Originally Posted by
qs933
I'm a little more willing to cut National some slack on car availability. I'm sure it's much more difficult to manage inventory overall and between classes if what people are driving varies significantly from what they've reserved. For example, every time I've driven a premium on a full-size reservation, that's one less vehicle for the next renter, who may actually have a premium reservation, to choose from.
A couple rentals ago at a non-aisle location, I was offered a Honda Accord LX or Subaru Legacy on my Premium reservation. I was disappointed, but I think that comes with the territory with the flexibility that National offers.
Am not so much worried for National's other renters having one less "right" class vehicle to rent. National for years has had fleet problems which in turn feeds having to give *upgrades*. These often are nothing more than National honoring their promise to give any renter with a confirmed reservation *something*.
Case in point at least here in NYC gas prices heavily influence what persons rent. When it was up around or near $5/gal people reserved and wanted ECAR or CCAR. What did National have? Mostly ICAR, SCAR along with SUV's and minivans.
Most frequent renters from National/Alamo have long figured out they can reserve an econobox but likely will be given ICAR or above because of inventory issues.
National for years also had problems with locations counting expectant returns to fulfill booked rentals for the day. Well problem was many renters figured out they could keep their vehicle one, two or more days longer than booked not only for the same rate but otherwise suffer no other problems. For those who were credit card challenged and didn't want to put huge holds on their cards this worked out to having amounts equaling one day but keeping the car for much longer.
Meanwhile back at the ranch National locations now have to find a way to make up for the returns that didn't happen.