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John Cletheroe's
USA and Canada Holiday Hints |
Based on our own experiences, and purely in our opinion, some of the well known "up market" car rental companies such as Avis and Hertz tend to give rather less than friendly service to visitors from Britain since the majority of their clients are business travellers on company expense accounts who will accept any costs without thought. A customer who queries the bill and refuses upgrades and extra unnecessary insurance is looked down upon by many of these companies' sales clerks and treated in an unfriendly manner because the clerk won't get any commission.
The local office of one of these well known "up market" car rental companies in Spokane, Washington State refused to accept a car rental voucher one year, claiming that it could opt out of the national company scheme just because it felt like it, being a franchise (we did eventually receive compensation for this after a long battle).
In recent years we have found Alamo to be rather better at providing service to private customers. This company's sales clerks seem to understand that visitors from Britain are paying for the car rental out of their own pocket. When you refuse to take an upgrade or unnecessary insurance they will still persist with the hard sell for a while (as is the self-defeating company policy of course), but they will eventually give in with good grace once they realise that you know what you're talking about. We've generally found Alamo an extremely efficient organisation and their cars to be of a very high standard - we've been given brand new cars on several occasions. However, we have had quite a few problems with tyres, as can happen with any make of car.
However, when an Alamo rental car broke down a long way from their nearest depot, the Alamo agent I spoke to on the phone proved extremely awkward. He suggested sending a replacement car and had trouble comprehending that as their nearest depot was a six hour drive away this wasn't a viable option. Luckily the car broke down in a National Park and eventually a National Park ranger negotiating on our behalf with Alamo, the car's manufacturer, the local towing company and repair garage managed to persuade Alamo to behave in a reasonable manner and agree to a tow and repair - but not before having to go as far as threatening to impound the car. The damage done to Alamo's reputation amongst the staff at the Park through this incident was considerable. The fundamental problem, as with so many companies, was Alamo's use of some very low quality staff in their call centre, we concluded.
When hiring a car from Dollar in the USA, check whether you can take the car into Canada as we have heard reports of problems. There shouldn't be any problems in this respect with Avis, Hertz or Alamo but it is always wise to check.
Small local car rental firms may not provide sufficient inherent insurance cover to match the Top-Up Insurance. They also may not be able to provide adequate backup should you encounter any problems with the car a long way from their base.
The various systems advertised by car rental companies as speeding up the rental pickup procedure, such as Alamo's "DirectRoad", are purely marketing illusions and can be completely ignored when deciding which company to rent from. In reality there are no special "fast track" desks or automatic machines at car rental depots, at least as far as Alamo is concerned. However, filling in the DirectRoad form and returning it may result in you not having to supply your home address and phone number when picking up the car, saving you perhaps thirty seconds.
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EMail me Please note that I am not in the car rental business or the travel trade and I cannot provide any more information on car rental other than that presented here. Nor can I process any requests for quotations or reservations for car rental - these should be directed to car rental companies or travel agents.
Most recently modified 25-May-01