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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 »
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Either National or I’m not renting a car period
On the corruption, those guards should have remembered Snyder v. United States, 603 U.S. 1 (2024), where the court effectively legalized bribery, so long as you refer to it as a ‘gratuity’… *facepalm*
What Avis (and Hertz, although I think they’re a lost cause) need to do is make sure if a mistake does happen, it’s easy to resolve (I don’t know if Avis has problems fixing problems.. Hertz sure seems to.) And ideally have a better computer system with more reasonable defaults — I’m assuming they didn’t put in a starting mileage and it defaults to “0”, when of course a more sensible default would be the mileage the vehicle had when it was previously checked in.
Hmm.. $2000 for 40,000 miles? That’s only 5 cents a mile, not bad. LOL.
How do they know he didn’t drive 40,000 miles in five days?
@Christian — If my math is correct, he’d need to average 333 mph every second of those 5 days.
It is possible that it was an unlimited mileage rate but the $2,000 were in other coverage. If it is for mileage, he has a stronger case that he was not driving at 333 mph continuously for 5 days.
@derek — We don’t agree much, but at least we agree here. An ‘Infiniti SUV’ maximum speed is probably 120-140 mph. Nascar drivers rarely exceed 200 mph. Even the fastest Bugatti isn’t getting much higher than 300 mph. There’s no way.
Re Southwest- their employees are typically above average. However, all of the major changes being implemented all at once is going to place a lot of stress on customer facing staff. I would expect SWA staff to lose some of that renown cheerfulness pretty quickly.
Never, ever rent from Avis, Hertz or Enterprise.
I use Sixt.
And have never had a problem.
Ever.
YMMV.
@cairns — Sixt is pretty good, nearly everywhere.
Since your namesake is Australian, one of the more unsavory car hire experiences for me was actually at the Thrifty in Ayers Rock airport (AYQ). Back in 2015, when I was there, the rental terms seemed by-design to allot just less mileage than needed to get to Kata Tjuta and back, so inevitably resulting in penalties for many customers. It seemed there were multiple frustrated renters like myself upon vehicle return. The guy who worked at that time really there liked to fight with people. And it wasn’t just him, like, some of the people who live and work out there did not seem very happy at all. I get it. It’s the Outback. Hostile place, generally. Like, everything there can kill you. Extreme heat. So many sandflies. Deadly snakes. So, perhaps, they somewhat mirror the harshness of that environment. Or, it was just that guy at Thrifty. He was a real ‘c-word’, as the ‘blokes’ Down Under say more openly than we do in the States. Anyway, sorry about the tariffs.
@1990 – And they say satire is dead…
Amazing that people don’t take pictures of the car upon arrival to it, the fuel gauge or mileage.. just saying….
We take pictures every single time. And Australian rental car agencies are just as corrupt as any in the World.
FWIW Australia taxes imported cars like no other country in the World. 30 to 40% at a minimum. A $30,000 Toyota will cost you $60,000 down under. Don’t even think about a Porsche or Mercedes. $200,000 easy. Trump’s tariff’s are nothing to them.
IMO Sixt rules all over. In Europe, the US or Oceania.
@Christian — More like ‘SA-tire’ (as in, South Australia… and tires… like for cars… the subject of this post). Fine, that’s too eclectic.
One time, because I received an IATA agent discount, I used Avis. December, 2019, and at the time worked for the US largest business travel agency.
Worst car rental experience I’ve ever had. I am usually a National only renter, and haven’t rented Avis ever again. The smoothness in how they run Emerald Isle is worth it maybe being a bit more expensive.
I’ve only had trouble with Avis once.
In ATL they didn’t have enough attendees to check the car back in. They assured that it’ll be scanned back in, but two days later it was still shown as not returned.
Good thing is that their own app tracks that car and shows it as parked in their lot.
I had to be on the phone with customer care for a couple of hours to get that sorted.
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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 »

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