Have to stop by counter but no one can tell me why
 

After modifying the time I was picking up/returning on an upcoming reservation, I noticed that I was being directed to the counter instead of to the aisle. I initially thought it had to do with my late arrival and/or the station I was renting from (hence my post on this issue in the BWI thread), but I spoke with the lead customer service rep at BWI who said it had to do with something coming from corporate, and that everything in my reservation and in my profile looked fine. I called the general customer service line a couple of times, and was eventually transferred to a very unhelpful supervisor who sounded like she just woke up, refused to look at anything in my account, and told me that there was absolutely nothing she could do because there's nothing in her system that shows her why I have to stop at the counter. She suggested that typically this occurs when there's some issue with payment, your driver's license, etc. But my payment method hasn't changed, and although I changed driver's licenses earlier this year, I've rented twice since then without being prompted to stop at the counter.

Does anyone know what might be going on? I'm also baffled that neither the corporate customer service supervisor nor the station lead customer service rep can tell me what's wrong.

Did your credit card expire? Usually counter visits are due to payment methods or DL issues.

I think this is right -- I played around with the times, and if I set pickup at 11pm, it sends me to the aisle, but from 11:30 onward (presumably until 7 am) it directs me to the counter. Very odd. Are there any other stations that are like this?

My credit card on file has been expired for over a year and I've never been told to go to the counter. I obviously present a different card at the gate booth

Had this happen to me too. Seems something in the account triggers the counter stop, but no-one really knows what. My stop by the counter at Miami airport took a few seconds. They looked at my reservation and the exec status and where wondering why the system said I needed to stop there. So without doing anything besides looking on my printed reservation I went to the aisle, grabbed a car and left without any problems. So if you know all your account data is ok, just go to the car and there shouldn't be a problem.

Ditto. I've done this on more than one occasion.

Just to close the loop on this: I went straight to the aisle and experienced no issues when checking out at the booth (although the CSR did seem to have to do more on the computer than I've seen in the past). In fact, there was a sign at the counter that directed all EC members to the garage.

Oddly, and I've seen some posts about this in the past, the app advised me that Emerald Checkout was unavailable until 7am (I arrived around 1am). So I do think that this issue (being directed to the counter) was, in my case, related to my late pickup time.