I turned in my Hertz rental in Santa Barbara this morning. The agent calculated as follows: $35.99 for the rental, but with a discount that came to $28 something. Plus something for state taxes (around $3, I think). And then $28 worth of gas, making the total $60 something. I noticed the gas total and asked how many miles I had driven: she told me a little less than 100. (I had the car for a day exactly and drove around a bit between Isla Vista where my son Stewart lives and Carpinteria when I attended a birthday party for a friend, maybe 30 miles apart.)
I was having trouble calculating how driving 100 miles turned into a $28 charge. I figured the car must have gotten 20 miles a gallon, so maybe I used five gallons, which would imply around $6 a gallon. But the other clerk behind the counter solved the mystery instantly by saying that Hertz charges $6.69 a gallon. Clearly Hertz has decided to do exactly what I believe our country should do, which is to make the cost of gasoline much higher so as to discourage the use of gasoline and contribute to reduced demand for something that's giving us serious problems in the Middle East. But he actually told me that Hertz intended to incent the customer to fill up the tank at "normal" gasoline prices so that Hertz didn't have to fill the tank itself. (I know that it's hard for Hertz to manage inventories of gasoline and that they don't like to manage the fluctuating price of gas, which is the real reason rental car companies started charging usurious prices for filling the tank for the customer.) I observed that I hadn't been so incented, that indeed I hadn't been informed that this was the deal when I picked up the car the previous day. So he relented and told the first clerk to pretend that the tank was 7/8 full so that I would pay less for the gas (still $14!).
Call me crazy, but I told the second clerk that I thought it might be considered a service for customers to fill their tanks at a small premium (not 250% of the price of premium fuel), particularly customers like myself that are labeled a #1 Gold Service Customer (i.e. one who spends a lot of money renting Hertz cars). He said that every other car company at the counter (Avis, National and one more) did exactly the same thing. I told him as politely as I could that that infuriated me even more (because it sounds like monopolistic, anti-competitive behavior). I told him that I was using Enterprise more and more because they don't maintain this silly policy. I told him that I was one of Hertz's best customers and I was providing him with customer feedback. He continued to believe that the customer-oriented behavior that he should engage in was to continue to argue with me. So I left to catch my flight.
I wish the main rental car companies weren't all identically customer hostile, so that I have a real choice. I have discovered that Enterprise is giving me a choice because they like their customers and treat them like valued, intelligent entities. I hope Enterprise opens up in Santa Barbara airport.
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