MiamiAirport Formerly NY George

I did my first HoD rental from LGA Sunday night. A little confusion but CS helped through the process. The cost was a little less than half of a cab and around 40% of a car service. Within minutes of parking the car in NYC I got an email telling me the reservation had been successfully terminated and a follow up email with the total charge (which was taken care of by the $25 credit.)

I don't care what kind of car I'm given, its for a ten mile trek back to Manhattan, I just want to get home asap.

I went ahead and made five more reservations for flights getting in late where I would take a car/car service rather than fool around with public transportation to Manhattan. I just tried to make another reservation but got an error message that I had reached the maximum number of reservations allowed.

Does HoD really limit the number of reservations one can make. That just seems totally unrealistic.

themicah

Both HoD and Zipcar have this policy to prevent people from making a million reservations "just in case," tying up all the cars and then canceling last minute.

MiamiAirport Formerly NY George

Yes to an extent I can see that. My issue is that I fly into LGA or JFK about once a week, often late night. Since all of my travel is on my dime this is a great alternative to a cab or car service ($35++ for LGA, $45++ for JFK) or taking forever on public transporatation.

This may have been in the Rules of Contract but I can't remember seeing it. Now that I know it I will not book in advance but my only concern is the availability of cars when booking for LGA or JFK closer to date of travel.

FlyinHawaiian

I haven't run into any availability issues with one-ways FROM the airports a few days in advance. They seem to have a pretty stable inventory at those locations and suspect they can position additional needed cars there, given a few days' notice.

I do recommend getting the HOD mobile app if you have a smartphone.

xienon

Last week, 3 Chevy Volts shows up in the system located at 300 Madison (PWC building) in NYC. I showed up at the building this morning and the garage entrance was closed. So, I showed the confirmation email to building security and none of them have ever heard of Hertz on Demand or how I can access the garage w/o being an employee.

I then called HoD and was told that the location was for employees only, which was obviously not listed on the website.

I must say this experience pretty much describes all my experiences with trying to rent a EV or a plug-in hybrid. Whenever I try to reserve the smart EV, I always get a cancellation email 15 minutes before the start time. The Leaf is also unreservable even though both the smart EV and Leaf are prominently advertised on the website.

That said, every non EV I've tried to reserve went smoothly.

paytonc

Yeah, the ability to rent a Leaf was a key selling point for me -- except that the staffer at the Washington Union Station location swore up and down that he'd never seen one there. Every attempt to reserve it had been cancelled 15 minutes before (and "upgraded" to a Jeep or something). The last time I reserved one just beforehand, it wasn't cancelled but the car wasn't there -- customer service reassigned me to a nearby gas car. A subsequent email to customer service hasn't been answered.

Haven't tried renting the Smart EV that's parked at the (one) charging station there, but it was not reassuring to see that it's been unplugged every time I've been by.

xienon

After one of my many cancelled smart EV reservations, I was told by customer service that the battery was not charged. However, I was next to the car and could tell that the charge gauge read full. Still, they refused to let me take the car.

FlyinHawaiian

My one-way from LGA last night was a YF Impala that I might have rented in one of my prior trips. We landed early so I used the iPhone app to update my pickup time.

My pet peeve with this rental was that since the On Demand spaces aren't under the canopy, the car was covered with an inch of snow. Even worse, there wasn't a snow brush in the car, so I had to scavenge one from one of the Gold cars.

jackal

That's better than the On Demand vehicle I tried to rent in ANC as a test a couple of weeks ago--not only was it covered in 12" of snow without a snow brush, it had been sitting so long that the battery was dead and the car wouldn't start in the -10 degree weather.

Fortunately, I didn't actually need the car (I just wanted to see how the On Demand process worked), so I called them and cancelled. I told them I had somewhere to be and couldn't wait for someone to come get the car started, and they said, "Well, we don't have anyone who can do that anyway." Umm, yeah, that was reassuring...

themicah

We have a Leaf parked outside our building (it was the first Leaf in New York State, actually), but I've still never driven it. I haven't tried that many times, but at least two or three times I've had my reservation canceled.

In my mind pure EVs make sense for regular commuters, for school bus fleets, and for other applications where the vehicle is used for predictable distances and where it sits unused in the same place (where charging stations can be installed) much of the time.

But I think pure EVs make terrible car-sharing vehicles. The Volt makes much more sense since it can take advantage of charging stations to juice up when not in use, reducing the need for drivers to fill up the gas and lowering operating costs. But it doesn't HAVE to be taken out of service for multi-hour stretches if there is continuous demand for it.

paytonc

Well, it looks like they have an answer to our concerns: the little (e) logo is nowhere to be found when searching for cars in multiple cities. I had been looking forward to trying an EV, but maybe not at this time. The experience makes me wonder how the all-Smart EV Car2Go system is faring in San Diego.

In other news, HOD's Chevy sedans have started arriving at curbside spaces in Washington, DC.

xienon

The cars are still reservable once you click on the few locations that have them.

They also changed the interface to hide the car color and plate, which I can't understand the logic behind. Some people are picky about color and I personally like to see the plate in case there are two of the same cars at each location.

MiamiAirport Formerly NY George

I've done HOD several times out of LGA and have been impressed with the cars and ease of use as far getting texts and then obtaining the car. However, everytime the attendant at the gate at Hertz LGA has wanted a contract and did not really understand HOD. Also, the attendant at the garage at 55 14th St in Manhattan the other night had no idea of what HOD was about. He kept telling me that I could not park there. I was dogged tired so I just left the car and called HOD and they said they would call the garage and take care of the problem.

FlyinHawaiian

I haven't had a problem with the gate agents at LGA; IME, they seem to be more familiar with the term "Connect car" than "Hertz on Demand car" when you check out.

FlyinHawaiian

That being said, I think I got the attendant that newyorkgeorge was talking about at LGA last night. He wanted to get the mileage from my car and tried to sell me the fuel purchase option before printing my contract. I explained to him that all he needed to do was open the gate and let me on my way.

I was also ticked that my car was not in the OnDemand parking spaces but in one of the Gold stalls all the way in the back corner of the lot (I had to ask inside where my car was). It had also been parked in by another car, so I had to wait for a lot attendant to move the cars around.

I gave LGA the lowest marks I could on the online customer satisfaction survey for my last two On Demand rentals; we'll see if that gets their attention.

The one-way into LGA was a YC Chevy Cruze with leather seats (I really like this car) and the one-way from LGA was a stock F Chevy Malibu. The NeverLost in the Malibu was acting flakey so I re-booted it, which seemed to help.