Rental Cars

Time for the Car Rental post.

Yet again another industry that's suffering from consolidation, but overall that consolidation hasn't hurt the service as much as it has the airlines. At least not so far, and not from my perspective.

All I want from a rental car company is a clean, functioning vehicle that doesn't take me too long to pick up and return.

I've used the big 2, Hertz and Avis. I also use National quite a bit, and have experience with Enterprise, Alamo, Budget, and Dollar. But the majority of my experience has been with Avis and National.

If I'm correct (I could check to be sure, but don't care that much), Enterprise owns National and Alamo. Budget and Dollar have faded substantially, and seem to be disappearing from many airports.

Recent news reports about shoddy maintenance at some of the companies notwithstanding, I have never been stranded by a rental car breakdown.

Only once did I show up at my destination to find out Avis was out of cars; they'd had a weather event that slowed returns and stopped deliveries. I was pretty unhappy at first, but just had to hang out in the airport for a couple of hours until a delivery of cars arrived, then they gave me a premium vehicle for my trouble. So in the end, it wasn't too terrible.

The best experiences with rental cars are at airports where the cars can be picked up in the parking garage right across from the terminal. Smaller airports where they're parked in a lot right outside baggage claim are preferred as well.

But many big airports, especially those with an offsite rental car facility that can only be reached by bus, make the rental car pickup painful. Chalk up another reason I don't like the northeast - Philadelphia, Boston, Washington DC are the worst places in the country to have to pick up a rental car. In those airports, buses might not show up for 20 minutes, while renters crowd the sidewalk and fight for a space on the bus when it finally arrives.

In those cold-weather cities, returns often have to be made outside in the rain and snow, where returning rental customers shiver in the cold while waiting for the agent to finally get you checked in. Just my luck, when I've had to wait to be checked in the longest, the agent's likely to run out of paper on his little portable receipt printer or the battery will die. It's unspeakably irritating to have to go inside to check your car in after you've already been waiting in the cold for the agent.

The best situation I've found when on a longer-term project, where the rental agents get to know me. It seems that once they recognize me and begin to call me by name, I notice I get checked in a bit quicker, and they're more likely to give me a better upgrade. Another advantage of the smaller airports over the giant ones.

Like hotels but perhaps worse, government's favorite place to collect outrageous taxes and fees is the rental car. Just last week I was in Minneapolis, renting from the MSP airport. I got a pretty good deal on a full-size car for the week, only $205.

But wait, $205 is just the rental rate. When I returned the car, I was actually charged almost $290. The extra 80-plus dollars? Taxes and fees. Assessments from the state, the city, the airport authority, and I suppose everybody else who has a palm that needs greased. Legalized theft is the only way to describe a 40 percent tax rate. Because most of us renters are from out of state, so we can complain all we want, but we don't vote for the officials who dreamed up all those taxes and fees.

The best rental car experiences can be found at a limited number of airports around the country. In those places, you walk out of the terminal and into the garage, where you see your name on the board and walk up to your car, hop in and drive to the exit, show your drivers license to the guard, and you're off. The company automatically upgraded you to a nice vehicle that's clean, has no strong odors (neither cigarette smoke nor disgusting air fresheners), has some power on the interstate, and gets you around nicely and in relatively decent style. Then when you return to the garage, the agent's there at your door as soon as you park, scanning the bar code and giving you the receipt just as you've pulled your bags out of the trunk and are ready to walk into the terminal.

The best thing about renting cars is that best experience actually does happen now and then.