Avis at Seattle
 

Great start to my BA holiday experience.
Arrived at 11:15pm into SEA and about 200 people queuing for the rental car bus.
Arrived 10-15 mins later after catching the 3rd bus and about 100 people in front of me.

Last time I booked Avis through BA at SJC, 1h30 waiting before one of the two agents went off on break and never got my car.

Probably going to be 2am before I get to my hotel, being up a 28hrs or so :(

Some staffer is is saying 5hrs! Maybe 47 flights came in at once?
Supposed to be 1500 rentals tomorrow so no chance in coming back and having an easy time.

Absolutely @££% show of a company!

Got Avis preferred and my name is on the screen, but still quite a wait downstairs on floor 2.

On the other hand, at Charlotte WV recently, I walked up to the desk and showed them my ID, they gave me the keys and told me which bay the car was in. I was driving away less than 10 minutes after touchdown. I have no doubt they have bad days (the queue for non-Preferred at Palm Springs can be very long) but in my experience Avis are generally very efficient.

In the end, I waited about 20 mins in the preferred queue.
Had booked a Rav4 type thing, but got the option of a mini van or pick up truck. Asked for anything smaller, and I got some electric car - just need to figure out where to charge it now.

The Zapp Map app is very good for finding EV chargers

I had a bad experience at the downtown Avis in SEA earlier this year. Apparently the 3 (a Barclaycard, Lloyds and Amex) cards I had offered for the security deposit were all "declining" and hence they refused to hand over a car. Cash and debit cards refused. All card companies confirmed no attempted transactions.

While stood in the office trying to sort, overheard conversations from staff about having no cars/being overbooked.
Ended up rebooking myself with Alamo - lo amd behold card worked first time.

Booked via Avios/IAG Loyalty (not BAH) and eventually got the cost difference refunded plus a very generous Avios recovery.

This was my exact experience in PHX in November. Had booked a RAV4 9 months earlier but all they could offer was a van or pick up truck otherwise wait an hour for possibly something else. They eventually offered a Jeep Grand Cherokee which was OK. Several customers came back to the desk complaining someone else was in their car or the car just wasn't there. Suspect overbooking and sharing cars with Budget. Complained to BA holidays and they refunded 25% of the hire costs.

The things we do for double tier points

I didn't start in the UK, so none for me. Just wanted the car to explore outside of Seattle etc.

Just charging it up right now
Approx 227 mile range, so its got me from Seattle to Troutdale (with a lunch stop and to see something called "Nutty Narrows" in Long view I think) with around 26 miles left.
Handily, there's some "hyper fast up to 350kw" chargers about 300m from my hotel. Going to take just under an hour to charge (seem to be topping out at 42W tops now saying 215 mins left for the remaining 48%), so probably just under $40, so maybe not really any cheaper than unleaded?)
(Think it's $0.56 per kW)

To be honest, i would personally stick with unleaded if i had the choice. Easy to go anywhere and fill up in a few minutes. Bit of a faff trying to find chargers.
At least in the UK, a lot of supermarkets have them.

The manager who telling people about the wait times,
did mention asking to be comped on a day's rental or fuel. Some of these 4x4 trucks or whatever could cost $200 to fill up and be far less fuel efficient than the 1L Kia you booked....

Added: well, spent just over 140 mins to take it up to 90% (watts dropped from 42kW to just over 7 by that point). Cost $27.xx dollars.
Car is saying range of 148 miles which definitely isn't 90% of 227 (unless it adjusts).

Sounds like they rented you a Toyota BZ4x or Solterra?

the 227 mile range, 42kw and 140 minute charge is abysmal;

its 270 miles, 230kw and 25 minute charge from 10-90 in any of the Hyundai Ioniq/EV6

fwiw I usually take an EV since many come with free fast charging or there are free fast chargers that I’ve found

Yes it was a Solterra.

Weird mileage on it. Switched on the heater for a bit and the range dropped by 50 miles, but eventually went back up when I switched it off.
Makes it difficult to know how far you're going to get.

Charged it again last night to around 87% (1h30+).
Range showed as 197 miles.
Same 42kW which dropped towards single figures over time.

(Couldn't get a single local charger to work - all required apps that wouldn't find the charger even though i was plugged into it. Had to drive 4 miles to the next town to use a "electrify America" one that takes credit card payments).

Yeah - that sounds like the really bad car the Solterra is. Sorry you’ve had such a poor experience, Bolt/BZ4x/Solterra/Niro/Kona are good models to avoid in the future.

On reasonable EVs (MB, Hyundai Ioniq/EV6, Tesla, BMW, etc) they have an efficient heat pump that only takes 5-10% mileage with A/C or heat.

Local charger wise, Chargepoint’s the only app I have. Need it for the free charging at Amazon buildings in Seattle after hours.

I don’t look on the map for the charger, I just use the ChargePoint card in Apple wallet at the charger