Originally Posted by
ginmqi
The way the agent explained was that my DL# is attached to my name/emerald club account. (When I signed up for EC in the first place and made my online profile) And that when I checkout at the gate, as long as my DL# is attached and when I hand the DL over at the checkout the computer will automatically associate the reservation/rental to my emerald club account and the benefits/perks will pop up even if I reserved it using a 3rd party website that could not tell national I was a EC member when I initially booked it.
I guess if someone doesn't put in their DL info then it could be an issue?......
Right, but at what point did your DL# get attached?
When you book without a frequent renter profile, all that's transmitted to the rental office is your name. (And maybe your phone number, depending on the booking source.) Unless you book with your EC number, the rental office has no further information about you other than your name.
You'd have to speak with someone at some point to add either your EC# or your DL#, I would think.
I'm actually wondering now if the agent you talked to at the counter actually did process your rental. You said it was less than one minute, but Odyssey (the computer system Alamo/National uses) is very fast and efficient, and someone who has worked there for a little while and knows what they're doing can easily rent a car to someone who already has a profile in the system in well less than a minute. It's literally type the DL# in, hit a couple of tabs and arrow keys to select the profile, and then hit tab a bunch of times to skip through all the pre-filled fields and then hit save to process the contract. And then for an EC member there's nothing to print, so it's like literally 10-15 seconds of work to save the contract and send you on the way. It's quite possible the agent did that without you really realizing he/she was actually opening a rental contract for you.