wetrat0

Last year I used Thrifty Blue Chip for several leisure rentals, especially with their really great weekend rates. I was always greeted cordially and they had a reasonably nice car ready for me when I arrived (nothing exciting but never more than a year old or 20,000 miles). This weekend, I went to a station that I've been to before. Nothing was ready. I was sent to the counter to update my credit card. No attempt was made to expedite my processing versus the other customers who were not members of the loyalty program and had Hotwire, etc. They did not have the car assigned or ready to go. After waiting while the staff twiddled their thumbs, I was offered a Camry with 65,000 miles and covered in bird s***. I told the guy that if he could not do any better I would walk to National, to which he was utterly indifferent. So.. I walked to National, where I got a car with 65 miles (yes, a 1000-fold decrease) and needless to say had been through a car wash sometime in the last week.

I guess you could say I should have known better but I have had OK experiences with Thrifty before. But it seems like Thrifty is trying to follow the Spirit airlines model lately since being taken over by Hertz. At this point I would hesitate to use Hotwire for car rentals because they now have Dollar/Thrifty as an option.