Thanks for nothing Thrifty San Antonio
 

Due to a late flight yesterday I called Thrifty to let them know I'd be in after midnight. I was basically told to bad we close at midnight, but you can come in a 5am to get your car. Doesn't do much good for a 1 day rental. So my $25 rental turned into a $54 taxi ride. Thanks for nothing. Rant off...

Why is your arriving after they close their fault?

c'est la vie ... sometimes things don't go as planned, be flexible makes life easier :)

Ummm...what exactly is Thrifty guilty of here? They close at a certain hour and it's not thier fault your flight was late, nor were they obligated to stay open and pay overtime to staff merely to accomodate you. Who are you? Oprah?

It's not, but frustrating when they tell you tough we aren't staying open and all the other delayed flights are also out of luck. Therefore the rant off

Hence the taxi ride, because I didn't feel like getting on each shuttle bus (Hertz, Budget) looking for a car.

Nothing but poor customer service, and if I was the only delayed customer....but considering at least two more flights landed after I did I'm going out on a limb and thinking they lost a fair amount of revenue.

Weak. They don't owe you an apology for closing on time. You are the rude one for .....ing about it to them..if you want to rant, rant to the airline that made you late. And as to lost revenue, think of the operating costs of staying open for the occasional, unknown delayed flights after midnight. It would cost more to make such a gamble. How many hours should they wait each night and pay people for flights that may or may not be late?

I doubt they care, since DTG's business model is to provide less customer service than the competition.

When you rent from Thirty, you have to accept that you are going to receive less service than you would have received from their competition. When your plane lands, you might find that Thrifty might be the only "in terminal" rental that has a van shuttling you to an offsite location (BUF), have noticeably less frequent shuttle service than their competition (ORD), be the farthest car rental lot from the terminal (DEN), and be open for less hours than the competition.

You'll get less service, but that is offset by the lower rental cost -- in your case, the 24-hour rental was apparently less than a cab ride.

To me, Thrifty's lower rates are worth the trade off. I take advantage of the blue chip line when I pick up cars and I avoid scheduling flight arrivals close to their closing times.

It's not like there was another shift coming on at midnight.

Those terrible Thrifty employees...actually closing on time, as advertised, and going home to their families instead of disrupting their own schedules, transportation, childcare, lives for that $25 rental. It's definitely enough to make a poor victim turn in his Blue Chip card.

While I'm not really advocating this practice, it can sometimes be to your benefit to make a backup reservation with another company just in case.

So far, the rental companies have not implemented cancellation fees (although this could be changing soon), so you are not on the hook for a no-show. If you arrive on-time and have no problem with your original lower priced rental, you can always cancel the other one to be courteous.

This not only protects you from a late arrival situation like above, but also from an oversold situation, which doesn't happen often, but it is possible.

Jonathan
www.autoslash.com
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