I had the exact same reaction. As I've said before, it sometimes surprises me that a travel article written by someone that clearly doesn't like travel gets published in a major publication. Whenever this happens, 90% of the time it's the same author. This guy clearly has the wrong job.

In looking at the specifics of this article, most of it seems to be nonsense. Regarding the infant seat issue, he goes on to say that it would be a big hassle for most parents to bring along their own car seat and that it's a great convenience to have the car rental agency provide it (hence why the charge for it), but then goes on to say that it should be done for free. The comparison to seat belts doesn't hold as seat belts are standard equipment in the car.

And, if he's just now getting around to figuring out that car rental companies charge more for younger drivers, he's been asleep at the switch for about 20 years.

There is one new kind of fee that I've noticed being charged for recently that wasn't there before and that I'd put in the category of nuisance, "just because" fees: rental "change fess" and "late return fees." I don't remember seeing those ever in the past. And by "late return fee" I don't mean the revised rate for returning a car later than the period for which you rented it (such as being charged for an extra hour if you rented the car for 24.5 hours on a one-day rental), but a surcharge fee for returning the car after the return time you specified at the time of rental.

Here's what I mean: the way it used to work for the major, top-tier rental agencies was that if your return date/time differed from your original plans, they'd simply adjust your rate accordingly upon return. In some rare cases, this might make the rate go up if you returned early, if you returned early enough so as to no longer qualify for weekend rate for example. But in most cases, the rate would only go up if it would have been higher to specify the new return time at the time of rental. For example, if you rented a car for 5 days and got the weekly rate because it was cheaper than 5 x the daily rate, then you could call them up and extend the rental to 6 or 7 days without a fee. Although the fine print usually says that you can keep the car for up to 4 extra days without calling them in advance, I would usually call them as a courtesy if I were to keep the car for more than one extra day. A few months ago when I did this, I noticed a $10 "rental change" fee on my bill, even though I had a weekly rate and the new return date was within a week. So, I decided at that point that I'd make no more courtesy calls in that situation. The next time it happened to me, I got a $10 "late return" fee in the same situation, so they got me either way! Going forward, any time I get a weekly rate, I'll just book the return to be exactly 1 week later than the rental, even if I plan to return early. I think it would be harder for them to justify an "early return" fee, and they'll have a less-reliable idea of when the car will come back.