rental car company experiences
Filed under: xn--cnq77f.com
I'm a reporter for a national personal finance magazine working on a consumer-focused story about the rental car industry. I'm interested in hearing your experiences as frequent travelers in dealing with the rental car industry: what you've learned, tips for more novice travelers, and also anything you've learned about the industry that it doesn't tell its customers about. I am also going to be posting this in the other car rental miles forums, so I apologize ahead of time for any overlap. If you are interested in sharing your thoughts, I look forward to hearing from you; please email me at jmcgregor@hearst.com. Otherwise, thanks for reading.
A synopsis:
* No rental car companies provide great service consistently. Everyone has their own preferences, but I think Hertz earns a C+ in my book. National and Budget struggle to earn a C-, and everyone else gets an F as far as I'm concerned. (I give the nod to Hertz for rolling out 5-Star and Pres. Circle, read that board for more detail).
* Service varies widely from location to location and rental to rental. I mean WIDELY. Some locations are well-processized and efficient. Others are chaos, with customers waiting everywhere for cars. If you are a frequent traveler, you get to recognize this quickly and adjust your rentals accordingly.
* FF miles sometimes take forever to post. Sometimes they don't post at all. Calling customer service is sometimes helpful, sometimes not.
* Hertz and Budget (and maybe others) offer their own points, redeemable for free rentals and (in Budget's case) other stuff. If you are a frequent traveler, the agency's own points are usually more valuable than the FF miles they give you.
* Getting the lowest rate on a rental car is more art than science. You have to go to each agency website individually with an arsenal of corporate codes, discount codes, promotion IDs, coupon numbers, etc. and try a bunch of combinations of them to see what rate pops out. Travelocity, Orbitz, and Expedia searches NEVER yield the best rental car rate because the agencies themselves design their sites to require these codes that can only be entered manually.
You are welcome to email me if you have questions. Doing searches of these boards should answer most of your questions...
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