I don't care if it's ethical or not but I often make duplicate car rental reservations. I can't remember the last time I had to rely on a back up reservation but I certainly needed it in TLV 2 weeks ago. Upon arriving at the Avis counter, all 3 counter agents were arguing with customers about discount codes. I had used A07400 for my reservation; a very commonly-used code that I have used more than 100 times over the past decade without any issues.

When it was my turn, I dealt with a rather unpleasant fella that interrogated me about the code and then flat out accused me of stealing from Avis for using the code. I simply asked if he was going to honor the reservation or not. He didn't answer me but started clacking on his keyboard and proceeded to tell me my rate would not be $504 instead of $177. I laughed at him and told him to cancel it. He seemed surprised as I walked away where those before me grudgingly paid whatever rate they were offered without a discount.

I went over to Hertz (ugh!) with my back up reservation and left with a car for $192. One other oddity in Israel, the rental car needed to have a 4-digit code (provided by the agent) entered into a keypad on the dashboard before the key would start the car. I've never seen this anywhere else in the world.