National - How to get contact info?

I have a long term (5 month) rental coming up in which our corporate travel agency booked me a car at Hertz that is a little lower than what I booked myself with National using our corporate rate. I of course would love to use National instead because I'm Executive Elite, but I'm forced to go with the lowest rate.

I called the location directly several times and asked to speak to the manager to ask them to match the Hertz rate, but each call got me a different person claiming to be the manager and telling me that they don't have the ability to lower the rate in my reservation. I'm sure this is BS, but they insist that it is true.

I then called the Emerald line and asked them to give me the name and email for the actual general manager of the location, and I was told that there is no general manager, there are 4 'desk managers' and another 4 'station managers'. I said okay, give me the one of those that is in charge of all the others and was told they are all equals, and that no one 'outranks' any of the others. I know this is also BS since there is no organization in the world that could function with 8 bosses of equal authority.

Does anyone know how to get the contact info for the one person specifically in charge of a location?

That's not unusual; at DCA there are 4-5 different station managers on call during just the weekends, and they all appear to be of equal status.

Maybe someone in your corporate travel agency has relevant contact info? Other than that, you can ask for district manager info.

Is there anyway you can rent from Enterprise instead? You still can get free days and Status for Emerald Club.

I have found that Enterprise are willing to negotiate on rates; I tell them my budget for a rental and they make it happen. Especially for a 5 month rental. I do work for a large company, but even on personal rentals I can often get better than posted rates if I call them up and see what they can do.

Just a thought...

Are you saying that Enterprise rentals will earn Emerald credits just like a National rental?

So if you rent for >85 days with Enterprise you will earn Emerald Exexutive Elite?

How is this possible?

Have a look at the detailed rules for Emerald Club. The addition of Enterprise earning generated a long thread.

https://www.nationalcar.com/national/pdfs/nationalEC-ProgramRulesAndConditions-effective-010612_v3.pdf

Have a look at the detailed rules for Emerald Club. The addition of Enterprise earning generated a long thread.

https://www.nationalcar.com/national/pdfs/nationalEC-ProgramRulesAndConditions-effective-010612_v3.pdf

Wow, that's great. Now I have to re-think my whole plan. Of course I've always gotten horrible cars from Enterprise, so it might not be worth it.

Yes, sometimes you can get less than amazing vehicles with Enterprise, but I think that holds true for every company.

Call them ahead of time and tell them your situation and see if they can hold a good car for you (low mileage, something you like). Enterprise will actually do things like this, if you give them a call. IME they generally do care about the customer; but it obviously depends on location. You are probably going to get better service at a local station than an airport, but once again that likely depends on the location.

I had enough rentals with Enterprise last year that it got me a bunch of free days with National, which I am taking advantage of this year - so could be worth the hassle of a single phone call to see what they can do for rates and car choice.

Good luck with that.

Yes, sometimes you can get less than amazing vehicles with Enterprise, but I think that holds true for every company.


Enterprise is a whole different class of bad. While I can only recommend actually visiting the location prior to rental to find the right point of contact, I can tell you unequivocally that a large location usually has a corporate liason in charge of long-term/corp rentals. And they absolutely have the power to adjust a prior reservation. Its called a "MODRATE", or modified rate. I had this for a couple of years straight from 2006-2008, when the agreed upon corp rate between my company and the location that didn't want to lose my long term business, yet the reservation system wouldn't allow for that rate to be entered. In effect, the rate was modified at the end of each month, upon re-up for the next monthly RA.