Avis - Has Avis lost the plot?

I have been using Avis for years and am a preferred member but recently they seem to have done some very odd things.

I travel to Aberdeen regualrly, normally for one night and justify a hire car on the basis that its normally comparable to getting a couple of taxi trips into town from the airport.

However this time around I checked teh rates about a week before travellign and got £50 pre paid or £120 if i went fully flexible. As I hadn't confirmed plans I didn't book tehre and then. 2 days before travellign I checked again and it had gone up to £120 regardless of prepay or not, then I checked a day later and it had gone down to £80.

In the end I couldnt justify the expense so I booked Eurocar through the company. that cost £35 and I got a better class of car!

I do like Avis and am willing to pay a prepium for service but this is insane

I use the UK Avis site for EU travel. Maybe the US site (use a discount code) will be better.

Thanks for raising your concerns. We always appreciate feedback from loyal customers, especially when they have suggested ways that we can improve our service. Your issue is one that many people may be familiar with; this year there were fewer cars available for customers to rent. This was true across many countries, not just the UK.

As you may have read, the car hire industry have tried to encourage customers to book early, and at Avis we have tried to do this by offering cheaper rates to customers who do so. As we move closer to the pick-up date we generally increase our prices as we sell out of cars. Occasionally we will drop prices where we don’t get the demand we were expecting, which may explain why on this occasion you saw the price drop. Another reason that may explain the price reduction is that from time to time we do offer promotional rates.

We have a few posts on our blog that further explain our pricing if you’re interested -
http://wetryharder.co.uk/?p=683

I hope this helps.

Lucy, Avis UK,
www.wetryharder.co.uk

Lucy
Thak you for your post.