Last updated September 25, 2026
Privacy
RateYourRentalCar is a public directory of rental-car reports. You can look up a car and leave a review without an account. This page says what that means for plates, VINs, and the other details the site stores.
Who runs the site
The operator of RateYourRentalCar publishes this website at www.rateyourrentalcar.com. Questions about this policy, or a request to correct or remove a review, go to hello@rateyourrentalcar.com.
What you can submit
A review does not ask for your name, phone number, or email. The form can include:
- The rental company
- A license plate and US state, or a vehicle identification number (VIN)
- Make and model, if you add them
- A rental date, a star rating, issue categories, and optional notes
- Photos, only when photo uploads are turned on for the site
If you open a review from an existing car page, the form is tied to that car. You do not re-enter the plate or VIN.
What other people can see
Reviews are public as soon as they are submitted. A car page shows the license plate and state, the rental company, the rating, the issues, the notes, and the rental date. Make and model appear when a reviewer supplied them on the first report for that car. Later reviews do not replace those vehicle details.
Car pages can be indexed by search engines. The sitemap lists car pages by an internal id, not by plate or VIN.
License plates and VINs
A plate and state are the way the next renter finds the car, so the full plate is shown on the car page.
A VIN is stored when a review includes one, or when the car was first filed by VIN. Public pages show only the last 6 characters. The full VIN is not placed in the page title or in the review link. We still keep the full VIN on the server so a later lookup can find the same car and so we can request a recall check.
Do not put a person’s name, phone number, address, or rental agreement number in the notes. The form is for the car, not for the renter.
Photos
Photo uploads are off unless the site operator enables them. When they are on, a review can include up to five images. Each file is checked against its actual image data and stored for display on that car’s page. Images are served from Cloudflare R2. They are meant to be viewed with the review, not as a private album.
Recall checks
When a car has a VIN, the server may send that VIN to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to decode the vehicle and to look up recall campaigns for that year, make, and model. We store the campaign list and show it on the car page. That list is not a statement that this specific VIN still needs a repair. The page links to NHTSA SaferCar for the official VIN check.
Technical data
The site does not use an advertising network and does not set an account cookie. New signups are not offered.
To slow automated lookups and review spam, we hash the network address of a request and count recent requests from that hash. The raw address is not written into the review. Those counter rows are deleted after about a day.
The host (Vercel) and the database (Neon) also keep their own connection and error logs, which can include a network address for a short time. We use those logs to run the site, not to build a marketing profile.
Older accounts
Sign-in was removed. A review submitted before that change may still show a display name and a contributor level that was earned on the old account. Those labels are not an identity check. New reviews are anonymous.
How long we keep it
A published review, its plate or VIN, and any stored recall result stay up so later renters can read them. Rate-limit counters are short-lived. If we remove a review, we remove it from the public page. A car page with no reviews left can remain so the plate can still be looked up.
Who else processes it
- Vercel hosts the website.
- Neon stores the database.
- Cloudflare R2 stores review photos when uploads are enabled.
- NHTSA receives a VIN only for a recall lookup, as described above.
We do not sell plate lists, reviews, or VINs. We do not share them with rental companies as a paid feed.
Children
The site is for adults renting cars. It is not directed at children, and reviews should not include information about a child.
Corrections and removal
Email hello@rateyourrentalcar.com with the car page URL and what is wrong. We can correct a vehicle detail that was stored in error or hide a review that is abusive, that includes someone’s private contact details, or that you can show you did not submit. We do not promise to take down a good-faith report of a car someone else drove just because a rental company disagrees with it.
Changes
If this policy changes, the date at the top of the page changes with it. The matching rules for what the public can see are also described in the terms.