Full Throttle Rentals

Full Throttle Rentals False rental damages, Tempe, Arizona

19th of Apr, 2011 by User346758

Do NOT rent from these guys. It wasn't until after our terrible experience that we found all the other bad reviews and BBB cases. We rented 2 jet skis for my friend's bachelor party weekend to take up to Bartlett lake. When we picked up the skis they did a routine inspection, taking some video with a handheld digital camera. The guy at the shop also warned us that they were loaded on the trailer wrong (with the two seater and the three seater needing to go on the opposite sides). He said to make sure when we load them back up at the dock to put them on the other way. We were experienced with towing jet skis and other watercraft and so we thought that was a silly request for them to make. However, when we got them back to our house to finish packing, we noticed that one of the cranks on the tandem ski trailer was only being held on by one of two necessary bolts. Easy enough to overlook during a quick inspection, but a major safety concern while towing. And they wanted us to reload the heavier three-seater onto this busted side of the trailer?? They also only provided us with one safety tie-down between the two skis. Without thinking much of it, we quickly used some of our own rope and tie-downs to secure the skis before towing them up to the lake. Once we got them there, the skis ran great. That is until one of our group members sucked up a section of boat rope into the intake that someone had left floating in the water. Thankfully he was barely at speed when this happened and he shut the ski off immediately. We towed it back to shore with our boat and put it back on the trailer to inspect. It was then that we took a closer look at the underside of the skis ourselves for the first time. Low and behold there was a huge chunk of damaged fiberglass on one side. We knew we hadn't caused that. It would have taken hitting a huge rock or log at speed to cause that kind of damage. We tried to pull out the stuck rope from the loose end, but it was pretty well wrapped around the driveshaft. Not wanting to let this ruin the rest of our weekend, we left the one ski on the trailer and continued using the good one. We were also sure that the pre-existing fiberglass damage would be on their video so we didn't even sweat it. When we went to return the skis, we pointed out the flaws with the trailer crank, explained the rope incident, and pointed out the fiberglass damage we had noticed. The guy who checked us back in was a pretty good sport and thanked us for pointing those things out. In regards to the rope getting stuck he said "don't worry it happens all the time, it isn't a big deal." We knew we hadn't caused any real damage to the engine or anything so again, we didn't sweat it. Then came the phone call from the owner the next day. He wanted us to pay$2400. When my buddy whose name was on the contract tried to explain again that we didn't cause any of that, he drove down there to see the pre-inspection video footage. Sure enough the girl they had doing the filming conveniently overlooked the underside of that particular ski. So they had no real evidence. After some more talking, the owner said he would settle for $1400 and claimed to have a video of the previous renter returning the ski in good condition. When we asked for a copy of that video file (we also wanted to check the file's creation date to see how old it was), he refused to give or send us a copy. It was then that we really realized we were being scammed and started doing some research on this guy and Full Throttle Rentals. We found a laundry list of complaints with similar stories and 12 different cases filed with the BBB. We're still trying to settle this mess and I will repost here with a conclusion once one is reached. Until then, I strongly advise everyone to stay away from Full Throttle Rentals. It's people and businesses like this that are single-handedly destroying what little is left of the watersports and recreation industries after this economic recession.

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