Bluefan75

I would assume it was preassigned because we reserved a "Midsize SUV-Toyota Rav4 or similar". Seats were cloth.

trtcttcgo

Wouldn’t worry about it. Normal usage like a windshield chip they won’t care about. Especially in Calgary, which is notorious for the amount of windshield replacements each year. They probably don’t even replace it until it starts affecting visibility

huskyflyer

I recently took a car from Enterprise (same damage policy as National) in Canada and they said windshield chips have to be above two inches for them to count as damage -anything smaller than that does not count as its wear and tear. However, any types of "star"/cracks that form on windshield do count as damage. On return, the rental agent oddly was checking the roof for damage (he climbed up on the driver side to look closely at the roof) and didn't even take a look at the windshield.

trtcttcgo

I’ve seen them check the top of large SUVs in Toronto because Toronto has many low parking entrances. It comes down to the agent. I’ve personally never had any Enterprise/National agents ask about damage even if I’ve accidentally scraped the bottom of the front bumper on a curb a couple times, especially some SUVs that have a low bumper. Same with windshield cracks. Recently brought back a car with 15psi in one of the wheels, still drove fine and the agent didn’t even ask about it. I find most agents to be reasonable that unless it looks like you intentionally drove 100km/hr through a hail storm they won’t give you a hard time. Also, always use a credit card with car rental damage waiver when booking, saves any headaches.

newfbc

Calgary has hail storms.. I was there for Stampede and there was a huge one.. when I returned the car she went over it closely and had some large round thing - almost like a hula hoop with a fabric sheet over it. Luckily I didn't get 'hit' with the hail.

Ron.

mlpl1280

Friday afternoon only a few sedan left in both aisles, came back later and saw a Grand Cherokee on ES, staff pulling a Durango into EA but the manager took it and drove it away
Sunday morning:
ES: Santa Fe, wrangler, edge, murano, equinox, rouge, two jeep wagoneers
EA: malibu, altima

taway

Just to provide a data point, it was no problem using a foreign (non-US/Canadian) license and still go straight to the aisle, even without having my National member number added to the booking initially since it was made and prepaid through Auto Europe. The person at the gate just asked for my DL number and that was sufficient to pull up my profile and add connect it to the booking.

Another data point: The rate offered by AE—which was about 35% less than the cheapest rate I could get with the Amex Platinum discount directly through National or anything found by AutoSlash—said that I would need to return the car empty. However the employee at the gate asked if I would prefer to return full instead which I opted for. So it seems you may be able to override these kinds of conditions.


I saw a couple relatively new BMW X1s right at the beginning of the aisle when I arrived at around 7:50 am on a Wednesday, as well as a a couple Audis (didn't check the model). Didn't bother walking any further and took one of the BMWs. It was nice to drive and had CarPlay as expected. No adaptive cruise control though, which was a bummer but also expected. Strangely it was also missing the speed limiter feature. Is that not common a common feature for (German) cars in North America or is that another quirk of rental cars? Would have been nice to have with the 30 kmh speed limits in towns with loads of 4-way stop signs...

For about a day and a half we experienced a very strange bug where our iPhones' GPS location would get messed up when connected to CarPlay in the BMW. It would be reported as being maybe about 100-500 meters away from our actual location, making the navigation useless (both with Google Maps and Apple Maps). It worked perfectly fine as long as our phones were not connected to CarPlay. But then it just started working again. It happened both with my wife iPhone running iOS 16 and mine running iOS 17... Never experienced it with CarPlay in our car back home.

huskyflyer

The BMW in EHI fleet do have a speed assistance future where it will beep after you exceed a certain speed. I seem to recall there was a car that I once rented where you could limit the speed and to override the speed limit you had to press the accelerator to the floor while driving, but I cant recall which car it was - maybe it was the BMW? I am not sure if this feature is common in cars though. I only rent cars and I have rarely seen this feature actually limit your speed aside from one rental I had

That's strange - I have never had CarPlay issues on BMW rentals - I actually think BMWs are the most reliable for CarPlays.

It is Chevrolets I have issues with CarPlays all the time that sometimes the wireless CarPlay just wont connect to my phone or it would freeze.

Another time on a Hyundai rental in the middle of nowhere in upstate NY during a blizzard my CarPlay stopped working and it was a diaster to navigate the different back country road without a GPS... then of course when I finally get back to a city and the blizzard was over, CarPlay miraculously starts working again...

trtcttcgo

10/22 morning
Aisles were full. ES had GLB, X1, X3, a truck, Pathfinder, Santa Fe, Equinox, Edge, Rogue, RAV4.
took the 2023 X3 with 28k km

returned 10/29 evening.
aisles were full. Didn’t take a detailed look but saw at least two BMW SUVs and an Audi SUV and Sedan

Nitehawk

Returned to YYC, checked out the aisle on my way out. Well stocked, about 5 audi A4's, one X3, one 5.0 mustang, Mercedes CLA. Also a 5.0 mustang convertible on the emerald aisle. it was as high as 16 degrees today, so I guess it's still mustang season.

Funny thing happened. I snapped a couple of photos of the aisle, and one of the greeters tried to chase me down and asked me to delete the pictures. "You're not allowed to take photos here, please delete the photos!" So I responded "you can't take photos of the aisle?" and he told me "No, you have to delete them!" So anyway I just walked away. For the record, there were no people in the two photos I snapped, and also not even plates, since AB doesn't require front plates.

newhamish

Hey all,

Looking at booking my summer holiday next year.

Pricing for luxury is $1300
Pricing for intermediate is $1386

I am a EE memeber should i just book the Luxury as it is cheaper.

Can i still pick from the ES aisle?

huskyflyer

Since when were you not allowed to take pictures of the aisle... how is that any different than someone taking a picture of a car for damages? They are both photos at their parking lot lol. Also, at least at YVR, they have like CCTV cameras everywhere on their lot (probably because National leaves the car keys in unlocked cars on the parking lot).

A lot of the nice cars at YVR have Alberta plates. I guess this is how all those nice Alberta-plated cars end up in Vancouver through one way aisle reservations. Just this weekend, I saw Audis A3s, BMW 3 Series, X3, XC60s etc at YVR with Alberta plates. \

paterwdb

Picking up a car next week and driving down into the mountains of Montana, where I will need 4wd. Anyone have a sense of what the aisle will look like? I currently have a Luxury reserved, but assume there might actually be a better option of a larger SUV or truck with 4wd on the aisle. Worst case, an Audi or BMW x could work out.

A to Z

Picked up a car on March 26th around 9pm.
Both aisles were full - Executive had a bunch of SUVs - BMW X3, Audi Q5, Hyundai Santa Fe, and a couple others I can't remember
Emerald had the standard midsize sedan selection (Malibus, Altimas, etc).

Dropped off on Mar 31st. Took a quick look, and the aisles were full but had much worse cars. Executive had Chevy Equinox, Nissan Rogue, plus a couple sedans.

letzgo

It seems that the reservation system blocks out all the minivans or large SUVs (Yukon, Tahoe, etc.) from the inventory for all bookings from June. I can search for any dates in May, and the list shows minivans or large (premium, they call it) SUVs, but for any searches involving June dates, it doesn’t seem to show any of them. I have a reservation for the Executive Aisle for June dates and am wondering if there will be either minivans or large SUVs that can take 7 people available. Does anyone have any experience with large SUVs or minivans at Executive Aisle at YYC National?