Can't agree more about (b). Last september around a long weekend here on the east coast of US, I had "booked" an SUV since I was planning a road trip with my extended family. In addition to booking it online, I had also called up the office a few days in advance to let them know that I will be picking up the car at 4 pm after my workday is done. When I reached there, I was offered a pickup truck and was told "cars are never guaranteed". I agreed to take any car that can take 5 people and even after that it took then 3 hours to arrange a mid-size sedan for me. What is the point of taking reservations if you cannot honor them? The model is seriously broken and in need of disruption.

If a car company guaranteed a specific vehicle, they'd probably have to charge a premium and have stricter cancellation policies (which most don't have at all now). With SUVs in particular, I find pricing is all over the map if you try to reserve one in advance and, as you say, it's not guaranteed. I find that I have the most luck just using National's Emerald Aisle which lets me pick the car I want when I get to the airport. But it's still not guaranteed--though I've always been able to get an SUV when I've wanted one.

I get the people cancel all the time and hence they need to account for it. But in this case I had specifically called them in advance that I will be there to pick up my car and they had confirmed with me that my reservation is good. They still couldn't come through after that.

I don't mind they holding on to my credit card when I make the reservation if by doing that they can guarantee a better quality of service.

It's fair to say that the majors (which are pretty much the only ones renting at airport locations) are optimized for the 95% use case. They work fine most of the time but, in my experience, are pretty much incapable of dealing with anything outside of the usual "system."

In addition to not being able to guarantee a specific vehicle--even with a deposit--I had an issue with Avis a few years back where they were utterly unable to extend a rental to bridge it to another reservation I had already made, i.e. they couldn't take two one week reservations with a week in between and turn it into a 3-week reservation.

Zipcar and Maven manage to do it just fine.

:) Almost 30 years later they still don't know how to "hold" a reservation

Thanks for this. Could you explain (c)? I don't understand what you mean.

Regarding the rest, it sounds like they got used to offering a poor service because they don't have enough competition or something. You might have a point there, but for a competitor to take advantage of that they just need to execute better on those points. They don't really need to source their cars from average Joes...

I'm not saying that Hertz isn't shit, I'm just saying that I don't understand how where the cars are sourced from is a real differentiating point. EDIT: I just re-read your last line and it seems you agree.

The "waivers" for coverage that one needs to get not to get sodomized in an event of an accident require one to be someone very familiar with all kinds of statues or spending nearly $70-$100 a day to be able to cover a premium sedan or above ( did you know that Impala is a premium sedan? )

No, credit card automatic policies do not cover even top 10 issues that you would have in event of an accident - they at most cover loss of revenue provision and some of the damage to the vehicle you are renting.

The only reasonable insurance that you can get is Amex premium insurance which is $25/trip (not a day) and covers everything.

Edit: Over years I tried Citi, HSBC, BOA, Chase and even CapOne "premium insurances" - they all were garbage with a list of exclusions longer than most of TOS policies on shady websites.

I feel like your original phrasing is a little ambiguous. To say they are a scam sounds like they are fraudulent, but they are not (as you clearly understand), they are in all but a handful of cases a necessity.

Of course they are scams:

It is illegal to sell insurance by non-licensed sales people - see Zenefits. It is illegal to claim that something is insurance or describe it as insurance when it is not. If paperwork says it is "waiver" but someone who makes me sign for it says it is "insurance" they are committing a crime and if a company actively encourages such behavior the company is engaging in a criminal activity

All I'm saying is if anyone reads this and is one day standing at a rental station considering the liability waiver and remembers someone referring it to a scam, they might wholesale dismiss it. People do it all the time because there seems to be a widespread belief that credit cards cover everything.

Insurance, waiver, whatever, it will save your ass if you purchase it when you need it and one should seriously understand whether they need it or not. It's that value that makes me question whether one should call it a scam.

Rental car companies always try to sell you liability coverage for accidents and damage for about $25/day. Almost every major credit card already includes the coverage for free, so when you opt into the rental coverage, you're needlessly paying a significant premium for something you likely already have.

This is not true. _Most_ cards do _not_ cover at fault general liability, most cover the damage to the car and that's usually secondary coverage, which is to say if you have insurance already, you will have to utilize that first in case a claim is required.

If you fall asleep and drive a car into a house or hit a pedestrian, you better have to have some third party liability coverage. If you have car insurance already you probably have this coverage, but if you don't... you don't.

This is a pretty complicated topic and I've done some deep dives into it and found it's not as clear cut as most people seem to believe. What kind of card you have matters, whether you have insurance already matters and even with both of those you need to understand what exactly is covered by who and when. If you don't have insurance you should always get liability. If you don't have insurance and rent a lot you should call up Progressive or National and request a quote for non-owner liability coverage.

What one shouldn't do is go around telling people to waive all coverage and that rental car insurance is a scam.

Rental companies will also hit you for "loss of use" while their damaged car is being repaired. This will likely be claimed at $hundreds/day. Most personal auto insurance and even many credit card liability plans will not cover this. I have a State Farm Visa for the sole reason that if I rent a car using that card I am fully covered including for loss of use.

> Rental companies will also hit you for "loss of use" while their damaged car is being repaired. This will likely be claimed at $hundreds/day.

This is much more than the cost to the consumer of renting the car. How can they possibly defend it?

Thank you for the correction. Unfortunately I can't edit my original comment to highlight that anymore. I've certainly always rented whilst having primary coverage from my normal auto insurance and so the distinction wasn't especially important for me. That said (and again, I was incorrect in my first post), some/many credit cards /do/ offer primary insurance coverage for rentals, and anyone renting a car should definitely take the time to check before getting to the rental counter!

Not really. Credit card coverage is secondary insurance, which means that your automotive liability insurance is the primary. Some cards offer primary coverage, usually for a fee or with a fee-based credit card.

That's problematic if you don't have insurance, or if you are in a risk category where some accident or damage to a vehicle will result in policy cancellation or a rate hike with your personal insurance. Some personal policies have different limits or gotchas for incidents related to business travel as well.

The other replies to your question seem to focus on insurance coverage via credit cards.

If you have a standard auto policy for a vehicle at home, you should also check whether it covers rentals. A lot of policies will cover you while driving "non-owned" vehicles for personal use with the same coverage limits/deductibles as your own vehicle.

We have to live in the world we have. We should strangle car sharing in its cradle because even after decades of mediocre service a competitor could come along and complete doesn't sound like a sound strategy.

> We have to live in the world we have. We should strangle car sharing in its cradle because even after decades of mediocre service a competitor could come along and complete doesn't sound like a sound strategy.

I don't think sarcasm helps having a productive conversation.

Also, straw-man: I wasn't arguing we should strangle anything.