Hertz - What are the odds of this happening, very strange!

I have been renting a blue Alpha 156 from Hertz at Marble Arch in London this week.

On Thursday night I was staying at a Holiday Inn in Bristol, when I got up on Friday morning I found another Alpha 156 parked next to mine. This one was charcoal grey but otherwise identical, when I walked around the back it had one letter different on the number plate (mine was WV05 UEE and it was WV05 UEW or something similar). Not only that, when I looked inside it had one of those yellow Hertz, excess stickers on the dash too!

I rent a lot of Hertz cars but what is the chance that one of the next cars of the production line will end up at the same hotel as mine! :confused:

Phill

The odds are pretty good. Basically it is the same as the liklihood that the same model car from the same rental facility would wind up at your hotel.

This is because the facility likely received their year's allocation of that model all at one time. And registered them at once.

The similarity in license number indicates that the cars were registered at the same time, not manufactured (although that was likely true as well).

I see Same color Hertz Tauruses and Camries park at my hotel' and my client's parking lots all the time.

I had it happen with me in London just last month, with a Volvo V70 wagon.

This current trip (picked up a car at Gatwick 10 days ago) I spotted a car I had back in January...

Steve

I have several instances where three of my team members have all had the same silver blah Taurus. Once, two of them swapped cars without knowing, and only found out once they got to the hotel and checked the trunk and it was not their bag!

I picked up a Mazda 6 in PHF with PA tags. I was driving back from New Jersey and I see another Mazda 6 with PA tags that is one off from mine. I thought this was pretty weird.

I've definitely encountered a lot of kissing-cousin Tauri in client parking lots. Sometimes when we were working in Schaumburg, I'd have to walk around the lot, amongst a field of green Tauri, clicking the key until my green Taurus barked back at me.

There's just something so...Schaumburg...about that experience.

I almost thought about renting a Buick from Avis once, but that seemed way too rebellious at the time...a total loose-cannon thing to do. ;)

About 3 weeks ago I rented a Taurus at Grand Rapids and got upgraded to a Jaguar that had been stranded there by someone who'd done a one-way rental from Detroit. It was kind of a memorable car -- a beautiful red paint job, nearly white leather interior, and the world's most rusted Michigan license plate (and that's saying something). They made a big deal about at the counter about letting me have it (it was their only NL car left) since they were apparently supposed to be "saving" it somehow for someone to take it one-way back to Detroit. Well, the other day I was in Grand Rapids again having reserved a Taurus, and, lo and behold, landed my butt in the same Jaguar again. Not that the rusted license plate affected how much I enjoyed the car, mind you...

;)

Years ago we owned a Honda Civic. One day I came out of work, unlocked my car with my key (yup, it was in the old days), got in, and turned on the car... only to realize that the seat was awfully close to the steering wheel.

Then I realized that it wasn't my car at all.

Fancy that.