I’ve rented a lot of cars, and from almost every agency. I once worked for a company that would pick up rental cars for foreign employees working for us on long-term loan — we had a mini-fleet parked outside. And I used to negotiate contracts with Hertz and the like. It’s been years since I handled a corporate account, but I still rent cars frequently for family trips. I thought I’d use a rental for a weekend trip to Salem, Mass., so I could put my car in the shop for some maintenance.
I stopped by the local Enterprise in Annapolis, Md., and said, “I’m going to Massachusetts for the weekend.”
The rental guy says, “It won’t come with unlimited mileage because Massachusetts is outside a certain range.”
“What?” My conversation with him appears below.
“If you rent in Md., you get the surrounding states with unlimited mileage, but if you’re taking it beyond a certain range, you get only so many miles per day, and then you pay extra over that.”
(We’ll ignore the possibility for now that I would rent the car and then surreptitiously drive it out of the state range on the ‘surrounding’ states unlimited mileage option — not that I would do that because there would be hell to pay if say, I got in an accident — but if someone did that and nothing exceptional happened, how would they know?)
“Huh? I’ve rented from Enterprise before and taken the car from Maryland to the Keys, on unlimited mileage, of course.”
“Well, you can still get unlimited mileage from the airport location.”
“Why would that be? Those are the people that least need unlimited mileage. They’re flying in from a great distance and then using the car locally.”
Then he tries to convince me that a lot of people fly hundreds or thousands of miles only to hop into a car and drive HUNDREDS more, instead of, say, flying to an airport closer to the location they’re driving to. (Maybe a few, a definite minority, but not A LOT).
“People don’t usually do that, trust me. They just pick a closer airport.”
He doesn’t address that, but goes on to claim:
“The extra cost is because of the time the car is out of service because, you know, if it goes that many miles, they have to service it. And we lose money while it’s out of service.”
(We’ll ignore for the moment that many rental cars I’ve had seemed to have been serviced last when Henry Ford was still around).
“Well, that might sound good to you, but how does that work? I mean, after all, I could drive the car in Maryland 1,000 miles in two days (which I’ve done), does that mean because it was still in the surrounding area, they won’t tag it to be serviced?”
Not waiting for his moronic answer, I continue, “If I rent the car for two days, two days is two days, why do you care if I rack up the 900 or more miles in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia (all allowed under the local unlimited mileage option, plus Del., Pa., N.J., and N.Y.), or in Massachusetts?
Didn’t have an answer to that one.
In fact, it sounded suspiciously like it was ONLY Massachusetts that was invoking the ‘long distance’ non-unlimited mileage fees, like maybe they were just inventing reasons to charge people more.
They wouldn’t do that, would they?
Yes, they would, and its troubling because many wouldn’t understand all the ramifications of this policy. The policy is for suckers. In mentioning this to someone else, there was at least one point they missed.
Say I rent the car to go to Massachusetts, it’s not like I really get unlimited mileage driving through Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and then bang, I hit the border of Mass. and the meter starts rolling.
You see, if I really got unlimited mileage in the surrounding states, as the guy inferred in his explanation, that’s what would happen. BUT they have no way of discerning that and charging me ONLY for the more than 200 miles a day I log in Mass.
So in effect, if you get charged for anything over 200 miles a day when you take it out of the surrounding states, you’re really getting charged ANYTIME you take it over 200 miles. So in two days, in reality, I’d get 400 free miles and then have to pay for anything over that. Even if I didn’t make any side trips, according to MapQuest my destination is 884 miles, so I’d get hit for mileage on 484 of those, surely a steep bill.
This is another example of a policy that’s just dumb. It’s prone to misunderstanding, which is poor customer relations, and it seems predatory given most of folks I’ve explained it to don’t initially understand and think they’re paying only for the excessive mileage within Mass.
Rental companies have the right to charge whatever they want, just as I have the right to walk out. That’s what I did.
