[rdl]

I rent from Hertz and Avis and Silvercar exclusively, and have elite status with each.

What I hate is when I get a car which is dirty, especially the side mirrors or glass in general (safety issue). I do not fucking want to have to wash the car when I get off a plane at 11pm to not have massive internal glare.

Insurance is only an issue for morons.

Counter lines are solved for elites.

Prices at Hertz and Avis are sometimes high, but not usually out of the realm of reasonableness for at least one of them.

Silvercar is the correct solution to all car rentals, but it's not in enough cities yet. Consistently "ok" prices (if a little high), great cars, great service. No need for anything other than this, IMO.

[JOHN_JOHN_JOHN]

"Elite" status is a slap in the face to all customers. If the rental company is capable of offering that level of service, then that level of service should be the norm, at the non-elite price, and available to all customers. Elite members shouldn't have to pay extra for it. And non-elite customers shouldn't be subjected to inferior service just because they don't have elite status.

[rdl]

Hertz Gold is pretty easy to get for free through various sources, or it's $50/yr or a minimum number of rentals. All it really means is you've substantially pre-registed so they can totally automate the pickup process, as they have your identity/license/etc. info on file.

[jordanpg]

Yes, well, we are stuck with capitalism.

[76357632477]

What do you mean by "Insurance is only an issue for morons."?

Not everyone who rents a vehicle is doing it while traveling. A lot of people living in cities only need a vehicle once or twice a year, for example. They don't own a car otherwise, and thus don't have insurance that may cover rental cars. And not all of them have a credit card that includes insurance, or if they do, it may not offer sufficient coverage.

[rdl]

If you rent infrequently and don't have a car or good credit card, just pay the $10. If you drive once a year, you're probably a sufficiently bad driver due to recent inexperience so you're getting underpriced coverage. (e.g. when I rented cars right after getting my first US license, with no experience driving on highways or in cities.)

If you rent frequently enough that you dislike the fee, and don't have a car/insurance, either get a real credit card, or you're probably doing it wrong.

[joshmangel]

@Ryan - I flew into LAX last week and went to try out Silver Car for the first time. I just needed a car for the day. Pickup was around 7 AM and I was going to be returning it the following day at 1 PM. The app quoted me $200 since it considered that a full two day rental ($89/day + fees). In my case, I wouldn't have opted in for the $28/day insurance either.

[rdl]

It's discounted 15% with FoundersCard and includes free tank of gas ($60 or so?). The "two days for 30h" thing is annoying with most car rentals. With Hertz elite you can get 4h grace period sometimes, and with a lot of them there's an hourly rate which is ~1/4 to 1/8 of the daily rate, but you're still possibly in for two days otherwise.

LAX and LAS are pretty cheap places to rent cars usually (from Avis/Hertz/etc.).

[zoltar92]

Ryan, thanks for your input! I was under the impression Silvercar required you to take a shuttle there, is this not the case anymore? Or maybe not an issue for you?

[rdl]

Many airports have shuttles anyway. I'm not Hertz Platinum or anything, so I don't have someone usually bringing my car to me -- it's a shuttle ride to the rental place, which tends to be close.

SFO has the airtrain/car pez dispenser, but I never need to rent a car at SFO.

[zoltar92]

So would being able to circumvent shuttles be a value add to you? Or insignificant because of relatively short time. What about the wait?

[rdl]

Hertz and Avis shuttles, at least, are frequent, and usually fast. It'd be a slight positive to get Hertz Platinum style "driver drives to curb with you car, gets out, you get in, and the delivery driver takes a shuttle back to base", but I don't think I'd pay much of a premium for that. Maybe $25 per rental, tops.

At airports with big on-site car vending machines, you're not going to generally be able to do that at any scale without being arrested, and you'll probably be inferior to my current experience of walking across to the car vending area gold stalls, going to the number which was emailed to me, picking up my car, and driving off.

It might be more of an issue at smaller airports with no onsite cars, or where at certain hours all the shuttles are infrequent.