I felt so honored by Hertz for inviting me (see below) into the President’s Circle (I’m guessing their equivalent of Avis First)…but the whole $450 “invitation fee” was such a buzzkill. Guess I’ll just stick to giving Avis my business since they already love me more than Hertz ever will (I am the biggest fan of Avis First ever…free upgrades to new Mustangs RULE!)

Some time ago, it seems that Avis quit giving out 5 iTunes songs per rental, and switched to eMusic. Obviously, there’s significantly less selection, but I got this lovely “explanation” from them today when searching for songs by Fergie:

Yeaaaah, I’m sure it’s because they’re popular and you want to keep independant music alive. It’s not that the labels won’t license to you…nooooo, bit that at all.

Ok, let’s take a look at the receipt:

The rental fee was $168 for 3 days…fair enough. And I get the taxes (granted, the airport and the state of Kentucky are bleeding renters, but it’s not like Avis has a choice on charging me this), but what I don’t get are the $5.48/day fee and the 9.89% fee.

The 9.89% fee seems to be a concession recovery fee…in other words, it’s a fee being charged  to help them pay for the cost of their location at the airport…uh, isn’t that what I’m paying for in the rental fee? Isn’t that why the rental fee is higher at say LAX than it is in Richmond, VA?

And the $5.48/day fee is even worse. According to the note there, it’s a property tax license recoupment fee…again, isn’t that, or shouldn’t that be included in the rental fee?

So, in total, the rental fee covers exactly what? Just the car? No way an intermediate class (Avis C-Class) costs them $58/day to have in inventory and staff costs…We’re paying for their taxes and infrastructure as seperate fees, so as to allow them to have a higher margin on their rental.

This strikes me that rental car companies have become like the airlines…fees for this, fees for that.

As M. Thénardier might say:

Charge ‘em for the lice
Extra for the mice
Two percent for looking in the mirror twice
Here a little slice
There a little cut
Three percent for sleeping with the window shut
When it comes to fixing prices
There are a lot of tricks he knows
How it all increases
All those bits and pieces
Jesus! It’s amazing how it grows!

(nod to Jackie Gleason)

God was it so fun to drive

So, imagine my pleasant surprise when I realized my latest rental from Avis was a 2007 FlexFuel Chevy Impala.

As I was walking to the back of the car, I saw this on the trunk:

And I thought it was pretty sweet that the rental agencies are starting to experiment with renewalable/non-petroleum fuel sources.

And in case you didn’t see the little medallion on the back of the trunk, you got this eye-opener of a gas cap:

Way to go Avis…definitely a step in the right direction!

So, as I’m travelling quite a bit now, I’ve decided to sign up for all of the hotel, air, and rental car frequent traveller programs I can. Most of the sign-up experiences have been nothing too spectacular, but I’d like to draw particular attention to Alamo and their Quicksilver program for particular scorn.

First off, go to the Alamo website (http://www.alamo.com) and try to find out about Quicksilver…did you find it? No, well, you have to click on Programs, then Business Programs, and then it lists as a benefit a free enrollment in Quicksilver.

Now, try to sign up for it…sorry, that’s a trick question, because you can’t sign up for it online! You have to email Customer Service, and then they email you back a PDF of the membership application. No. I’m. Not. Kidding.

Once you fill that out, you can either snail mail it back to them, or fax it…I chose to fax it in…a couple of weeks later (honestly, no more than usual), I got my enrollment package…which contained my spiffy new membership card…printed on perforated regular laser/copier paper, and not hard plastic like every. other. place. I had to take it to Kinko’s and pay for it to be laminated.

Honestly, it’s like they don’t even want to have a business/frequent rental program. That’s fine by me…I’m more than happy to give my business to another firm that wants it and is willing to make an investment in the program needed to keep frequent travelers happy.

So, looks like Avis is having a little customer service issue with their new eliete level renting program Avis First.

I qualified for Avis First a month ago based on rental days (35 paid rental days in a calendar year). After a couple of days past the qualifying rental, I went onto their site, and lo-and-behold my membership was still just Avis Preferred.  I wrote to the CSC email asking if I needed to do something to “activate” the Avis First, and they wrote me back that I hadn’t qualified yet, but when I did, I would automatically be upgraded. Curious, I went back to the site, and re-checked my sums, and yes, I did have 35 days.

So I called the Preferred Customer Service Department, and found out that the reason the system wasn’t picking up 5 of the days was I had used a different credit card for one of the rentals. The CSC keyed in the rental agreement, and had it get kicked back out to her…she placed me on hold, and then came back five minutes later saying that that rental wouldn’t count, because it had been overseas (in Ireland), and only US/Canada rentals will qualify.

Confused, I pulled up the Avis First Terms and Conditions and didn’t find mention of this restriction…in fact the qualifying conditions are listed as :

Member Qualifications
Membership is by invitation and a renter must have the following qualifications to be eligible:

• You must be in Preferred Service. (Check)
• In a calendar year, you must have 12 or more paid rentals or a cumulative rental day total of 35 or more days on one wizard number to qualify. (Check)
  
• All qualifying rentals must check in and check out in the same calendar year. (and check)

 As I pointed out there is obviously no mention of rentals needing to be only in the US or Canada. The very polite CSC apologized but said that the T&Cs she had access to did require the rentals to be in the US and Canada.

Undeterred, I set about emailing customer service, and after 10 emails, a variety of confused and contradictory responses, I was told I would be upgraded to Avis First, because the Irish rental would apply (after first being told it wouldn’t apply, because the Cork airport location is just a licensee…to which I pointed out that it has the shuttlebus, the exclusively Avis location, and all the trappings of a full-Avis branch, so how is that possibly a legit exclusion).

And yet, still nothing…until one day I logged in and noticed that I finally had made Avis First…the only drawback is that it was from another 5 days of US based rentals posting to my account.

Oh well, at least I got what I wanted…but Avis could try a little bit harder…because Hertz is giving away #1 Club Gold Memberships to AAdvantage Platinum members, and I hear they’re much better at customer service.