What is wrong with Avis at LAX?
 

I routinely have to wait up to an hour for bus pickup at LAX.

I've taken to actually counting the number of Hertz buses that stop before the Avis bus arrives. The lowest number of Hertz busses I've ever counted is 3. The highest? 11.

Sunday evening, two Avis buses actually drove right past the rental car bus stop at T7 without even stopping (the second one - at 8:26 PM - was bus number 23...)

Now, I get pretty good service from Avis across-the-board at other locations, and outside of the bus pickup the Avis service at LAX is just fine.

But what on God's good Earth is wrong with the idiots running the Avis bus service at LAX? Is it just me?

And what's a good phone number to call and address to write to in order to complain for real about this?

I cannot answer your question and have never had any problem with the bus service, however I can say that LAX has provided me every time with the best upgrades I have ever received as a Preferred Select ^ Not only 1 class, it was always my pick

I rented about a month ago at LAX from Avis and we didn't have any problems with bus pickup, but then we were at T4. Perhaps by the time the busses got to T7, they were already full? You didn't say.

I'm sure you could find the phone number for the LAX Avis office on Avis.com.

Good luck.

For what it's worth... I fly into LAX every week. Nornally I rent Hertz. I was complaining about the same thing with them and thought I would check out Avis. So my feeling is that it doesn't matter who you rent with. For some reason at LAX, you always end up waiting longer for the bus you need to get on. Not helpful, I know, but I feel your pain.

Nope - buses that went by were not full - I actually got a good look at the second one that went by, along with a few others of the about 30 or 40 people waiting for an Avis bus.

And no, this is not a random thing. It happens often, but it's much worse if I get to LAX about 8PM on a Sunday night.

And don't switch from Hertz. As I said earlier, I've always counted several Hertz buses at T7 before the first Avis bus shows up.

as much as I would like to say it will get better soon, it wont. The degree of what I know about this subject could give away my cover, so ill just say your right, its happening, management is aware and they are trying to fix it.

LAX has been absolutely outstanding, every time, with both upgrades and service! I fly into LAX almost every month and it is one of the few car rental experiences that I am confident will be smooth.

As for the OP's issue: I have never seen shuttle frequency as good as it needs to be, from my view standing curbside, at any location that uses them.

OT rant: At FLL, the car rental shuttle buses are run by the airport/county and you will sit on them at terminal 3 until they are completely full, even though there are six empty waiting behind the first one filling up. I have taken to walking the 15 minutes to the rental faciltiy and often beat the shuttle bus!




Good Luck


T

Do or do not, there is no try.

Seriously, there's a problem. Management is aware. What could be the barrier to fixing it and doing so quickly? Not enough buses? Break out some of the rental vans. Not enough employees? Hire more, shift some around, pay overtime?

Its kind of funny to me. Years ago with another company, they had their loyalty/rates with Thrifty Car rental at IAH. I used to stand outside waiting for these stupid buses to come by. AVIS used to have the most and I remember continually wishing that it was AVIS my car was with. For every Thrifty van, I think there was 5 AVIS buses.

This is of course different nowadays since IAH has common shuttles to a central car rental facility with everyone in it.

1> union work slowdown, refusal to work overtime shifts until new contract ratified.
a-bus drivers
b-bus mechanics
2> shortage of managers to oversee the operations to real time adjust.
avis is hiring furiously, but in the state of california they are still down 50+ managers


hows that for starters?

I just picked up a car at LAX last night about 7:30. There wasn't much of a wait at all for the bus, less than 5 mins I'd say. Of course, then we had to deal with all of the holiday traffic as we stopped at each of the other concourses. And don't you know, I was the only one on the bus until the last stop! There didn't seem to be any people waiting, even if the driver did a quick door-open-door-closed stop at each. Of course, "the computer was not working", so the preferred members still had to go inside for a car. This is getting to be more of a common problem than late busses for me.

I had to call Avis @ LAX on 11/27 in the morning after I stood out in the freezing cold weather and watched at least 2 of every other rental car company zip on by. Sorry I didn't keep the number as I was connected directly through 411.

When the driver came, he apologized and said he was waiting at terminal 4 for someone who never showed up.

Holy sh*t. Those positions are unionized? Ugh.