Hertz - Hertz sold out in Orlando Feb 15-20. Suggestions?

Both Hertz.com and the Gold reservations # are telling me that Hertz is sold out of cars in Orlando on President's Day weekend. Any ideas on how to get around this issue as I would definitely prefer to rent with Hertz rather than switching to another company. Anyone I can call or email as a 5-Star member?

Update: As an alternative, I have reservations at Dollar ($200.66 w/tax economy using CD#RM111,on-airport location) and Thrifty ($208.79 w/tax econ using WMRT code, off-airport location). Hotwire suggests a minimum of $68/day so the Hotwire/Priceline route doesn't seem promising.

Thanks!

I have worked for 3 of Hertz' biggest customers - who supposedly have guaranteed car availability. But at the #1 gold desk - when it says sold out, they are sold out. Escalating to supervisors and managers and threats of calling corporate travel coordinators has never worked.

What has worked for me is showing up at the counter with my President's Circle/5 Star car (depending on what I had at the time) and asking about cancellations/special accomodation. This has been successful twice - once in SFO and once in ATL.

I usually reserve Avis as a backup.

There are a couple of other threads here about the rental car shortage that's been going on in Florida since about hurricane season...perhaps PM some of those other renters and see what they ended up doing? They might have some ideas as to where the cars are - if anywhere.

I was in MCO in December - I did the same thing you did: called up and down the food chain within Hertz (from local office to the Gold desk). They simply said that a vast portion of their MCO fleet was on long-lease to insurance adjusters, aid agencies, the federal/state government, etc. and they might not have 'em all back until Spring. They said they've even had to turn away President's Circle members: there simply aren't any cars, even though they've been bringing 'em in from other states for some time now.

Anyway: for my December rental - I was able to book a car at a Budget neighborhood location about 7 miles from MCO. Then...last minute...I scored a car from Alamo in the airport and canceled the Budget rental. I even called Hertz directly on the day of the rental: still nothing. Sounds like you already have a decent option with Dollar: just keep checking and working the discount codes between now and then to see if anything better shows up.

I also had trouble getting decent rates from the major (in-terminal) rental agencies for that same weekend...http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=388677

Finally found an acceptable rate...midsize car from Alamo (base rate $43/day) through American Express Platinum Travel. Next best, National Car Rental at $52/day thru National's website (can't recall if I logged into the Emerald Club webpage for this rate).

I am one of those people who have been working in Florida since the hurricanes last year and "hogging" all the rental cars out of MCO. The FEMA Disaster Field Office (DFO) is in Orlando, so pretty much every FEMA/contractor person initially has to go through Orlando and rents their car from MCO, and then drives to wherever they need to go in Florida. Everytime I go to the DFO, the parking lot pretty much resembles a large rental car lot.

Anyway, a suggestion to the OP, PRS:

If you can't get a rental for the exact dates you want, try making a reservation for a rental that goes one or two days beyond your preferred return date (or however many you need to extend for the system to accept your rental). I've found that a lot of the times, when they won't rent for 2 days, they will rent for 3-4 days that will include the original 2 days that you couldn't rent. Same for hotels. I don't know why, maybe this is a way for the system to give preference to longer-term renters/hotel guests. And then if you return early, I believe you only pay for the days you kept the car.

Another thing. I just checked Hertz website and they seem to have rentals available for Feb 15-20, so you might want to check again (but not for rentals starting 2/16, 2/17, 2/18, or 2/19 to end on 2/20; if you want one of those rental start dates, you have to delay your rental return date)