I always wonder if its worth going cheaper or more expensive when renting cars. Stuff like this is interesting, I wonder how many other corners are cut at the cheaper places.
I live in downtown Toronto and don't own a car. I use car sharing for local needs, but the traditional car rental companies for when I need to leave the city. Enterprise has been consistently terrible. On multiple occasions I've had to wait hours past my scheduled pick-up time due to either understaffing, overbooking, and/or due to other events. Enterprise apparently has a deal with insurance companies where they loan cars after accidents. I once had to wait 12 hours for a car as they were over-booked due to accidents after a snow storm. One time I was rear-ended in an enterprise-rented car. The other person's insurance dealt with the damages, but 18 months later they called me up, demanding payment for the time the car was in the shop.
I used to rent from national/alamo as they would rent to me w/o mandatory extra insurance when I was under 25. They were bought out by enterprise and almost immediately went downhill.
Hertz has always had a car available when promised. I can also take the rentals across the border to the US w/o extra fees. Twice they had to upsize my car for whatever reasons and they gave me a discount to deal with the greater fuel consumption.
As somebody who is a loyal Hertz customer, I worry what the company will look like after the bankruptcy.
Also, great experiences with Hertz. I've rented through them in many countries and it's always been great service.
As for the article blaming their fleet for sticking with sedans for too long, to me as a European traveler, this is a feature. One time, I rented from a different company, which "generously" stuck me with some monster SUV, and I mostly hated the experience.
I also like sedans, particularly small ones that don't use much fuel. And all of the rental companies have sedans in their fleets. The issue is that they depreciate quickly because of Americans' preferences for trucks and SUVs.
I'm gonna make up some numbers here, but they illustrate the point. A Toyota Tacoma that costs $30,000 new might retain 75% of it's value after 3 years and 30,000 miles (these numbers are approximate). So you sell it for $22,500 and you take a $7,500 depreciation hit.
Meanwhile, an Hyundai Elantra that costs $21,000 retains 55% of it's value over that same period, so you can sell it for $11,500 and take a $9,450 depreciation hit.
As a general rule, trucks seem to retain their value very well, followed by SUVs and then sedans (at least in the US). Luxury sedans devalue the most.
The issue that Hertz had is that they bought a bunch of sedans and then the market preference shifted heavily to SUVs (with oil prices being low). So their initial calculations showed that they'd be able to sell their cars on the used market for price $X, but then they ended up being worth a lower amount, $Y, when consumer preferences shifted.
I can understand trucks retaining their value, as there is a clientele who drives them for utilitarian reasons (though not necessarily the ones who buy them new). I can understand why luxury sedans devalue quickly, as they are bought for prestige.
But it is not self evident to me why SUVs would have superior utilitarian value to regular sedans.
Crude oil was going for $113/barrel in 2014 (which is likely around the time that Hertz made the decision to buy sedans) and then went down to less than half of that a year later. While the price has fluctuated since then, the prices have remained fairly low. Meanwhile, Americans like SUVs for reasons that I don't fully understand, but it's just a fact. And when gasoline is cheap, it doesn't cost that much more to buy one, so demand is high, and therefore resale prices go up (at least compared to sedans).
But they're the only agency that actually rents cars I have any desire to drive.
I got a brand new full-size Volvo S90 sedan for what all the other agencies charge for a janky Corolla or something. And this wasn't a lucky upgrade scenario, they just had better cars at lower prices when booking.
The trunk on the Q60 wasn't big enough to hold all our luggage, the car required super-premium gas, it got crap gas mileage, and after the trip Hertz tried to bill me $150 for gas, even though I had paid the premium for a gas fill up at the end. I swore I would NEVER rent from Hertz again. I even cancelled a reservation I had with Dollar Rent-a-car when I discovered that they were owned by Hertz.
If I got a rental car that required premium gas, I'd still fill it with regular.
That being said, I hear you.
The only company that insisted on doing a personal credit pull for a rental that was being paid for on corporate card. And then declined me because "details didn't match". And then (initially) refused to refund my prepaid rental.
Enterprise on the other hand has always been a cakewalk for me.
Perhaps I'm thinking about this the wrong way. Oil changes cost next to nothing, the customer pays for fuel, everything from brakes to suspension components on down to wiper blades are irrelevant when they sell the cars before any of that stuff needs to be replaced. Maybe tires actually are their biggest wear item?
While you might generally not have to replace tires before, say, 30k miles, the tires on a rental car do not exactly live an easy life, and when you're talking about fleets going up to 50k miles, they'll absolutely be needing replacement.
It also makes me wonder if Dollar Thrifty was letting them get illegally low, or just below the Hertz standard.
With massive rental cars franchising you never know. Rental car is always a potential problem and should be treated as such.
Hence, the main property you should be looking for is how does the rental company manage problems. Starting from the rental garage (when you point to some issue like worn out tires) and throughout the road. Also it means you should make some trial and errors.