Category Archives for car rental.
I’ve seen some truly absurd travel add-ons, but this one might be the strangest: airport rental cars in Jacksonville tack on a mandatory $3 “security fee.” It’s an airport pass-through that’s separate from the rest of the required surcharges—another example of how rental car pricing gets sliced into junk line items that can quietly add 50% or more to the real cost.
A Florida driver was arrested and spent the night in jail after a traffic stop over a rental car’s license-plate frame partially covering the first “S” in “Sunshine State.” Police later released him and apologized, saying the statute’s vague wording led them to believe the frame was illegal
She rented the car from Enterprise, drove it for a week, and only then spotted the loaded gun under her 9-year-old’s seat — after already finding an ax beneath the driver’s. It turns out this isn’t even unusual.
An Uber driver told a passenger he was “too fat for my car,” then threatened to pull a gun — all caught on video. The clip’s been viewed over 27 million times and raises serious questions about size discrimination and driver rights.
An Avis Budget employee in Syracuse quietly turned the company’s cars into his own rental business — stealing 47 vehicles before anyone noticed. Police say the insider built a full “Carbnb” operation worth over $1 million before vanishing this summer.
Avis has a new service that lets you skip the bus to and from the airport rental center entirely, a concierge that delivers your car to you and that drives you back in the vehicle to the airport when you return it.
Make sure you’re stacking offers for the best deals on rideshare, and crediting your Lyft rides to either Alaska Airlines or to Bilt Rewards.
Advantage Rent A Car appears to be shutting down. The Las Vegas location apparently closed last week. Their flagship headquarters Orlando airport location closed yesterday. Franchise locations appear to still be open. A Dallas off-airport location also shows closed, and I’m hearing Denver as well. This was flagged to me by Jonathan of Autoslash which is both a great source of absolute best deals on car rentals and awareness for what’s going on in the industry. This is a scoop since it doesn’t appear the state of play of Advantage If a separate bankruptcy is filed (and for technical reasons it’s possible there wouldn’t need to be), it would be their fourth bankruptcy. A PACER search of the federal bankruptcy docket shows they haven’t filed a new one yet – just their May 2020 Chapter 11 case…
Hertz’s new AI system lets them go after 5 times as many customers as before. The rate at which they’re sending out bills is skyrocketing.
Now they scan cars as they’re being returned – vehicles drive through a camera‑and‑sensor tunnel and get an ‘MRI for vehicles’ to log damage in a way that rental staff never did before. It also finds hard to spot damage such as under the vehicle, uneven tire wear, hairline cracks in the windshield.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
