Actually, I did date the sister of an employee at PDX. But I wasn't at avis at the time.

One thing to remember, you take the good with the bad. If you want the lincolns and Cadi upgrades, you gotta deal with the occasional mommy wagon too. You have to understand how things work at these locations. 6-8am, there are often huge preferred hours. If a location has 200 stalls, and your preferred reservations for a single hour are 110-120, someones getting a van baybee! i know. Many people say "I rent 35 cars a year!@#@!#!" arguement, but so everyone knows, we have a way of verifying that, rather quickly and 9 times out of 10 the perrson complaining has less than 4 rentals in 24months on their profile. Regardless, when the contracts spit out, its all timing. I have advocated in the past to have people use flight numbers of earlier flights in making reservations. Preferred rentals are usually brought up 1-2 hours in advance and kept on the "BIG BOARD" flashing and pointing for at least two hours after arrival. That bieng the case, saavy renters can find a flight that lands an hour before their flight and usually finds better success in car selection and cars bieng ready (with the exception of some locations that do not pull up until your confirmed on the bus-per some posterrs here, LAX is one of them.).

The agents will do their best to minimize the issue. If you have a reservation for 3 hours, your chances of getting the Van or the 3 headed stepchild are good.

And anyone who comes in and asks for the "car they were reserved for" during those hours are not getting the "you want to date my sister" odd stare...its the "wholly @(#$(#$ I have no cars, every sedan I have is already on contract for preferred. I have to void someone elses contract, risk screwing up their credit card, give that car to this guy, then pray to freaking bhudda that the other guy doesnt come in within the next 10 minutes while i call and beg the QTA to send me another batch of cars triple time" stare.

If you have a reservation more than a day,and you get a van in place of a Full size reservation or less....there are more issues than that going on.

Sometimes I envy small locations. At least they can see the cars getting cleaned and judge whats coming up. At the larger locations like mine, i need to rely on a nextel beep to another manager and then a lead to shuttle cars from a holding lot or from the QTA area before my customers can see it. If we run out of cars.....the FASTEST we can get cars is sometimes 30 min. So given that issue, some customers do get vans instead of Impalas with mini jacks. If your here for 3 hours for a meeting, if we make you miss that meeting, its wasted airfare. So we get you into anything with 4 wheels on occasion as to not delay your meeting. imagine a high powered attorney flying in for a court date and then hes late to court because he had to wait for a car. We cant let that happen, so we make sure, as much as possible, that every person is in a car, even if its not what your reserved for. I have had people come back to me at return saying " I couldnt say anything at the beginning because if I did, i would have missed my meeting." And i always work something out with them. theres no way,in my mind, to not do something. I would rather giveout a 25 dollar coupon afterwards for sticking someone in a mommy wagon(van) or the 36k impala with a wierd squeak when it turns right than to have them miss a meeting waitiing for a car, potentially losing that customer for life.


As a manager, its sometimes easier to knock off 20 bucks off the rental for you to go buy a RF adapter for your ipod than to find you a full size carwith the minijack.

Ohh....did i give something away?!?!??!!?