> Due to a vehicle shortage, the car rental agency offered him a van that he said reeked of cigarettes and marijuana instead of a compact car. Jimenez refused the malodorous van, and after a more than two-hour wait he settled for another van with more than 60,000 miles, visible body damage and a “musty odor” that seemed to come from the air conditioning system.
> A global microchip shortage that has cut production of new cars continues to deal a heavy blow to car rental companies
How is a car shortage an excuse for rental car agencies to act in this unacceptable manner?
If I reserve a specific kind of car, I expect that reserved car to be there. If there is a shortage, then do not make that particular car available on the booking portal.
This is like if you reserved a hotel room, and were put into a janitorial closet instead, with the excuse being that this was because of a wallpaper shortage. This is completely untenable conduct.
The difference from car rental vs a hotel room or an airplane seat is the fact the the company relies on the previous occupant to return the car on time, which often does not happen. If a person wants to extend a hotel reservation but the hotel is entirely sold out, they say "sorry, too bad." With a rental car people simply don't always bring them back, they pay the extra day fee or whatever, but the car simply isn't there to give to you. It does suck, of course, the best way to prevent this is to pre-pay. This will get you priority among everyone else waiting for cars to become available.
It's understandable if a reserved car occasionally isn't available because it was returned late, but it seems like most car rental companies don't even attempt to limit reservations based on their inventory. It seems like standard industry practice is to accept all reservations, then hope they can somehow come up with the cars, e.g. by borrowing cars from elsewhere.
The other day we were in a queue with ~20 families waiting for the cars they reserved, and it was clear none were available. Surely they didn't have that many late returns.
If there are some companies that do limit their reservations appropriately, I'd like to know their names please :)
You got a car though, right? Long line, waiting around, of course it sucks but this is meaningless without knowing where you were or the end result. 20 out of thousands (Orlando, Las Vegas)? Not unreasonable at all.
LAX area but it seemed like a small agency. They were processing around 3-4 customers per hour, presumably as returns came in. We got a car after ~2h, but lots of others gave up and left. Hypothetically if nobody gave up, I expect the line would have grown and grown until they eventually closed with a huge line of reservations they couldn't meet.
So you admit it was a small agency, in other words, next time stick with a Hertz, Avis, National, Alamo, etc. In any case you got a car after 2 hours. I'm not denying it sucks, especially with a family, but it happens. Ever had a flight delayed for 2 hours? Happens all the time.
Don't all those companies follow the same practice? I've used most of them and have issues all the time (though in most cases they have some car available, just not what I reserved).
> The difference from car rental vs a hotel room or an airplane seat is the fact the the company relies on the previous occupant to return the car on time, which often does not happen. If a person wants to extend a hotel reservation but the hotel is entirely sold out, they say "sorry, too bad." With a rental car people simply don't always bring them back, they pay the extra day fee or whatever, but the car simply isn't there to give to you.
If you don't want to vacate your plane seat or your hotel room, you don't just get to say you'll pay for another night or another flight. Why then is this allowed practice for car rentals? The late return fee should be proportionately high so as to very strongly dissuade this kind of behavior.
> Why then is this allowed practice for car rentals?
Because the car is a physical object whose entire purpose is for you to take it far away from the rental office.
> The late return fee should be proportionately high
Are you sure you want to advocate for large corporations to add additional, punitive fees to consumers? One day you might need to return a car late, you know, if someone in your party gets sick or something.
They already do charge a lot extra, still, some people pay it. The other part is there is no fixed time where everything switches over. Hotels have a fixed check-out time for everybody, doesn't matter if you checked in at 3pm the or 11pm. Cars work on a 24-hour schedule, if you rented the car in the evening, you can keep it till the evening. Sometimes people return them early, if they have a flight to catch or whatever, some people keep the car as long as possible. Usually this is managed just fine, but sure, occasionally, demand exceeds supply and the car isn't immediately available. Flights get delayed too, sometimes, perhaps you've noticed.
Rental car companies cannot control their inventory as well as we might hope. Sometimes cars are returned early. Sometimes late. Sometimes late and in need of maintenance. Sometimes people cancel. If the rental agency planned for these contingencies with additional inventory, that would just be extra cars lying around depreciating most of the time. I think we are to understand from their "untenable conduct" is that margins are too low to not be cleverly utilizing all of their inventory JIT-style, and nobody in their market segment wants to pay higher fees in exchange for a guaranteed vehicle model.
Depends. I wouldn't want to get slapped with a high fee if I were held up in traffic, I'd end up renting elsewhere. Also, I've heard that rental agencies often lend vehicles between one another, which could further complicate the issues that make capacity unreliable.
I agree that it's wrong for rental car companies to use the term "reserve" in this was, but it's by now standard practice. They absolutely do not have a physical car (or one of a set of a class of car) guaranteed to be available. Instead, they make statistical predictions; usually they do have the car, or at worse a nicer car that they will upgrade you to for free. But when there is a supply shock, all bets are off.
If I reserve something, I expect it to be there. Car rental companies should not be allowed to play the game of lying to consumers under the understanding that lying is "by now standard practice". This is what consumer protection laws are explicitly for. If a car rental company wants to 'play the odds' and say that they're likely, but not definitely, going to have a car available, then sure that's their prerogative, BUT then they should not be legally allowed to make it appear like you are actually reserving a vehicle that will be there...that is fraud.
Let's look at an analogy with even just the same object. Let's say I run a car dealership. 9 times out of 10 you get the car that I told you you're going to get. But every tenth time, I just happen to be out of stock because I didn't predict that a market could have shortages and didn't plan accordingly. In that instance, I then give you a completely different car than the one you thought you were buying, oh and this one also happens to reek of vomit and smoke. This would not in a million years be acceptable.
I think you, personally, have no right to complain because you know what "reserve" means in this context. Every single car rental company does this. If another consumer is misled because they honestly interpreted "reserve" literally, they might have a claim. But you and I would not.
It is not so much a problem as a simple reality that the cost of fulfilling every reservation exactly is (for example) 10x then it is worth fulfilling only 99% of reservations at a cost of 1x.
Car rental customers are not going to pay 10x to get that extra 1% of guarantee, and you simply will not see that type of car rental business exist. It simply is not economical to build enough redundancy for the 1% of the time there is a problem.
Of course, it also is not economical to build enough redundancy for multi year pandemic situations.
I’m just making assumptions, but the point is a sufficiently small number of people are being disappointed such that the business is still viable (shown by the fact that it stays in business even though they cannot guarantee every reservation).
Presumably the market is capable of coming close to the solution where people are willing to pay $x for a y% chance of having their needs meet, such that sufficient people will not pay $x+z to get a 100% chance of having their needs met.
Could the business not be 'viable' owing to the fact that there is simply no alternative? If the choice is between making a "reservation" that may or may not be available and between definitely not having a car, obviously everyone is going to pick the former, but that could be within bounds of 99% of those picking the former still being disappointed, just having no other option.
There have been many car rental companies for many decades competing with each other. If it were true that sufficient people were willing to pay for 100% reliability, then it stands to reason one of the car rental companies would have championed that guarantee and succeeded.
It is not like it was an unknown issue, having even been in the plot of one of the episodes of one of the most popular television show of the 90s.
Even today, there are 3 car rental companies, Enterprise, Avis, and Hertz, and any one has the option of offering a 100% guarantee, but they do not.
Hotels do not either. And neither do airlines. You can get walked to another hotel, or bumped to another flight (assuming you are not a VIP of some kind).
Which tells me guaranteeing the last 1% (or whatever small percentage of people that cannot be accommodated) is too costly and customers would rather save money instead of pay for the redundancies needed.
> A global microchip shortage that has cut production of new cars continues to deal a heavy blow to car rental companies
How is a car shortage an excuse for rental car agencies to act in this unacceptable manner?
If I reserve a specific kind of car, I expect that reserved car to be there. If there is a shortage, then do not make that particular car available on the booking portal.
This is like if you reserved a hotel room, and were put into a janitorial closet instead, with the excuse being that this was because of a wallpaper shortage. This is completely untenable conduct.