Originally Posted by
coswellnc
Beginning in January, our company changed it preferred rental vendor from Budget to Hertz and now I am renting from Hertz almost every week for work and always select SAT Radio as an option on my rental. Recently (last 4 months or so) I have been assigned cars that say they have SAT Radio only to find out that the SAT Radio subscription in the car(s) I have been assigned have expired which forces me to go to the counter and have the car swapped. This has occurred on almost every rental I have had since June and in the case of BHM ORD, MCO and TPA I have had to swap cars up to three times to find one with a current SAT Radio subscription. In fact, in TPA I was assigned FOUR cars before I got one that had an active SAT Radio subscription. They finally gave me a Town Car with the Hertz SAT Radio Head because the counter rep said that unlike the Makes/Models with built in SAT Radio, the subscriptions of Hertz SAT Radio Heads never expire.
Does anyone at Hertz track the SAT Radio subscriptions in their cars to monitor when a car's SAT Radio is no longer active? Is there an address I can write to for complaints about this and would it make a difference? I would think Hertz would want this extra $5/day revenue, but I'm beginning to think no one at Hertz really cares. Sure, the counter staff is happy to play musical cars with me until they get me a car that has an active SAT Radio, but often times I find myself spending over an hour at the counter to get a car when I should be in and out in no time because of my #1 Gold Club Status. Will I get better service once my status updates to at least 5 Star next year based on my rental frequency?
This is a PITA. I always just call Hertz and get connected to the roadside assistance and have them contact XM and send a refresh code to the radio. You have to go to channel 1 and get the radio ID first. I used to call XM directly and they would refresh it as well, but twice I was told that the radio had been taken off of XM's circulation list and was no longer contracted and needed to be renewed by Hertz, if in fact the radio was in service. So I called Hertz and found out that Roadside Assistance is the department in charge of this. Just follow the prompts all the way until you get a human and they will be able to help you. Entire process takes about 20 minutes. I know, a PITA, but it works.