Avis at LAX? Car Quality/Selection?
 

I normally avoid Avis, as all my past rentals with them have ended up with dirty cars and poor rental experiences. With that being said - I ended up using priceline to bid on a car for a 10 day period out of LAX (due to astronomical prices to get one outright), and surprisingly got an amazing deal at $10/day for an economy...saving me about $170.

For those who rent at the LAX station - how is the selection of cars (especially for what priceline deems as an "economy" for avis)? Would I be better off upgrading to a standard/fullsize or midsize car? I'd be happy with a Mazda 6 or Ford Fusion, but I'm hesitant to upgrade only to find out if they dont have them there.

The question is whether you can do any of that while having boooked through Priceline.

If you're Avis Preferred (free) and book with your Preferred/Wizard number through Avis directly, you can use Select & Go at LAX. But not if you don't have your Preferred linked to your reservation, and I have my doubts that you can link Preferred (even if you do have it) to a Priceline reservation.

With Priceline, you generally give up perks, and get what you paid for, at a low price. If you want "membership" perks, whether with a car rental program or a hotel program, you generally have to book with them directly, not through any third-party booking site.

And you don't get a "selection" at a rental agency where you don't have status/membership. You are assinged a car. Maybe, just maybe, you can bargain for another car, but likely only in the same category, if you're just a "nobody" off the street (which you generally are, with any third-party booking site reservation, whether you otherwise are a member of their program or not).

My experience at LAX are irrelevant. I typically book economy, and drive away in a compact or even intermediate. But that's solely because I am (at least) Avis Prefered, and always make my reservations at avis.com while logged in with my Preferred/Wizard number. So the cars are get are Preferred upgrades (either automatic upgrades they chose for me, or, since the past year or so, through Select & Go), and that's not necessarily at all what someone coming in with a third-party website reservation would get.

By the way, the selections I can make in Select & Go are way better for me than what they upgrade me to. More than half the time at LAX they upgrade me to some SUV, when all I want is a normal car, and so (unless I go to the desk and ask to be "downgraded back") Select & Go gives me my best & fastest choice of cars. (Fortunately, at stations that don't have Select & Go, I don't often get this useless-to-me SUV upgrade.)

You can ask at the time of pick up to add your wizard number, have done it numerous times on a prepaid rental through Priceline.

I think you may have mis-read into what I meant. I'm not looking for Avis preferred benefits, free upgrades, or any of the such. Priceline has offered me the ability to upgrade myself prior to arrival for an additional dollar amount per day for a midsize or standard size car (a relatively small amount, an extra $2 a day) if I should so choose so. With all that being said - my question really is, how is the car selection at LAX...and would I be fine with the "economy" class of cars (size doesnt matter lol, I'm more or less looking for new functional cars that are clean, fairly low mileage, and has automated windows and door locks).

I would kindly disagree that it really isnt true that you dont get to choose your own car where you dont have status....100% of the time when I've rented from Hertz, Budget, Enterprise, etc...and had no status, they always asked me if "x" car was fine....and if not, they looked to see what else they had, or I threw out models within the category that I'd be happy with. Granted, it's not like Nationals Emerald Aisle or similar programs where you freely walk about the lot...but it still gives you some say. I was simply wondering if Avis at LAX was similar to that.

LAX is one of the biggest stations out there, with cars galore. Last weekend, too many cars in fact... they were stacking them in any empty space they could, including in visitor parking.