Everything went very smooth

The originally booked SUV was not available and was downgraded. When we got the keys and entered the car, the safety lock was broken, which was unsafe especially for children. We switched to a second car, only to find the air conditioning blew out hot air. After much hassle, we switched to a third downgraded car, wasting nearly 2 hours (from the original 1 PM to nearly 3 PM). In a hurry, we took the third downgraded car, but soon discovered it had no GPS and not even a USB port. During our 4-day Melbourne trip, we had to navigate with 3 phones taking turns. We couldn’t listen to music or take photos to save battery for navigation. Charging phones became our top priority every night at the hotel, or we couldn’t use the phones for navigation the next day. In desperation, we bought a car USB port, which didn’t work in the car but worked fine in a friend’s car, proving the car port was broken. Terrible service!!!

Staff are all Chinese and communication in Mandarin is smooth. They provide driving training for beginners before renting, which is commendable. However, they gave us a downgraded Chinese-made seven-seater car with poor performance and high fuel consumption. The fuel tank was almost empty at handover. It's really baffling why a Chinese-run rental company doesn't follow international standards (foreign rental companies usually hand over cars with a full tank and upgrade if the same class is unavailable).

Car was dirty and the guys objected initially to my request for the car to be sanitised

Efficient and friendly counter-staff. No hidden extras.

Maybe for AUCars to have a fixed meeting spot for the shuttle. The text just had a number to call. The problem was the heavy accent of the person I called and I called them in the noisey environment of the airport. Maybe in the text nominate the meet spot. The shuttle also needed to be identified maybe two magnetic signs in door of shuttle. Other than that rental was great and staff at AU cars were courteous.