Theoretically, renting a car for rare long drives is a reasonable proposal. In practice, it's a PITA in most areas. You go to pick it up, the rental office is understaffed, so you wait 20-30 minutes or more. Then they spend time trying to upsell you on the car and insurance and fuel plans, and then tell you they don't have the actual car model you reserved but they have a [not really comparable] substitute. Then you have to spend time walking around the car, looking for dents and scratches so they don't get charged to you when you turn it in.
It would be more practical if it worked like on the TV ads where you just walk up to your car, get in, and go.
Throw in the risk of Hertz randomly charging your credit card $30,000 because they thought you stole the car.
Or they fancied some extra revenue and ding you for a bogus $500 scratch
Or they downgrade you but lie and say it’s actually an upgrade
Enterprise give me actual proper attitude when I decline their extra insurance. Their snotty 20 year old new recruits are all like “would you mind explaining why you’re declining?” in an aggressive tone
Enterprise also basically threaten you in to taking it. They mention they charge £1000 per piece of damage, reiterating this multiple times. They remind me of the mafia. I reminded the manager of my local branch that such intimidation is illegal
I rent cars approximately all the time (I live on an island, so when I go anywhere, it's by air, and except for NYC, I always get a car wherever I go). Maybe 20 rentals/yr, a few years it was 50+ rentals.
Any of the big company "frequent renter" programs, like National Emerald Aisle/Executive, Hertz #1, etc., gives all the stuff you want. Usually I'm at airport locations (which do have extra taxes/fees), but it's "walk up to car, walk around one time just to make sure there's nothing obviously wrong, get in, adjust mirrors, configure usbc/carplay, stop at booth where they take my drivers license and credit card, drive off". With National I get my pick of any car on the lot (and with a corp discount code, usually around $30-40/day all-in).
The local branches suck a little more due to limited selection and lack of cannelized check out, but they're pretty close. Also way worse at most non-US locations (with the exception of big gateway airports).
I've returned cars and aside from one time where I drove over a concrete curb at CDG which I couldn't see (sigh, at the airport itself, returning the car), and had to pay for damages, it's always been painless. One time I returned a car where thieves at Stanford had broken the rear glass, and at SFO they just said "oh, another one", and checked a box on the return form; everything was handled via email after that.
There are also day-rate car rentals through Uber and some other programs like that where you use an app, find car, and drive off.
I would have no problem relying on rental for the last 5% of car needs (e.g. if I had a 2 seater or something, or didn't want to get snow tires to go into the mountains, etc. The "get to the rental location" is the biggest friction, and in true emergency cases where I absolutely need a car right then, which is why I usually rent for the whole trip.
> With National I get my pick of any car on the lot (and with a corp discount code, usually around $30-40/day all-in).
When I fly and need a car I also use National to avoid the hassle of long lines and forms, just walk to the lot, pick a car get in and go, zero hassle. But this only works at airport locations so it is not a solution for the local use being discussed.
With local rentals I've never managed to get out in less than ~45 minutes of paperwork and waiting, it's a huge hassle.
Also as you'll know, with the Emerald Aisle the minimum class is midsize so there's a price premium for the convenience. Just got back from a trip yesterday using a National rental, $644 all-in for 6 days for the smallest car I can get on Emerald Aisle. Over $100/day. You must have a nice corp discount.
I live ~10m away from my territory's biggest airport so I guess I'm spoiled on local rentals that way. But I was mainly thinking about the long-distance road trip use case for a vehicle, in which case an hour+ trip to the airport to pick up the vehicle isn't necessarily unreasonable, either -- I've rented for weeks at a time, and if you're putting 300+ miles/day on a car, makes sense even if you own a comparable vehicle. If the 1-4 road trips/yr which exceed your EV's capabilities require an hour to set up for a road trip, might still be worth it, especially if the EV saves you time with HOV lane access every day.
(My favorite rental car option of all time was Silvercar -- they had a fleet of identical Audi A4 sedans, no-hassle app based rental, good for the time prices ($50-60/day), and zero hassle overall. Something happened and they became audiondemand and became vastly more expensive, though.)
This sounds like a very outdated view. I rent cars semi-frequently and the pick-up and drop-off are usually very fast if not nearly instant. This assumes you made the reservation online. I've had some annoyingly long waits in recent years but those have been exceptions and weren't really all that long, more just annoying.
I have the top tier of Avis loyalty program, almost exclusively on corporate rates, and even then arriving at SFO often results in a > 30 minute delay between arriving at the rental car centre and getting on the 101.
If you try to rent at an in-town location, forget about it, you're going to be dealing with someone who has spent a long time watching The Apprentice and thinks they know what business is about trying to sell you a 2008-era navigation system.
Just not my experience I guess. No upsells, never a 30 minutes wait. I haven't owned a car in 15 years so renting is pretty normal for me and almost always effortless.
I've rented cars on and off for ~15 years, my experience: there are certainly regional differences but renting has certainly got shittier and shitter over the years, perhaps skewed by my experience in Europe:
- Car class inflation (cheaper models, models being bumped up a category i.e. "Luxury" not actually being Luxury)
- Instead of raising prices sufficiently, they use 'damage' as a revenue stream more and more
- Reticence to give you a printed paper contracts, making it harder to inspect them.
- Far less thorough damage recording. It's like they just delete existing damage in the records at the beginning of the rental. I always get a blank damage sheet when I rent.
- Higher and higher mileage vehicles
- Bigger and bigger deposits and damage excess ("co-pay")
- Dynamic Currency Conversion scam
- Fuel recharge scam
This isn't just a post-pandemic cost-recovery thing. Renting was getting shittier in the years prior
It would be more practical if it worked like on the TV ads where you just walk up to your car, get in, and go.