So I get the fact that elites can always book a car with 24 hours notice, but what happens when a location is oversold and they have no cars available, despite the fact that you have a reservation (ala Seinfeld)? This has happened to me a couple of times in the past two years, such that I never pick up a week-end car at my downtown location on a Friday night anymore. Do they make sure that they always have a car set aside for elite reservations?
Availablility is based on vehicles on the ground, booked reservations and scheduled returns. Then, depending on the location the system is set to book 15% over your available fleet to compensate for "NO SHOWS" or cancellations, which inevitably occur. This is usually sufficient to ensure everyone gets a car without having tons of cars left over, although the fleet mix may be off. To answer your question, if someone has to get "bumped", it will be a non E/C member (even though they potentially could have booked weeks ago and the EE booked it with 24hrs notice and over rode the system sell out). We try to avoid bumping anyone but it does happen on occassion. The same people that usually complain they had to wait for a car, are the same ones that keep their car rental longer than originally booked and never bother to call the location so they can extend it. That's when a location usually runs into problems, when the scheduled returns dont return as scheduled, and dont call to extend.
Hope that helps.