Car Rental Experience That “Hurts”

I usually rent from Enterprise, especially on personal trips, but on our recent Florida family vacation I used Hertz. Big mistake! Sure, I started with a nice $75 discount coupon compliments of my AAA membership, but when a traffic jam made us almost an hour late returning to the airport, we were mugged with bad-profit policies.

First, for the one extra hour we used the car, Hertz charged us 50% of the cost of an additional day. Wouldn’t 1/24th make more sense? Then it added on a charge of almost $75 because the tank on the Toyota sedan was only half full. The Hertz employee who checked us in was obviously embarrassed by these unreasonable fees when he handed us the bill—he warned us that the next time we rented from Hertz we should be sure to buy the protection policy that covers gasoline refills. I thought to myself that selling “protection” sounded more appropriate to organized crime than a car-rental business.

So what started out as a $75 savings was more than wiped out by overpriced gas refills and abusive late fees. These bad-profit polices not only managed to embarrass the front-line employee who had to give me the bad news, they managed to make a stressful experience (rushing to catch our plane) even more painful.

Sure, the accountants at Hertz must be pleased with the fee revenue they booked at my expense. And after all, don’t most of the other rental companies utilize similar dirty tricks in their pricing and fees? But I know one thing: the next time I rent a car for a family vacation, I won’t be going back to Hertz. Maybe there are a lot of people just like me—which would explain why Enterprise continues to gain share in the car rental business. And maybe there are a lot of employees who are embarrassed to implement fees and charges they consider unfair and abusive. That may be why companies addicted to bad profits find it so hard to attract and retain talent.

Oh, and by the way. I don’t feel particularly good about AAA either, given that it was that organization’s coupon that enticed me into this bad experience in the first place. I probably will not bother opening many more of the envelopes full of “bargains” AAA sends to our house. Bad profits hurt customers, employees, partners, and investors. That’s why they are BAD!!!