Category Archives for car rental.
Mike Johns was trying to get from Phoenix home to Los Angeles. He took a Waymo to the airport, only it wouldn’t stop looping around a parking lot instead of heading to the terminal.
You can rent someone’s car on Turo, as an alternative to renting from a company like Hertz or Avis. It’s not always as seamless a pickup at airports, but you’re renting a specific vehicle rather than a broad category. You can choose much nicer cars, or cheaper cars! Sometimes you’ll get a much better deal renting from a private party. And you can organize dropoffs at your hotel, too.
Yes, it was real. On Sunday I wrote about a Hertz customer being charged $10,000 for driving his rental car too much on a month-long, unlimited miles rental. And when he questioned the charge, he was threated with arrest.
A Hertz customer rented a car for a month and drove it 25,000 miles or about 800 miles per day which is genuinely impressive and might be some sort of world record. He had an unlimited miles rate, but Hertz was not happy – they were going to charge $10,000 miles for the excess driving.
Darren Lynn Bousman is the director of Saw II, Saw III, Saw IV, and several other horror films. So when he went to rent a car from Hertz – over Halloween week – well, you know where this story is going.
I’m not certain that bidding for a driver is a tip, exactly, since tips does not actually stand for ‘to insure prompt service’. But it’s just another way that Uber has lost the plot since picking Expedia’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi to run the business.
My hypothesis was that Uber seemed to be picking a higher price because I had credits in my account. I might be willing to spend more because my ‘real’ out of pocket cost was less, and those credits were trapped anyway.
I decided to use my Uber credits for Uber Eats instead. That pricing seemed normal.
Consumer group Travelers United has sued Avis Budget Group under the Washington, D.C. Consumer Protection Procedures Act for egregious junk fees charged on top of advertised rental car prices, characterizing the practice as “bait and switch” and “drip pricing.”
At the beginning of the year there was consternation over the ‘end date’ for Hertz benefits for Capital One’s suite of Venture cards. The Venture X card in particular offers Hertz Presidents Club status, while the Venture offers Five Star.
People keep renting cars from them. So here’s finally some advice on how to do so without ending up in jail as their next victim, or at least one way you may be able to see an early warning signal that this could happen to you.
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 »
