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Comment by camhart | Hacker News Reader

I tried renting an EV from Hertz a couple months ago. I reserved a Model Y. They waited until the morning of to call me and tell me they didn't have one for me. Said they might have a model 3 (but not the model Y I reserved) 3-4 hours passed my reserved pickup time. I waited an hour or two, then found a model y on Turo that got the job done. Then Hertz tried to charged me for cancelling... they did fix that but I was furious when I saw it going pending on my card.

I'm going to avoid Hertz from here on out as much as possible. Especially if I want an EV. Perhaps the problem isn't Tesla, but Hertz. At least based on my experience, that's what it was.

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Rental agencies don't actually "rent specific cars" - they sell rentals at specific price points and fill those obligations with whatever they have laying around at the time.

Which is why it's almost best to just rent the lowest, cheapest thing, because they'll give you whatever they have.

This stops working when you need a particular aspect of whatever it is, especially if it's an aspect nobody really "cares" about - like whether it is EV.

Most people care it has enough seats, and enough luggage room. So a larger SUV works as well as a car for them.

My wife and I went to Kauai and specifically rented a Jeep so we could take it on some moderate trails to see waterfalls and whatnot. We were somewhat dismayed when we arrived and found we had been "upgraded" to a BMW X5 and there were no actual off-road vehicles available from the company. It was a nice car, for sure, but not what we had wanted.

IME rental car agreements prohibit taking them "off road" which might include tracks. No idea about US (EDIT not Japan) specifically.

> Japan

Nitpick: unless I just popped into an alternate timeline, Kauai is American [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kauai

Eh, my revisionist ideology mixed with late week tiredness... Caught red handed.

It's an understandable mistake, as I'm sure Kauai and other parts of Hawaii are kawaii.

I've never tried to take a rental truly off-road but I've definitely had them on very unpaved roads they probably shouldn't have been on. You can get true off-road vehicles in locales like Death Valley but they're very pricey compared to a standard rental.

Drive it like a rental and don't destroy it, and you get away with murder.

A lot of the "don't do this" rules on a rental are just so they can stick your insurance with the cost if you break it.

In reality, if the damage is very slight and the person checking them in doesn't want to do the paperwork, it's going to slide.

If you do drive off-road in a rental, wash it before returning it.

I've definitely had a number of minor scrapes etc. over decades and I've never once had an issue--though I've almost exclusively dealt with the larger companies for whom minor scrapes etc. are presumably considered normal.

... and sometimes they have no viable plan for having something close to what they've promised.

Not so long ago Ireserved a car, from a large national company, to go on a backpacking trip. I picked an early pickup window, so I would have time to drive a substantial distance, hike, and get to my desired stopping point before nightfall. I arrive at the rental place at 8a, and find that they're fully staffed but had only a a single large van available for rent. If I waited around until mid afternoon, I was told, _maybe_ something would show up. One of the staff told me that the prior week corporate had decided to open up that site even though there were no cars.

I'm surprised that Turo/Getaround/etc don't message more aggressively about "you'll actually get the car you want, when you want, which somehow most car rental companies think is unachievable."

Generally that's true, but Hertz specifically does have a few classes of vehicle that only contain one model, and they advertise those as something like "guaranteed make/model" / "reserve this exact car".

And while they do run out, most of the time you will receive what you booked, and at larger airport locations they'll typically substitute something close in size and nature to what you booked if they do run out of your specific class.

They never seem to have enough small cars in Europe. I'm fed up of being 'upgraded' to a crossover/SUV. I think it's worse with eg Enterprise because their fleet tends to reflect what people own, because they do so much crash/repairs business. But it happens with most of them

Which country? Had no issues getting small cars in France. Got a Fiat500 last time in France on Hertz. I suspect French rental cos like to "upgrade" the 1-way rentals to get rid of them due to unpopularity. Only time I got upgraded to an SUV (2-lane wide Jeep Compass) in France was on a 1-way.

UK mostly. And Spain, but it's been about a year since I rented there so maybe it's changed. Italy too. I've never rented in France

That’s true in most cases, but with Teslas and a few others they offer a “model guaranteed”.

See:

https://www.hertz.com/rentacar/vehicleguide/index.jsp?target...

>I'm going to avoid Hertz from here on out as much as possible.

Hertz having a history of unrepentantly reporting their customers as having stolen returned rental cars is another reason to avoid them.

The fact that CostcoTravel.com does not have Hertz as an option also tells me that Hertz is not a good business.

https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/local-news/i-team-investi...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/us/herbert-alford-hertz-l...

https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/hertz-false-arrest-cla...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2022/03/02/rental-car-h...

Hertz is bottom of the barrel. I pay a little extra to avoid them.

At least they called you. I traveled a lot this last fall and pretty much always reserved a hybrid with Avis because I was going to drive long distances. What I actually got at the counter most of the time was "let me see if we have any hybrids available" followed by receiving some random car that was not, in fact, a hybrid (and often as far as you can get from a fuel-efficient hybrid, a regular gas SUV).

> I'm going to avoid Hertz from here on out as much as possible.

This is good advice for everyone. Hertz is the company who likes to lose track of their cars and then call the police and report the car stolen by the person renting it. They're a truly shitty company, not worth the hassle.

Car rental companies generally don't guarantee specific models. Even if you select like a convertible Mustang, odds are they won't actually have it. They'll give you something that "meets or exceeds your reservation", like a chevy suburban.

Turo is much better if you need a specific vehicle. In Alaska, Hawaii, and Utah I've rented 4WD vehicles when I needed 4WD. They almost all still say in the contract that you're not allowed to take it off road. I always contact the renter ahead of time to make sure it's okay if I go on dirt mountain roads that need 4WD and I've always found someone who approves. I'd guess you can get what you want on Turo.

When renting Tesla's from Hertz its advertised as a guaranteed model.

While that's true, a guarantee like that is only as good as the penalties. There is no penalty for Hertz not giving you a specific model AFAIK. In reality with Hertz it means slighter-above-normal chance of getting that model.

Now if it were "exact model or your rental is free", that would be something to behold

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