Enterprise adds 5000 hybrid cars to their rental fleet

by Scott Carmichael on

People are apparently not renting cars as often as they used to. But while some car rental firms are closing up shop, others are taking those lemons and making “green lemonade”.

Enterprise rent-a-car just announced a massive expansion to their hybrid rental fleet.

The chain is adding 5000 new hybrid vehicles, and expanding their “hybrid branch” lineup. Already, 27 Enterprise locations offer online and phone reservations of a hybrid vehicle, and that number is set to rise to 80 within a couple of months.

The Enterprise hybrid lineup offers the Ford Escape, Toyota Prius and the Toyota Camry.

Sadly, being green comes at a price. A regular airport rental with Enterprise (for a standard car) is about $30/day, but to protect the environment in a hybrid, you’ll pay about $70/day. Ouch.

Still, it’s nice to see a major rental company making a difference, and it is always great when customers at least have the option to rent green.

Budget program strains your budget

by Tom Johansmeyer on

We’re all turned on by the thought of getting free money in the mail, but you should be skeptical unless the tooth fairy delivers it personally. According to Upgrade:Travel Better, you should be wary of a new deal from Budget Rent-A-Car.

Sign the $10 check that you get from Budget, and you’re really joining a fee-laden membership program that will cost you much more. The best part? You’re giving the company that manages this program (Trilegiant) access to your credit card information. So, you know they’ll get paid. As you may have figured out by now, Trilegiant has a history of complaints about its billing practices.

If you believe in free money, sign the “check” immediately. If Trilegiant doesn’t take your money, someone else undoubtedly will.

[Via Wall Street Journal]

[Thanks, Dad]

Advantage Rent A Car is the next victim of the crappy economy

by Scott Carmichael on

The doom and gloom stories about our economy going down the toilet are starting to depress me.

The news from Advantage Rent A Car is no different – not only have people stopped buying cars, they obviously no longer rent them either.

The chain has 49 stores in the United States, and well over 100 overseas but the decline in rentals and the lack of available credit has forced them into Chapter 11.

The press release does not mention what the fate is of their international locations, but the Advantage.com website won’t let you reserve a car at any of their locations.

Customers with a rental car reservation will be assisted by Hertz who will honor “nearly all” the pending reservations. The Advantage locations at the following airport locations will remain open for normal business: Austin, Chicago Midway, Colorado Springs, Denver, El Paso, Houston, Orlando, Phoenix and Salt Lake City.

If you have an existing reservation with Advantage then you are advised to call 800-777-5500 or 80-777-5524 to be advised of the status of your reservation. Advantage does remind people currently using one of their rental cars that they will want them back as scheduled. The “consolidation” will affect 440 Advantage employees, I wish them the best of luck in finding a new job.

National Car renters: get free Executive Status

by Grant Martin on

[Disclaimer: I’m not really sure where this code came from, but am reading multiple reports that it works]

For those of you familiar with rental companies, you know that they give away memberships like candy. National Car’s “club” is called Emerald Access, whereby you put in your driver’s license and preferences online and get a membership number. If you’ve made a reservation, you can then just show up at your departure terminal, jump in a car, hand them your info on the way out and zip away before half of the other schlubs are even out of line.

It’s a pretty good system and I’ve been an Emerald Member for the last four years or so.

Like other hotel/airline/travel rewards programs, it takes a certain number of reservations or “nights” to reach the upper tiers of rental car redemptions. Once you reach those levels you can rent the nice Cadillacs or convertibles for no extra cost from a midsize rental — but it takes a long time to reach that status. In National’s case, the Executive Selection takes a fair dedication to renting cars and traveling, so is pretty much out of reach for even the casual business traveler like myself.

It looks like they released some sort of promo code that grants Executive Status though, and its been leaked around some of the travel forums. Using this link, you can put in your current Emerald number (which you can get for free if you don’t have one), fill in your information, click the link for “not switching companies” and you’ll automatically get upgraded.

Give it a try and see if it pans out. It worked for me.

Notes from Portugal: Hertz Hurts

by Iva Skoch on

There are some things to plan when you travel and some things that are best left unplanned if you want to really experience a place.

I don’t usually reserve a hotel, unless I’m arriving at night. I can always find one, and the searching makes for more interesting travel.

However, if you need a car once your flight lands, securing a reservation ahead of time is definitely the way to go. That not to say you can’t ultimately find a car somewhere, for some price, if you look really hard. (If you’re really out of sorts, you can almost always find car rentals off-airport, from hotel car desks, or rentals from smaller, local companies, if you keep looking. But, it can take time and effort, some riding around on buses or taxis, and can eat into your holiday time.)

But what if you’ve done your car-rental homework and you still get screwed? Welcome to Madrid airport and welcome to Hertz.

We secured our auto rental several months ago, confirmed the reservation recently, and printed out all the paperwork off the internet. When we got to the rental desk, they told us: sorry, your reservation has been canceled. By whom, we asked. We don’t know, we were told, the reservations center canceled it. Why, we asked. We don’t know, we were told. Ok, what are we going to do about a car, we asked. Please can we see the manager. Your reservation was canceled. (You can see where this is going.) Sir, we’re heading to Portugal. Tonight. We’ve got a 7.5 hour drive…which we’ll need a car to accomplish.

No apologies, no assistance, no explanation, no cars. Nothing.

All other airport rental agencies said: ‘no cars.’ (A variation: ‘no cars without reservation.’ The distinction became important.)

But perseverance paid off: we found an internet kiosk near a bank of phones, logged into the internet, and found that Europcar still had cars. We pulled out the credit card, made the reservation on the kiosk, went back down one flight of stairs to the counter.

Ah, a sea change had occurred. Sure, your car is ready. Right outside. Right now. Have fun.

My new rule upon landing at an airport: keep an eye out for internet access and keep tabs on where it is. You might need it.

Oh, and avoid Hertz Rent-a-car. In Madrid, at least.