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Comment by brtkdotse | Hacker News Reader

Every time I suggest “just rent a ICE for the edge case trips” people look at me like I’ve just kicked their dog

With the monetary and opportunity cost of renting (hassle, unpredictability, risk) it makes sense very very quickly to just own an ICE car for the predictable edge cases.

Have you rented a car recently? It’s a nightmare half the time.

In engineering I’d call that a high risk single point of failure.

There is no fundamental reason for car rental to be that awful.

App-based free floating rental cars (think e-scooters, but with actual cars) are ubiquitous in large German cities and work extremely well. There are usually several free cars within a 5 minute walking distance, and booking one takes less than 30s. You can even pre-book a car the day before, and the company will bring it close to your home (if necessary), and reserve it for you.

The classical rental car experience (AVIS and co.) is comically bad in comparison.

Avis was fine the 1 and only time I used it. Car was ready waiting for me in the parking lot. Just hop in they said. Keys inside. Quick check at the gate and that's it

But things could have gone wrong. Hassle was lurking around every corner.

Your own car also could break down.

Not sure about Germany but in London Zipcar are almost comically expensive. Basic Vauxhall Corsa for £85/day, plus an upfront joining fee. Pricing up a random week in Feb, I could rent a similar car from a traditional hire company for a whole week for less than £70.

What are you talking about? If car rental is your nightmare, you frankly haven't lived.

I rented a Toyota Rav for a road trip from Seattle the SW for 12 days. $700 plus fuel and done. That hyperbolic math you haven't done doesn't check out.

So you are telling me, that for a car with a 30k MSRP, instead of renting it once a year for 700$ for a road trip, I should purchase it outright... Because of unpredictability and risk? Millions of people rent cars every day. Maybe your hassle tolerance is infinitesimally low?

In engineering, I'd call it innumeracy.

The last time we rented a car, they refused to give us any car. We had paid over $400 already. There were no other rental options anywhere. My father had to drive 14 hours round trip to pick up my family.

But yeah, I’m sure renting cars is always just perfect and never a nightmare.

Why did they refuse? That makes it sound like they had cars but decided not to give you one, despite your pre-payment.

That’s precisely what they did. It was a one-way rental paid for on the Hertz website, and the local guy didn’t want to give up the car. So he refused.

When I called Hertz about it, they said they had no authority over the local agents. When I press them on it, they hung up on me.

There are definitely omitted parts to this story. We get it. Everyone does it. But this is definitely not the whole story.

Of course there are other parts to the story. But you have the salient facts.

What I'm pretty sure happened is that rental cars were in high demand for quite a while after Covid, and the local office didn't want to lose a car. (One way rental away from a small market, means there's not much of a chance of somebody delivering a car one-way back to that location anytime soon. So that means they have to pay to get a car shipped in from another market.) So they refused to give the car up.

If you want to hear the excuse the local agent originally gave it was that the rental was in my wife's name but the card it was paid for was my MIL's card. It was my wife who went in to get the car at first. But when both my wife and MIL went in to get the car, he still refused to give up the car, and stated that he wouldn't rent them a car.

So you can believe whatever you want about how I'm hiding things in the story. Believe me, if I spent the time to tell the whole story, it wouldn't reflect poorly on us, but only make Hertz look much, much worse.

Is it that hard to believe that a consumer had a bad experience with a rental company? I mean, seriously... have you ever watched Planes, Trains and Automobiles? It's only funny because so many people have experienced it. I'm not the only one in this thread citing a nightmare experience with a car rental.

A couple I am friends with tried to rent a car in NYC the day before Thanksgiving. Reserved a car online in advance, got to the rental place, only to be told that no vehicles were available. So instead of a car, they had to take the only form of transportation they could arrange at the last minute: the Megabus. Which is always fun with a small baby and luggage.

As I understand, theirs is a fairly common post-pandemic car rental experience.

> Have you rented a car recently? It’s a nightmare half the time.

I've run into this and it sucks. "all our cars are rented"

there are times when there are no cars.

Most of my car rental experiences are like that one Seinfeld episode. I reserve car X, and when I get there, they say they don't have car X (that they allowed me to reserve) but I can use car Y. Sometimes it doesn't matter at all, especially if they're going to pay for the gas. But it does bother me that I want a Honda Civic and walk out with a Dodge Charger or Ford F250.

> Have you rented a car recently? It’s a nightmare half the time.

I have never had a nightmare experience renting vehicles, and I do it fairly often. Perhaps I'm lucky.

It does decrease the amount of trips you take, to be fair. It doesn't have to, but it does.

Also, renting is a pain. I used to rent 6-10 times a year and about 50% of the time you'd get what you asked for, or had to run to an airport for better selection. I'd ask for a subcompact and they'd give me a van, vice versa...

Driving your own car is comfortable, especially if you have been driving it for a while. I especially want my car, that I know, on a long distance trip.

Especially now that UI design of cars has started to follow the experimental churn of the mobile phone industry instead of following most established designs everyone is familiar with.

Seriously, I am very surprised how resistant people are to it. When I was younger my dad had a big car and all year he would drive it by himself to work, but we ”needed” this big car once a year to go on family vacation and then filled that car to the brim for this one trip. It would have made so much more sense to just have a small commuter car for his daily commute and then just rent a gigantic car once a year for the family trip that could actually hold all our stuff.

Because for most people, the edge case trips are holiday ones. Which a lot of people tend to have at the same time: so try renting a vehicle when everyone needs one.

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