Costa Rica than local Costa Rican agencies.

A lot of the problems we see renters run into, especially problems that arise from suspiciously low rental quotes (as detailed at the start of this article), are the result of international rental companies not being aware of, or purposely omitting, costs that are mandatory in Costa Rica. Some domestic car rental agencies are guilty of the same, however, so unfortunately selecting a local Costa Rican company isn’t a foolproof way to avoid a scam. The takeaway here is that Costa Rica car rental scams are committed by both domestic and international rental agencies, so you could get scammed by either one. By committing time, effort, and attention to detail to the rental process, though, it’s possible to not get scammed by any.

Costa Rica car rental scams: Beware of the unpredictable

Though this isn’t common, we’ve heard of a few cases where a car rental agency didn’t have a car available despite there being a confirmed booking. Life is unpredictable, and in the car rental agency’s defense, sometimes problems occur that are beyond the agency’s control. Car accidents happen and cause delays, as do unforeseen travel circumstances that prevent renters from returning vehicles at the time and place the car agency expects. These problems, which may happen to the person who reserved your car the day or week before you did, can trickle down to affect your booking.

Vehicle rental agencies usually keep extra vehicles on hand to help manage problems like these when they do arise, although the supply may be limited or non-existent during the high season, and there’s no guarantee the supply will contain the model, category, or class of vehicle you want. To soften your disappointment, prepare yourself for the possibility that your car reservation could go awry and create a fallback plan in the event that it does. Even if you never need to use the plan, and we hope you don’t, knowing what you’ll do in a pinch, like contacting a different car rental agency or using a private transfer service or shared shuttle service to get to your first destination, will give you the peace of mind you need to know your trip won’t be ruined by bad luck.

12 best practices for avoiding car rental scams in Costa Rica

If you’re short on time, don’t fret! Below is a summary of 12 best practices, to help you avoid falling for a rental car scam in Costa Rica, or at least to help you increase your chances of having a positive car rental experience. Each suggestion below is described in greater detail above.

• Beware of low rental quotes.
• Ensure that the rental quote you receive reflects the final cost of the reservation.
• Pay special attention to whether the rental quote you receive includes all taxes and fees. 
• Make sure the rental quote you receive includes both parts of mandatory insurance.
• Reserve a car through a rental agency that either advertises vehicle models instead of vehicle categories and classes, or that can confirm, in writing, which car models among their fleet fall within each of their vehicle categories/classes.
• If the rental quote you receive includes a reference to “vehicle X, or similar”, have the rental agency confirm, in writing, car which models among their fleet fall within the “or similar” realm.
• Request a copy of the license plate number or the vehicle number from the rental agency.
• Know whether the type of car you rent has an impact on your rental agreement’s fine print.
• Walk around the vehicle before you sign for it to check the body of the car, the bumper, the tires, the interior, the trunk, the roof, and the safety kit for preexisting damage or missing parts.
• Ensure that the agency representative accurately and sufficiently reports on your rental agreement any preexisting damage.
• Acknowledge that avoiding rental car scams requires time, effort, and attention to detail on your part.
• Prepare for the possibility that your car reservation could go awry by creating a fallback plan in the unlikely event that it does.

Wondering if you should rent a car in Costa Rica or use other transportation to get around? Don’t miss our related blog post:

Renting A Car In Costa Rica: Should You Do It?

QUESTION TO COMMENT ON: Has your experience with car rental agencies in Costa Rica been positive or negative?

Pura vida!

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