Unwanted "Upgrade" to Minivan in DAY
 

We showed up at the Dollar Counter at the Dayton Airport this past Wednesday night with a printout of the reservation we had made for a mid-size on the Dollar website. Condensed dialogue:

"We don't have a mid-size. You can upgrade to full size or SUV for only $12 a day... or you can upgrade to a minivan for free."

"I don't want a minivan. I want a car."

"What can I do? We don't have a mid-size."

"What about a complimentary upgrade to a full-size?"

"You can upgrade for $12 a day, or you can have a compact if you don't want the minivan."

It's after 10:00 p.m. I check with a couple of other rental outfits and nobody can match the rate in a walkup, so I took the van and grudgingly drove it around Ohio for three days.

The only consolation was that the extremely aggressive counter rep. toned down her insurance / full gas tank pitch with me because she knew I was annoyed.

I have been upgraded quite a few times when the reserved category wasn't available, so don't think it's unusual, and I've never been given a runaround like this.

Am I the only one who thinks an upgrade to a minivan isn't an upgrade if you really don't like minivans?

No.

I just rented from Thrifty a while back and all they had was a minivan. And this was the middle of the day!

Anyways, I pleaded with the guy, but he wanted the same thing your Dollar guy wanted - a $15 upgrade for the SUV. I was like, 'Nah', the Suzuki XL-7 sucks IMO.

It was a brand new Chrysler T&C with 2 miles on it, but I'm a young guy - I don't want a minivan if I'm not carryin' my friends! So I tell the guy I can't take it, and ask him to call the airport location to see if they had some cars, and they did. Went to the airport and traded the van in for the car. Easy as pie.

Just ask can you take it and maybe return it the next day or later on for another car. Or take it to another location for trade. I ALWAYS do this. It's my money, and if I reserved a car, I'm going to drive one. Period.

I think you're right, CS. In this case, we flew into Dayton and were driving to Cincinnati. I had considered getting in touch with Dollar in Cincy but it just didn't seem worth it at that point. What really annoyed Mrs. Fredd and me was that the rep seemed to be trying to pull a bait-and-switch on us. A couple of weeks ago we got a comp upgrade in Kalmar Sweden from Avis. They didn't offer us a panel truck - they gave us a bigger car.

DAY Dollar also had one of those wrinkled old signs on the counter... you know, the ones that read "Manager's Special Today Only" or something similar. The woman was really pushing the insurance hard to the people in front of us, so I think I now know all I need to know about the Dollar Franchise at the Dayton Airport. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/rolleyes.gif

Did this with Thrifty in Vancouver - didn't want a van as was going to SEA for the day and it would look fishy at customs. At airport the agent noted I was Blue Chip and said that 'cuz of their satisfaction guarantee they would comp the rental (1 day) - got miles for the rental to boot!

Well, you've inspired me to send Dollar an e-mail complaint at least. I'm anticipating it won't do any good but I'll at least have the satisfaction of sharing with them the license numbers of the mid-size and full-size cars we saw sitting in the Dollar lot as we drove off in our fat little van (we wrote the numbers down for the heck of it).

We reserved directly from the Dollar website, so it wasn't even as if we had Pricelined or Hotwired them, not that there's anything wrong with either.

I rent probably half a dozen times a year on average from whomever offers the cheapest price and probably average upgrades 25% of the time. Last year in Germany we ended up with a big Opel with satellite navigation and we wandered on small roads throughout Eastern Germany for a week, only looking at a map once a day to decide the daily destination.

You've confirmed that I'm not out of line by thinking that a mini-van is not a reasonable upgrade, so I'll at least have the small satisfaction of letting Dollar know. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

This EXACT situation happened to me at DTW three weeks ago. Luckily, it was about 11AM, so I stood firm and asked for the General Manager.

I ended up w/ a SUV (Durango) instead.

hockeystl

This is interesting.
One of the consolidators here in the Uk that uses Dollar is now quoting the same price for Full Size and Mini-vans on their website. They are also offering vans as a "free" upgrade in newspaper ads.

Reserved an "intermediate" (Dodge Stratus or similar) at MHT several months ago and when I got there they gave me the keys to a Jeep Wrangler. Kind of palmed it over to me so I would be less likely to look at the tag. I walked out to the lot and saw the vehicle before I realized what they'd done.

Couldn't take the Jeep because I would be squiring my elderly mom around. Hiked back to the counter and they reluctantly gave me an Intrepid at no extra charge... but there's no way they could argue that a Wrangler is an intermediate car.

Bottom line: Dollar franchisees are under local pressure to rent out their own, owned cars first (and a motley collection they may be) before dipping into cars from the one-way pool that might also be available.

Always argue, because when they try to give you a car you didn't reserve they're serving their agenda, not yours.