Which Rental Car Companies do you trust?
 

Which domestic rental car companies do you trust to rent from? The bulk of my rentals are from Hertz, National, Enterprise, & Avis.

Every now and then I see a real good rate on one of the other rental companies. (Alamo, budget, Payless, Dollar, Thrify, etc).

Are these good solid rental companies, or am I getting myself into a situation of I get what I pay for? I know someone has had an awful experience with every company at some point. However, I’m wanting to know if they have decent reliable cars and they aren’t going to try to scam you out of money.

From our perspective, Alamo is excellent (use the online-check in or the automated kiosk wherever possible) and probably better than Enterprise (who owns both Alamo and National) given the ability to skip the counter, Budget can also be good if you use FastBreak but not as good as Avis (same company), Dollar/Thrifty are also the same company are a notch below Alamo/Budget. Avoid Payless at all costs. The other discount brands can be uneven service and vehicle-wise, but sometimes the price differential makes them an appealing choice.

I echo...
 

Autoslash's comments. Although I'd luv to rent from National every single time, as a practical matter, based on pricing alone, Alamo gets my vote, they have never disappointed me, and I rent 100% of the time (and I applaud their deposit policy which stands out from the rest of the industry). It's generally dangerous just because you have one bad experience to extrapolate that to a brand, as is often done on internet message boards, but it's true when you get to the down and dirty, your risk for something going wrong increases dramatically when you play with Payless and the like who are true bottom feeders. There's a reason they have earned that reputation. Can you rent and come out fine, absolutely, but it's a matter of the odds, and being from Vegas, I sorta know about that stuff... Autoslash's characterization of the brands mentioned, are consistent with my own experience, you can rent safely from those, just keep your eyes open and do what you "should" be doing when renting any vehicle.

Budget is basically indistinguishable from Avis these days.

Based on what the rental companies charge in reference to toll fees, I always go with Alamo or National or Enterprise. In Florida, they only charge a fee on the 24 hour period you actually use a toll. The other popular companies charge a per days of rental daily fee for using the tolls. Edited to add Hertz also only charges fee when a toll is incurred.

Buy your own NC QuickPass and skip paying the fees altogether.

Dollar/Thrifty are owned by Hertz and I've had very good luck with them over the years. At larger locations, Express/BlueChip membership allows you to skip the counter and many of those locations rolled out the "choose your own car" thing years before Hertz ran with Ultimate Choice.

My choice is Budget because it is basically Avis at at discount.

You have to be careful that you are not charged +$50 (or a similar outrage) if you log less than 75 miles on the rental and if you do not make sure the check-in person knows that you filled the tank.

It amazes me how few travelers sign up for car rental programs. At Sacramento airport last week the regular Budget line was at least a 45 minutes delay.

The Fast Break kiosk took ~ 90 seconds from arrival to keys.