jason8612

Moved by CMK10 and seconded by dchristiva:


TalkBoard recommends the following restructuring of car rental forums:

1. Car Rental Programs/Partners heading to remain the same

2. Add a new forum at the top of the list titled
Rental Car Discussion
and subtitled
General Topics, plus Alamo, Budget, Enterprise, Dollar, and Thrifty

3. Retain these four forums:
Avis | Preferred
Hertz | Gold Plus Rewards
National | Emerald Club
Sixt |

4. Close these four forums:
Budget | Fastbreak
Dollar | Express Renter Rewards
Thrifty | Blue Chip Rewards
Other Car Rental Programs (ie. Alamo, Enterprise)

5. Move all threads from the five closed forums into the new Rental Car Discussion forum



This vote will close on March 12, 2015 , at 3:00AM CST or after all TalkBoard members have registered their vote, whichever comes first.

Per the TalkBoard Guidelines:

A motion shall pass if at least two-thirds of the yes or no votes cast by TalkBoard members are ‘yes’ and a majority of the total TalkBoard membership votes 'yes' after voting opens 2 days after a site-wide announcement.

The purpose of posting voting topics in the public TalkBoard Topics forum is to solicit member feedback on any motions that are up for a vote and to allow for comments after a vote is made. It is at the sole discretion of the individual TalkBoard members whether they choose to post in the public discussion thread, there being no requirement to do so.

So while there is already a thread and discussion on this general topic and it is safe to assume that TalkBoard members have reviewed that thread, this thread is about this specific motion.

Please feel free to post questions, comments or any other sort of feedback in this thread or the discussion thread found here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/talkb...-subforum.html

mia

Many of the threads in these forums do not mention the name of the car rental company or program in the title. If all of these threads are dumped into a common forum it will be more difficult to locate information by browsing or searching. It would be better to close the forums, leave most of the threads in place, and manually re-title and move only those with recent activity to the top forum.

Edited to add suggestion:

• Close the Budget, Dollar, Thrifty, Other forums, with their messages intact.
• Move those four forums with messages to become locked subforums for the new Rental Car Discussion forum.
• Manually re-title and move into the Rental Car Discussion forum only those threads with activity in 2015.

MSPeconomist

It looks to me like item 5. should say four, not five, closed forums.

xSTRIKEx6864

I think it makes sense to group together Alamo/National/Enterprise (owned by the same company, plus you can earn National credits with Enterprise rentals.)

N639DL

I think the forums should be:

-General Discussion (including smaller companies not mentioned below)
-Avis/Budget
-Dollar/Thrifty
-Enterprise
-Hertz
-National/Alamo
-Sixt

I wouldn't object to National/Alamo/Enterprise being merged together since they are all owned by the same company and use the same shuttle and facility (such as at DEN). However Enterprise uses a lot more local, smaller rental locations which makes me think they are deserving of their own forum. Same thing for Hertz.

nsx

I posted this option in the private TB forum but it didn't go anywhere. I realize that the motion as written makes an essentially irreversible merge, but I nevertheless think it's better to merge both old and new content for these smaller companies.

nsx

Ownership is mostly irrelevant to FT'ers. Loyalty program and rental experience are important. In those regards National is way above Alamo and especially Enterprise. Sixt deserves a forum if for no other reason by virtue of having strong company support here. The others outside the big three IMHO have little to distinguish or recommend themselves to a frequent traveler. I'd go to Hotwire or Priceline before renting from any of them.

FWIW I'm old enough to remember getting 1500 miles or more for a single day car rental on some promotions. The small companies were much hungrier then. Any company that decides to regularly offer such promotions will probably win its own forum here.

mia

It's not just that it's irreversible, it would be like taking all of the slow circulating periodicals in a library and dumping them in a pile in the basement. FlyerTalk is not just about current discussions, it is also a library of information that members should be able to find and read as easily as possible. Less popular material is still useful if we can find it.

swag

I think creating a general car rental forum is long overdue. ^

MSPeconomist

We could do that without closing some of the current rental car fora (as specified in the motion), but unfortunately that's not the motion.

sullim4

Personally I like the idea of grouping by parent company... Avis/Budget, Hertz/Advantage/Dollar/Thrifty, Enterprise/Alamo/National. At many airports, these companies share fleets, customer service reps, etc. Personally, I frequent the car rental forums because I want to understand which company to use in a particular city since the quality of fleets and customer service varies so widely inside each of the brands.

Or, why not just compromise and have a brand new 'General Rental Car Discussion' forum, and then three sub-forums for each of the major brands (like we do with the AA parent forum and the legacy AAdvantage/Dividend Miles forums).

CMK10

I do not recall you bringing this up at any point during the discussion of the motion. If you wanted something like that included in the motion, it does typically helps to bring it up early in the process.

MSPeconomist

In the private TB forum, I requested numbers on January 8th for the rental car fora that were being considered for elimination. That never happened, although do I think that if one is suggesting that some fora on FT be closed, the person making the suggestion should provide a specific list of the fora being considered and some data documenting the case and especially demonstrating the extent to which the existing fora are (not) being used. I'm open minded about whether we decide to open or close these fora, but I want to first see the evidence and then decide carefully what to do. However, I've also argued strongly that we should keep the Sixt forum because their official rep has been so helpful to FT members.

In fact Sixt wasn't named among the rental car fora to be closed in your motion of February 18th, which was seconded (as you stated it) on February 23rd. Sixt appeared in the reformulated and more complete motion which was drafted by another TB member also on February 23rd, after your initial motion had been both proposed and seconded. The revised motion is what we're apparently supposed to be voting on, but it seems that it's still being tweaked in various dimensions. The first motion has never been withdrawn and the revised version hasn't yet received a second. So my understanding of parliamentary procedure is that the first version of the motion is what is on the table, although there seems to be consensus to try to continue to do some friendly amendments, technical corrections, or tweaks, however those words are defined, on the revised motion.

SkiAdcock

What the hades? How did someone not catch that? And yes you're correct in your understanding of parliamentary procedure.

Cheers.

CMK10

Yeah you requested numbers, I said if you were interested in seeing numbers perhaps you could look them up yourself, you neglected to do so. I also made a list in the public forum of how many threads were in each of the lesser used forums and from when the last thread on the first page was.

I believe the TB President has already told you to stop quoting Robert's Rule of Order. This does not have to be so complicated, we aren't the Canadian Parliament. There's no reason to withdraw the first motion when the TB President himself oversaw the editing of it into a new motion.