It is a lot more than that. I have spent last month doing quite a bit of sporadic rentals and it is a pain in the neck.

(a) pricing is not transparent what so ever. I can get estimated price but I cannot get the total out of the door price. It makes zero sense in 2018.

(b) i can never get a car that I am "ordering". I fail to understand why a Zipcar can do it, but neither Hertz nor Enterprise nor Budget can. If I'm getting an Tahoe, which is expensive which you claimed you have, I'm baffled why the barely coherent employee thinks that a minivan is a "similar vehicle".

(c) daily insurance scams - luckily it does not apply to me because $25/trip premium insurance via Amex is easy, automated and just pure awesome but oh my god people who do not know about it are just getting screwed.

(d) And finally... why is it that I still cannot search all the locations within a certain area for the cars and prices that I need? Why do I have to repeat the searches for the twenty Hertz in NYC when with a Zipcar or Maven i can just scroll through the map or get a list?

If rental car companies were to fix this 99% people like me won't be likely to use "peer-to-peer" because there's nothing worse than driving someone's non-standard, modified, coolant-gauge-may-not-actually-work car.

Can't agree more about (b). Last september around a long weekend here on the east coast of US, I had "booked" an SUV since I was planning a road trip with my extended family. In addition to booking it online, I had also called up the office a few days in advance to let them know that I will be picking up the car at 4 pm after my workday is done. When I reached there, I was offered a pickup truck and was told "cars are never guaranteed". I agreed to take any car that can take 5 people and even after that it took then 3 hours to arrange a mid-size sedan for me. What is the point of taking reservations if you cannot honor them? The model is seriously broken and in need of disruption.

If a car company guaranteed a specific vehicle, they'd probably have to charge a premium and have stricter cancellation policies (which most don't have at all now). With SUVs in particular, I find pricing is all over the map if you try to reserve one in advance and, as you say, it's not guaranteed. I find that I have the most luck just using National's Emerald Aisle which lets me pick the car I want when I get to the airport. But it's still not guaranteed--though I've always been able to get an SUV when I've wanted one.

I get the people cancel all the time and hence they need to account for it. But in this case I had specifically called them in advance that I will be there to pick up my car and they had confirmed with me that my reservation is good. They still couldn't come through after that.

I don't mind they holding on to my credit card when I make the reservation if by doing that they can guarantee a better quality of service.

It's fair to say that the majors (which are pretty much the only ones renting at airport locations) are optimized for the 95% use case. They work fine most of the time but, in my experience, are pretty much incapable of dealing with anything outside of the usual "system."

In addition to not being able to guarantee a specific vehicle--even with a deposit--I had an issue with Avis a few years back where they were utterly unable to extend a rental to bridge it to another reservation I had already made, i.e. they couldn't take two one week reservations with a week in between and turn it into a 3-week reservation.

Zipcar and Maven manage to do it just fine.

:) Almost 30 years later they still don't know how to "hold" a reservation

Thanks for this. Could you explain (c)? I don't understand what you mean.

Regarding the rest, it sounds like they got used to offering a poor service because they don't have enough competition or something. You might have a point there, but for a competitor to take advantage of that they just need to execute better on those points. They don't really need to source their cars from average Joes...

I'm not saying that Hertz isn't shit, I'm just saying that I don't understand how where the cars are sourced from is a real differentiating point. EDIT: I just re-read your last line and it seems you agree.

The "waivers" for coverage that one needs to get not to get sodomized in an event of an accident require one to be someone very familiar with all kinds of statues or spending nearly $70-$100 a day to be able to cover a premium sedan or above ( did you know that Impala is a premium sedan? )

No, credit card automatic policies do not cover even top 10 issues that you would have in event of an accident - they at most cover loss of revenue provision and some of the damage to the vehicle you are renting.

The only reasonable insurance that you can get is Amex premium insurance which is $25/trip (not a day) and covers everything.

Edit: Over years I tried Citi, HSBC, BOA, Chase and even CapOne "premium insurances" - they all were garbage with a list of exclusions longer than most of TOS policies on shady websites.

I feel like your original phrasing is a little ambiguous. To say they are a scam sounds like they are fraudulent, but they are not (as you clearly understand), they are in all but a handful of cases a necessity.

Of course they are scams:

It is illegal to sell insurance by non-licensed sales people - see Zenefits. It is illegal to claim that something is insurance or describe it as insurance when it is not. If paperwork says it is "waiver" but someone who makes me sign for it says it is "insurance" they are committing a crime and if a company actively encourages such behavior the company is engaging in a criminal activity

All I'm saying is if anyone reads this and is one day standing at a rental station considering the liability waiver and remembers someone referring it to a scam, they might wholesale dismiss it. People do it all the time because there seems to be a widespread belief that credit cards cover everything.

Insurance, waiver, whatever, it will save your ass if you purchase it when you need it and one should seriously understand whether they need it or not. It's that value that makes me question whether one should call it a scam.

Rental car companies always try to sell you liability coverage for accidents and damage for about $25/day. Almost every major credit card already includes the coverage for free, so when you opt into the rental coverage, you're needlessly paying a significant premium for something you likely already have.

This is not true. _Most_ cards do _not_ cover at fault general liability, most cover the damage to the car and that's usually secondary coverage, which is to say if you have insurance already, you will have to utilize that first in case a claim is required.

If you fall asleep and drive a car into a house or hit a pedestrian, you better have to have some third party liability coverage. If you have car insurance already you probably have this coverage, but if you don't... you don't.

This is a pretty complicated topic and I've done some deep dives into it and found it's not as clear cut as most people seem to believe. What kind of card you have matters, whether you have insurance already matters and even with both of those you need to understand what exactly is covered by who and when. If you don't have insurance you should always get liability. If you don't have insurance and rent a lot you should call up Progressive or National and request a quote for non-owner liability coverage.

What one shouldn't do is go around telling people to waive all coverage and that rental car insurance is a scam.

Rental companies will also hit you for "loss of use" while their damaged car is being repaired. This will likely be claimed at $hundreds/day. Most personal auto insurance and even many credit card liability plans will not cover this. I have a State Farm Visa for the sole reason that if I rent a car using that card I am fully covered including for loss of use.

> Rental companies will also hit you for "loss of use" while their damaged car is being repaired. This will likely be claimed at $hundreds/day.

This is much more than the cost to the consumer of renting the car. How can they possibly defend it?

Thank you for the correction. Unfortunately I can't edit my original comment to highlight that anymore. I've certainly always rented whilst having primary coverage from my normal auto insurance and so the distinction wasn't especially important for me. That said (and again, I was incorrect in my first post), some/many credit cards /do/ offer primary insurance coverage for rentals, and anyone renting a car should definitely take the time to check before getting to the rental counter!

Not really. Credit card coverage is secondary insurance, which means that your automotive liability insurance is the primary. Some cards offer primary coverage, usually for a fee or with a fee-based credit card.

That's problematic if you don't have insurance, or if you are in a risk category where some accident or damage to a vehicle will result in policy cancellation or a rate hike with your personal insurance. Some personal policies have different limits or gotchas for incidents related to business travel as well.

The other replies to your question seem to focus on insurance coverage via credit cards.

If you have a standard auto policy for a vehicle at home, you should also check whether it covers rentals. A lot of policies will cover you while driving "non-owned" vehicles for personal use with the same coverage limits/deductibles as your own vehicle.

We have to live in the world we have. We should strangle car sharing in its cradle because even after decades of mediocre service a competitor could come along and complete doesn't sound like a sound strategy.

> We have to live in the world we have. We should strangle car sharing in its cradle because even after decades of mediocre service a competitor could come along and complete doesn't sound like a sound strategy.

I don't think sarcasm helps having a productive conversation.

Also, straw-man: I wasn't arguing we should strangle anything.

Hertz actually owns cars and has to follow the law. The "startup" methodology is to shift everything to schmuck who owns the car.

Presumably, if the car owners can rent the cars for less than Hertz, and Hertz has the buying power and scale to buy and maintain thousands of cars for less money than you or I, these individual car owners are either eating costs due their own ignorance, or failing to do things like maintain them properly or follow the relevant law.

Hertz does not own cars. One of gazillion of Hertz affiliated companies owns cars that Hertz markets and rents to customers.

The marketing and rental process is stuck in the early nineties.

Hertz operates both Hertz-owned facilities (usually airport facilities) and franchised facilities (usually neighborhood facilities).

Hertz actually owns its cars, at least at its Hertz-owned facilities. http://ir.hertz.com/2014-11-14-Hertz-Announces-New-U-S-Renta...

Pop quiz:

which one do you think is hertz in NYS?

HERTZ LOCAL EDITION CORP.

HERTZ LOCAL EDITION TRANSPORTING, INC.

HERTZ MANAGEMENT & EQUITIES CORP.

HERTZ MARKETING, INC.

HERTZ NY LLC

HERTZ REALTY INC.

HERTZ SYSTEM, INC.

HERTZ TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

HERTZ TECHNOLOGY (DELAWARE)

HERTZ TRANSPORTING, INC.

HERTZ USA INC

HERTZ VAN LINES INC.

HERTZ VEHICLE FINANCING LLC

HERTZ VEHICLES LLC

Companies using different legal entities for risk or tax purposes is common in any area of business with lots of tangible assets. Whatever the Hertz holding company is, it controls everything. There's no meaningful comparison to a startup with random people owning title to cars.

Same thing when you walk into a CVS. "CVS Elm Street, LLC" isn't meaningfully distinguishable from CVS/Caremark, the parent.

They do this for liability purposes, not for tax purposes so it is exactly the same. The goal is to separate the revenue obtained from renting cars from the cars that are being rented so in event of a lawsuit the biggest assets (cars) are protected.

> Same thing when you walk into a CVS. "CVS Elm Street, LLC" isn't meaningfully distinguishable from CVS/Caremark, the parent.

Very very very different. What you are describing here is done for the tax purposes to segregate revenues subjected to different tax rules to guarantee that BlahTown which has one CVS in it and one CVS right outside of it cannot claim CVS needs to pay 1% on the sales done from a CVS outside of BlahTown.

Well, you just said it yourself, the average user doesn't see a difference. Turo and Hertz are providing the same service. Hence, Turo should be beholden to the same regulations as Hertz.

I mean, this just seems like common sense.

I imagine at airports Hertz and the like have quite a lot of overhead for a rental office, fees to work from the airport and the like. It would be hard for Hertz to get rid of that.

Having a commercial pickup/dropoff of cars occur where people stop to pick up grandma is certainly something airports can’t allow while at the same time charging the rental car companies big money to operate from the airport.

While very hard to address, it shouldn’t be harder to address than it is to address the problem of unlicensed taxis at airport arrival. And if the example from the article involved the person renting the car having to meet the renter at a McDonalds parking 5km from the airport, it wouldn’t sound as attractive.

Sure, that's true. The way I think of it is that the rental office cost is their cost of customer acquisition.

So the real advantage is that once you get an app install the first time you don't have to keep paying for new customers.

Which brings me back, shouldn't an app be something that Hertz should be working on in addition to everything else they've already done?

But the airport is also where most of the customers are.