Originally Posted by
flyerfmaz
It's not only true, it just gets worse. It seems that most of the car rental companies use archaic data processing systems that have little flexibility in making changes. Some months ago, I tried to get Enterprise to credit my National account for a rental instead of the Enterprise Plus, and it was so complicated it never happened. A couple of weeks ago, I contacted Hertz mid-rental when I discovered the wrong credit card was used for the reservation -- and there was nothing they could do to switch the card unless it was at the conclusion of the rental. And the list just goes on and on and on.
I'm not sure if the rental companies use outdated systems to their advantage, or if these are actually newer data processing systems programmed to behave like ancient mainframes. In any event, the issue you've raised is quite true and is pretty much across-the-board in the car rental industry.
Budget and Avis are the worst of the big chains with this. Their IT systems are a joke. Sometimes even just quoting a rental with a Wizard/Fastbreak number will triple the price without explanation if you are trying to use a discount code (it seems that the Wizard/FB profile sometimes overrides manually-entered discount codes), and they are incapable of adding the frequent renter number manually without repricing. Not sure if it's by design or incompetence. Maybe both. But basically, there is absolutely NO way to get a Wizard/Fastbreak number added to a rental--and we have even heard reports of the rate being kicked up if it is added at the rental counter. For Avis free weekend day credits, you may need to submit for retro-credit (not an issue with Budget as Fastbreak isn't a rewards program).
Hertz will usually add a Gold number, but they seem to have to manually recreate the reservation in their Gold system--your confirmation number will change, but the rate should stay the same as long as the agent knows what he/she is doing.
Dollar and Thrifty are the easiest when it comes to this. A quick call to their reservations line (or, even better, their onshore Internet Support line) will get the number applied to the existing reservation with no change in rate. This may change, though, as Dollar and Thrifty are transitioning their reservation systems over to Hertz's in the next month.
We don't have a lot of experience with Enterprise/Alamo/National.