Originally Posted by
randix
Autoslash, I wince when I read your statement that National has inflated prices, and then you say, "hey, you get what you pay for". Sorry, although I agree with the former statement, the latter statement is not acceptable (to me) to give National my business regardless based on that oft repeated generic phrase. I'm not employed by a large corporate company offering a large expense bankroll that perhaps could allow me to just shrug the former statement off... as for Alamo, I use to be a very frequent user, almost never had an issue, but post COVID, their prices have been "reimagined" and never dip into the zone where I can rationalize it... so I unfortunately find myself with, and more often than not, without your (AutoSlash) assistance, finding those "pockets" of pricing and reliability that do work for me. In some cases that means reducing my length of rental and using alternative means, like Uber/Lyft. But I'm not at a point where someone tells me that XYZ is fantastic, but overpriced, but I should use them regardless... that mindset may work for you and others who can "afford" it either due to financial position, affiliations or "connections", but it doesn't work for most (of us), and I find it rather elitist coming from you, a company that makes a marketing thing of searching for the best prices, and then offering tracking if they drop. I still find your service of value (but not as much as in the past after your altercation with Hertz), but your quotes are filled with companies with the very lowest prices and not surprisingly the highest dissatisfaction, so if you really feel you "get what you pay for", why even give those companies a platform on your site and let those with less experience and knowledge, suffer the consequence?
We never said to use National regardless. We only said that their prices were very high but that in terms of service, they are at the top of the heap. We also don't think it's worth paying double or whatever, to rent with them over someone else, but to each his or her own.
As far as Alamo goes, everyone had their own experiences. We can tell you that our customers complete tens of thousands of rentals each year and we almost never hear of problems with Enterprise, National, or Alamo, and our own personal experiences are in line with this. If your personal experience doesn't track with this, we respect that. We're just providing an observation from our own perspective, albeit one that takes comes from a wealth of experience and feedback (and sometimes lack thereof which can also be instructive).
As far as your last question, if we removed every single company that we get complaints about, then the only companies that would be left in our quotes would be Enterprise, National, and Alamo. We provide star ratings for every company we offer. Some folks are on a budget, so if say, Easirent (a deep-discount brand with a questionable reputation) is $100 for a 4-day rental, and the next best company is say Thrifty for $250, then who are we to hide Easirent? Maybe the person requesting the quote wouldn't be able to rent at all since $250 is out of their budget. We believe in being as transparent as possible and leaving it to the customer to make an informed decision. Is that elitist?