roadsurfer Reviews 7,294

Terrible experience with Roadsurfer Bilbao.
We rented a camper van this summer and were treated very unfairly.
After returning the vehicle, the company blamed us for a dent we didn’t cause and charged €800 from our deposit, demanding another €400 without clear evidence of the damage. Jon, the guy working there was unprofessional and a total liar, complaining about the company during 3 hours (the te we waited for him)
They don’t reply to our messages or complaints, yet they keep sending payment letters.
We feel cheated and mistreated as customers.
Not recommended at all — a shameful experience that ruined part of our trip.

We rented a camper from Roadsurfer in early July and unfortunately had one problem after another. The vehicle was clearly not properly maintained — the navigation system didn’t work, the side door didn’t close properly (a serious safety concern), and we later discovered a major mechanical issue due to lack of oil maintenance.

The problems started before we even left: we were sent off without signing the mandatory contract, only to be called nearly an hour into our drive and told we had to turn back to sign it — a huge waste of time.

A few days into our trip, the camper broke down due to the oil issue. We spent hours by the side of the road, made over ten phone calls to different numbers, and waited more than three hours for a tow truck to arrive. The first mechanic did nothing to fix the problem, and we had to drive three more hours to another location for a full oil change. This entire ordeal cost us two full days of our 10-day holiday, forced us to stay in a hotel overnight, and completely disrupted our itinerary.

We submitted a claim to Roadsurfer the day we returned the vehicle, and despite repeated follow-ups (now over three months later), we have heard nothing back. We were told we would be reimbursed for the hotel and taxis, as well as compensated for the lost time — but still no response.

Overall, the customer service has been appalling. The lack of communication and accountability has been extremely disappointing. If anything goes wrong during your trip, be prepared for a stressful and time-consuming experience. I would not recommend Roadsurfer — save yourself the frustration.

We have used Roadsurfer 4 times (3 in France and I in Ireland). The first 3 were absolutely great. For the 4th time in France (September 2025) the van was dirty, all seats extremely soiled and I had to ask for the mattress to be changed as it had a huge stain in the middle. We were told 'sorry it's the end of the season. they will be cleaned afterwards’!! I asked to change the van for the same model and was told there was something wrong with all the rest. The electricity had shorted so we had to find and fix that in order to charge the vehicle, cupboard door handles were broken or dysfunctional, the cover for the water tank outside was damaged and repaired with tape, the outside step worked on and off, the oven was dirty. The function to close off the inside toilet was also broken leading to a dreadful odour in the van for a few hours. I was so disappointed and for the first time thought about using another company for our next trip. We told the guy who checked us back in but he seemed completely uninterested. Has Roadsurfer peaked or become too big?

This company is unethical and takes your money and does not deliver the van as it should be. They are happy to make sure they have your money and deposit on arrival to ensure you return the van but they don't take time to precheck the van before the next hire. They hand over a van that has issues. They are clearly more interested in the money, than the service. Try making a complain and you get nowhere. They are not interested in customer service and putting things right.

Whatever you do I would recommend that you do not rent a van from this company. The issues we had throughout our rental was awful and they did NOTHING. The toilet was full and blocked on pickup. The fridge was not working. The cooker was only working one side. The dirty water had not been emptied. The damp, pungent smell in the shower room never left for the whole time we had the van. They should be ashamed they take your money TELL you how they expect their van to be returned but they rent it out in that state. Try making a complaint and THEY ignore you.

great service, nice and practical car (roadhouse), friendly and helpfull staff.

DO NOT RENT HERE!!!!

Halfway through our trip our water stopped working, that's when we found out there is no support number to call and the issue would not get fixed. The worst part is that we opened a complaint to get in some way compensated and they have not answered for 3 MONTHS!

Could not have been a worst experience.

In case anyone wants to contact us to solve this our reservation number is 3257933873

We had a great time with a Roadsurfer campervan, we were very happy with the service and the company. Booking Reference: 3816465191

However and I'm only writing this to try and get a response from someone, anyone, We caused some damage to the vehicle we logged this as an accident report, we didnt hear anything back until mid September (Handed back mid august) requesting over 5000 euros, which is not only over the Excess but a lot more than we were expecting.

I have politely sent emails over the last three weeks to ask why as the excess i believed was 2200 euros so over 5000 is a lot more;

The email addresses I sent too
damage,
contact,
rent,

I have received nothing back, no response at all. You cant call, you cant email.

They had already refunded our 800 Euro security deposit?

They still owe us for expenses of 300 euros following an overnight stay due to van not being available for 36 hours which I actually thought they handled really well. Again cant contact them about this either.

I am hopeful that Roadsurfer may reply to an email if they see how ridiculous this is. I cant work out if there policy is to deliberately ignore customers after they have purchased as before booking and during they were great.

We had a great experience with roadsurfer! The camper was clean, well-equipped, and in perfect condition. The pickup and drop-off process was smooth and quick, and the staff was friendly and helpful. Everything went exactly as planned — highly recommended!

Really bad service on Roadsurfer San Francisco, waiting a lot and no one able to help us for the services we ask for ! We rent a bike rack and bed sheet and it took 3 hours to have them…

A QUICK UPDATE: After months of waiting to hear back on our request for compensation for the long clusterfu*k of issues we endured (detailed in the following review) we finally got an email offering us an $80 voucher for a future Roadsurfer adventure that we are never going to take.

What a piece of sh*t organization.

1. When we picked up our RV we discovered that our black water tanks was, according to Ryan and his flashlight, "about 1/3 full." I'm guessing the gray water tank was even fuller because our sink and shower started backing up the first morning...requiring us to find a spot to dump out way before we expected. Hard to imagine how this could happen since Roadsurfer goes to great lengths to explain the importance of returning the RV fully dumped out...even going so far as to threaten a $500 fee for transgressors...hard to understand why we had to take one that wasn't properly dumped out. But that was nothing compared to the inconvenience of...

2. Our first night we stayed at a pristine campsite that didn't have hookups and discovered that despite Ryan's assurance that the battery should provide power for a day or two our lights started dimming in 20 minutes and went out after 30, which meant that if we wanted lights and running water we had to turn on the engine or the generator.

3. The next day we called and after about 15 minutes of being on hold were connected with a customer service agent in Germany (???) who suggested that maybe the battery was in shutdown mode and that when we got to a site with shore power it should reset after about 30 minutes.

4. Sadly, that didn't work and so we came to the conclusion that we were stuck with a bad battery. Our customer service rep said we could choose to get the battery replaced ourselves on-route and then put in for reimbursement. We declined that opportunity, which meant that we had to cut short out trip by two night because the campsites we had booked didn't have hookups which meant we would be without running water and lights for those stays. Bummer.

Miscellaneous complaints...

Oh, and along the way we discovered that the main blind in seating area wouldn't stay up on it's own and had to be held in place by tape, the screw holding the tension cords on the left side kept falling out and had to be duct taped into place and one of the screws holding the table to the wall fell out which led us to discover that actually 5 of the screws were missing (which is why the table is so wobbly) requiring us to find a hardware store, purchase screws and fix it ourselves. Oh, and the fan above the stove doesn't work, which meant the smoke alarm would go off every time we cooked something, requiring is to remove it's battery, and the igniter on the stove didn't work at all...thankfully we brought a portable camp lighter. Oh...and the key that locks the trunk was bent and broken and it was pretty much impossible to lock the trunk without fear of snapping the key off in the process.

To sum up I would say that I hope our experience is an outlier...but it was still our experience and so felt it necessary to make this report so you know what's possible. Maybe our RV just fell through the cracks, or maybe the maintenance crew is just really sloppy at checking the vehicles over before renting them to the next customer. I mean...how hard can it be to run a basic battery-health check? How hard could it be to go through the unit and check things like the exhaust fan on the stove? How hard could it be to attend to know trouble spots like the blinds and the wobbly table and make sure all the screws are in place?

There were at least 15 RVs of the type we rented on the lot at the time we picked ours up. Hard to believe that ours was the most roadworthy...and yet that's the one we got.

And so that's the review Roadsurfer gets from me.

Roadsurfer is a rip off. Avoid !!! A few days before my one-month rental they changed the pick-up city. Flights were booked, I had to travel by train 100 Km with all my luggages to find a remote location in a hellhole where I was attacked by wild dogs. The van was dirty. 50 Km after driving the van, the Engine Alarm lit up. Staff told me: "go on with your trip it always happens with VW's". Then the tires were not pressured. Upon return, they agreed to pay back a uber ride to my original airport. I lost two days of my trip and had a really POOR experience in Italy. They never reimbursed me the money due. I have to sue them now.

Thank you Julia for the fast and correct car check. Very professional I highly recommend ;)

We had absolutely no issues with the van. Super comfortable and got us everywhere we needed to go. Everything was quite straightforward once we got the hang of it. The team for the drop off and pick up were friendly and made the drop off and pick up very smooth! Absolutely loved touring Switzerland and would use Roadsurfer again.

Avoid Roadsurfer USA — cancelled my booking 36 hours before pickup.

I booked months in advance and arrived in Denver to find my camper van cancelled at the last minute. The onsite agent confirmed this has happened to several customers. (Online reviews confirm as much)

No alternative was offered, no real support provided — just “read our terms and conditions.” My entire trip was jeopardized, and my €1,800 deposit had been held since March.

After escalation, customer service still refused to move a vehicle from an other depot or even for me to go to another depot to collect a vehicle to fulfil the booking.

This company promotes “adventure freedom,” but leaves people stranded. Think twice before trusting Roadsurfer USA or Roadsurfer Europe — especially for long-distance travel.

Unfortunately, I was given a non functioning campervan (the leisure battery was not charging when driving or plugged in). I guess that can happen, even tho I paid good money. But the worst was the road assistance or lack there of. I asked for a new campervan but was denied and was sent to a garage 1h from my location for nothing, then sent back to the station where I picked up the campervan (another 1h from the garage). The supposedly change the battery. When I asked to test it they said it worked. I told them I had trust issues and wanted to test it but the guy told me my trust issues were my problem, not his. I left to station and tried to catch up on my itinerary. The same night I knew something was off because the battery did not charge while driving. The next morning, even tho it was plugged in, the battery level had decreased. I called the road assistance again and they told me I had to come back to the station (again) to switch van. I told them I was not going back, because I had already lost 2 days of travel on a 7 days trip. They told me that they would not meet me for a switch. I asked them to call the station and talk to the guy who told me the battery was working. The station manager took pity and finally agreed to meet me near my location for a switch (again 1h from my location) on day 5 of my trip. Honestly, this experience drained me and I lost 4 days of travel because of the situation and really bad clientele service. I was woman travelling alone in a foreign country and this was a bad experience. The people of Scotland were very kind tho and helping all along while the company did nothing. The first man I talked to from road assistance ghosted me for 24h after sending me to a garage for nothing. I have everything in writing in my email account. I’ll see if I can post this.

The worst campervan/RV rental experience in my 15 years of renting sprinter-style RVs. Roadsurfer basically uses its customers to do the maintenance and cleaning of their vehicles and then says they'll reimburse receipts "IF the damage is not found to be the fault of the renter." - in 6-8 weeks after returning the vehicle! Their checkout process even says to wipe off insects from the front exterior! So when we picked up our Dodge "Liberty Lodge" it had clearly just been dropped off and nothing was done by the company besides adding the bedding and kitchen set. It was filthy inside and out, it only had a 3/4 tank of gas, the gray water hose was missing, the gray and fresh water tanks were 1/3 full, laminate and wall-paper was peeling off of the table and the walls, window blinds were dirty and just stuffed randomly in the overhead compartment, etc. And since we were so distracted with trying to address all those issues and waiting for the on-site attendant we failed to notice that the toilet was broken, the water pump wouldn't shut off, the awning didn't work, and the cabin batteries wouldn't hold a charge longer than one day simply running the refrigerator. To top it off, their website is a nightmare that redirects you into loops when you're trying to troubleshoot and report issues, guiding you to generic and unhelpful FAQs before you finally find the tiny "Contact" button. Then when you submit an issue you are typically replied to with a bunch of cut and pasted FAQs and given links to RV repair companies. There's no phone number or person you can talk to. I know there aren't a lot of great campervan/RV rental companies out there, but next time we'll either try our luck with Outdoorsy or hopefully there will be another competitor.

Booked a camper from this company for a week leading up to the 3rd of July from their office in El Segundo.

The staff on pick up and drop off were mostly great. Helpful, informative, and shy of a single issue couldn't be faulted.

After 3 days in a cabin in the Sierra Nevada's we headed to Tahoe for 2 nights, and on arrival discovered we hadn't be supplied a power cable, which caused some distress in our party, due to the stress, heat, and inability to use the air conditioning.

After contacting their online portal, we were advised to buy a power cable and Roadsurfer would reimburse us. (You can see where this is going). No where in South Tahoe had the type of cable required, so we spent the whole afternoon of our only full day in Lake Tahoe driving to Carson City in Nevada to buy a power cable so we could actually comfortably sleep.

The holiday continued and we returned to El Segundo to drop off on the 3rd July. Drop off was smooth and the staff were great, saw we had obviously taken care of the vehicle, apologised for the inconvenience, and released our deposit.

It was explained to us that we had a week to submit our receipts and issues and following that week, a claim handling would take place.

The website states that claims will be processed within 8 weeks (after the 1 week), and just after the 8 weeks expired we received notice that claims were currently taking up to 10 weeks.

In between this time I contacted Roadsurfer on the only operational phone number I could find (sales of course, as you would imagine), and later received a reply - and I might be paraphrasing - along the lines of:

"Please don't contact us again, that line's for people who are trying to give us money, not get their own back. We're dealing with it, we'll contact you."

As you can see by the dates, 12 weeks have now elapsed and I'm still out of pocket, won't get my day in Lake Tahoe back, and have the image of my nearest and dearest crying through stress in my mind as I write this. At this point, I'm resigned to believe they just don't care, and I'm not going to be made whole in this experience.

They'll give some completely unsurprising reason for this - an unusually high number of comlaints or something - but is it really that unusual if this is how your aftercare is?

To the staff in El Segundo, thanks for your pleasant service, and try and not take bad experiences from customers personally. Everyone makes mistakes.

To Roadsurfer complaints and customer service, thanks for f*** all. I don't like being repeatedly lied to, and I'd expect better efficiency of German founded company. If you're getting "unusually high" numbers of complaints, maybe change your practises.

To everyone else, by all means use them, the vans are decent, the shop staff are decent, just pray nothing goes wrong and you need aftercare. If my experience is anything to go by, you won't be getting it.

Good luck!

You feel completely powerless – the only thing left is to warn others:
It seems to be standard practice here to push maintenance and wear-and-tear costs onto customers. If you still decide to book: document absolutely everything when you pick up the vehicle. Every fly screen, every scratch. Don’t report anything at drop-off that you didn’t personally cause.

We made the mistake of being too honest and reported normal wear that we had actually improved rather than worsened. Instead of being thanked for our cooperation, we were hit with a €1,000 bill. Roadsurfer has everything watertight from a legal standpoint and showed zero willingness to even consider our side of the story. Since then, we’ve heard many similar accounts of this scheme from Roadsurfer.

On top of that, the service is completely depersonalized and doesn’t deserve to be called service at all. Absolutely disappointing. It used to be very different years ago. So, never again.

If you're thinking of renting a camper from Roadsurfer — don't. It was, without exaggeration, the worst travel experience we've ever had. From start to finish, Roadsurfer showed a complete lack of professionalism, reliability, and accountability.
We booked a camper for pickup in Las Vegas in May, scheduled for 10:00 AM. At the last minute, Roadsurfer changed our pickup time to 5:30 PM — without explanation or apology — costing us a full day of our trip. That alone should’ve been a red flag.
Then we drove to Zion Canyon, where temperatures at night dropped to 20°F, only to discover the heater didn’t work. We froze all night. Their so-called “emergency” line? Useless. No one answered. No weekend support. We were left to deal with it entirely on our own.
Two days later — after more radio silence — we were finally told to drive TWO HOURS out of our way to meet a repair technician in a Walmart parking lot. That detour, plus waiting for the repair and driving back, cost us another full day of our trip. To top it off, we had to pay out-of-pocket for the repair. Roadsurfer told us to “file a claim.”
And it still gets worse.
The grey water tank started leaking into the interior of the camper. Yes — dirty wastewater seeping inside the vehicle we were supposed to live in. At this point, we were just trying to hold the trip together — until the driver-side exterior mirror literally fell off while driving. We had to pull over, retrieve it from the road, and tape it back on with duct tape. That's how ridiculous things got.
We filed a detailed claim documenting every issue: the lost time, the unsafe conditions, the repair expenses, the sheer misery of it all. We included photos, receipts, and a timeline. After two vague replies ("we're looking into it") and five months of silence, Roadsurfer finally responded — to let us know they would reimburse us only for the heater repair. No apology. No compensation for the wasted days. No accountability for the nightmare they handed us on wheels.
This company is a complete disaster. Their equipment is poorly maintained, their communication is nonexistent, and their support system is a joke. Once you drive off the lot, you're on your own. If something goes wrong (and trust me, it will), don't expect help. Just expect stress, wasted time, and a ruined trip.
Roadsurfer shouldn't be in business. Avoid them at all costs.