Category Archives for car rental.
Avis wants $1,278 for a rental car dent, but its own photos allegedly do not show the damage — and the dispute site is down while the charge still looms. Plus: Air Transat flight attendants cannot use cannabis even off-duty, Delta Sky Club lines hit 30 minutes, and Minneapolis airport meetings can happen behind TSA.
Air Canada’s new Hertz partnership is unusually rewarding: Aeroplan members can earn points, Hertz elite status, and even credits toward Air Canada elite status from car rentals. The odd twist is that most members now earn more Aeroplan points renting from Hertz than they do flying Air Canada.
A rental car employee went viral after showing a car returned after hours with the windows left down in the rain — and a full plate of spaghetti sitting on the passenger seat. A $9,000 cleanup bill may sound inflated, but between water damage, stains, odor, remediation and loss of use, this is exactly the kind of after-hours return that can get expensive fast.
A woman at the Atlanta airport Avis Car Rental melts down when she rented car seats as an add-on for her “babies” but the car seats “do not function” and she’s trying to get help but the employee “reek[s] of marijuana.” She says to call her “Karen” but don’t tell her to calm down because she’s relying on Avis for her children’s “well being” and they “failed.”
Avis stock has quadrupled in just a month, not because the car rental business suddenly got better, but because the stock itself became dangerously scarce. Two large holders now effectively control more than 100% of the company through stock and swaps, leaving short sellers trapped in a market where the few shares left to buy back can be priced almost however the dominant owners want.
Uber has stumbled onto a much better rental car idea by letting customers skip the counter and shuttle bus and have a car delivered to them instead. The problem is that the service (1) short-changes drivers, so they become unreliable and (2) still rides on Avis – as a result delays, uncertainty, and support failures keep it from becoming the premium product the market needs.
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.
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 »
