Preferred Booth at YYZ - Shut Down
 

Had a reservation out of Terminal 1 @ YYZ on Friday. Arrived to find a bunch of signs saying that the current economic crisis has forced Avis to discontinue the Preferred Booth. The boards that usually had names and spot numbers was dark and the office was all closed up.

They had a small section of the inside desk converted into a Preferred Area with a new board on which the RA's and keys were hung.

Wow, they shut down Preferred at Pearson? Must really be hurtin' - I've been there on prime weekdays and the boards would be lit up all the way. I wonder why they're shutting it down though, if anything else, Preferred is a cost-saver, eliminating the need for an EE to individually attend to each reservation/driver when they come in.

True, and I'm all about self-service at Pearson as in my experience the employees at ANY of the agencies aren't up to snuff...

I wonder if this is a new cost-cutting trend. The preferred booth at PDX was closed on Friday evening, and of course, my name wasn't on the board. I headed downstairs, and there was no dedicated preferred line in the general area. I had a very unsatisfying rental with Avis this weekend -- it seemed like they cut all of the better (ie: higher paid) employees and kept all of the completely clueless ones.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8830/4.2.2 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

I rented from YUL last week and the service was excellent. The preferred agent stayed beyond to help me and was very friendly, of course with the CHM meet and greet as well. Maybe it's a YYZ thing. I will be renting from YYC in a few days so will post back, though YYC doesn't have a preferred booth, it's integrated with the regular desk. (Remember the days when YYC had it's own preferred booth - years ago when they were downstairs on the ground floor?) :-)

Last time I was there, YYC was an absolute mess... even as CHM.

Avis is going down fast! I say let it fail.