The point is, who qualifies for Select & Go and how you figure that out is confusing. Avis says one thing but sometimes does another. They have signs saying you can use Select & Go if you reserved intermediate or higher, but they don't say what happens if you reserved lower then intermediate but got an upgrade to intermediate (or higher). Meanwhile, they sometimes send emails to people who reserved lower than intermediate which say "you car is in space X, if you don't like you can do an Exchange at Select & Go".

Unfortunately, at many locations now, there is no paperwork in your car, and if you don't go to the Preferred desk and ask, your next opportunity to find out whether there's a problem or not is when sitting in the exit lane with people behind you. Not the place I'd want to be to find out my Exchange is going to cost me $$$ extra.

Fortunately for me (but unfortunately for collecting data points), I have nor gotten a car I wanted to exchange since I find out that supposedly it's for intermediate reservations and higher only. So I don't have recent experience with Select & Go working with a lower-than-intermediate rental, nor have I read about such recent experience from anyone here in Avis forum.


... Meanwhile, before Select & Go was initiated (a few years ago), going to the Preferred desk and asking for a different car was the only method that Preferred members had available when they didn't like their assigned car. So I don't think of it as a "snub", I think of it as the always-available fallback. In fact, even today, not all locations have Select & Go, and those that don't, this is still the only method that Preferred members can use to switch cars.