Originally Posted by
ANC RED-EYE
Not my experience at all, though I haven't rented with them particularly recently. I live in ANC, and rented with them several times for work needs. Every time I had a National reservation with them (reserved full size for midsize rate), they literally asked me what I wanted, and/or gave me the choice among several options, always including upgraded options. One time my rental was during a rather significant storm and I had a long drive ahead of me. I requested something with AWD and they happily obliged. And no, my rentals were not often enough for them to recognize me as a regular - I got the impression that this is how they treated elites. YMMV.
I also had several Alamo reservations at this site (for personal reasons, when my personal vehicle was in the shop, etc). Alamo is serviced by the same employees, and my experiences on those rentals was as the OP described - I got the car class reserved (although even then they typically listed several options among which I was allowed to choose).
FWIW, up until about ~3 years ago (but my sense of time has been wildly skewed by COVID, so it could be a bit further back than that), Alamo/National at ANC was franchised (owned by Alaska Sales & Service, the local GM dealer). EHI corporate bought the franchise and has since merged back-end operations with Enterprise (don't know about front-end--haven't been in the ANC CONRAC since before COVID).