Last week at EWR, I rented from Hertz. I too was fairly horrified by the experience, mainly the price gouging aspect. While the service, in the sense of receiving and returning the car quickly, was fine, we ended up paying a ridiculous amount for the rental due to what I found to be bait-and-switch pricing and some deceptive smooth-talking by the woman at the counter. Not only that, but they wanted to charge us $13/day for a second driver (Mr. travelmad478), despite the fact that we’re married and living at the same address. Absolutely no other company I’ve used in years charges for that anymore. We declined, and I ended up driving the whole time (not a tragedy in this instance, but just annoying).

I rent almost exclusively through AutoSlash, and in rare cases Turo when pricing gets extreme with the mainstream car rental companies. I tend to view the big companies, kind of like legacy airlines, as all more or less the same from a service point of view, but I guess that’s not true these days.