I am planning on renting a car from avis at the denver international airport in late august. I thought that if I join avisi preferred that I could bypass the lines but I was told by avis that I would still have to stop by the counter to verify my identity etc. Is there a way I can activate my avis preferred membership at my local avis branch before my trip so that I can bypass the lines? I will be travelling with small children and it will be difficult for us to wait on a long line. thanks

Yes, you should be able to go into an Avis location after signing up so they can swipe your credit card. I've never done this but I've heard it works. Really no harm in signing up since it's free and then stopping in at your local Avis branch to see what happens. If you do, please report back on results.

Also, you can still go to the Preferred counter/kiosk/booth at Denver, which will have either no line or a very short line (compared to the potentially very long line inside).

So even if you aren't able to verify your identity at an Avis location beforehand and your name isn't on the board when you arrive at Avis Denver, you can still skip the line.

With Hertz, I know you actually have to rent a car somewhere to complete the enrollment process. Not sure how Avis works.

I can use the kiosk at the denver airport if my preferred membership is not activated?

It's not a matter of it being "activated" per se. They just need to swipe your credit card and driver's license once. After they do that, on subsequent rentals you just get in your car and drive off. For this first one you *may* have to stop at the counter/kiosk, but yes you would either get on the Avis Preferred line or go to the Avis Preferred kiosk in the garage. You don't have to stand on the "regular" line if that's what you're worried about.

And if your payment card expires and you get a replacement with a new expiration date, you may need to repeat that once for each such (or any other) credit card update.

Thanks. I read some horror stories about waiting on car rental lines in he denver airport. Some people had to wait close to two hours. Yelp gives some terrible reviews but most of the people who had preferred membership did not have to wait.

Really? In all my years of renting with Hertz, Avis and National, I've never had that happen once to me. I just update the card online and it's good-to-go. Not saying it can't happen, but it's never happened to me personally.

I've changed the card on file several times in the past and never had to do this.

Like I said, "may". I just know I read this in the past in other threads here in the Avis forum (i don't know how many years ago). But I don't know how many people need to do this, or what the circumstances are when they need to this.

In my case, I rent so many times overseas someplace where they require you to hand over the card and run it manually (they don't seem to even use the card on file) that I can't even remember what I've done the every 4 or 5 years that my card needs updating, because so many rentals at different kinds of Avis outlets (corporate & non-corporate, big and tiny airports, in different countries, etc) blur together after a while, and thus hard for me to remember which exact rental was my first one the last time I updated my credit card. (I've used the same credit for rentals for about two decades, so I only update it when the expiration date changes.)