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Last few times hiring from a non airport office in Boston/Washington DC I’ve had a couple of bad experiences with car hire (wrong car/bad car with no chance to swap/huge queues). Has anyone had experience of local car hire near West Hollywood/Beverly Hills.
Trying to decide if I should just take a taxi from Weho to LAX or even Burbank Airport rather than take the chance on being handed a knacker and no option to change as it’s a local branch. Prices for Hertz and Avis for an SUV are roughly the same. I have PC status with both but will be booking the car I want anyway so not bothered about an upgrade.
Doesn’t matter whether you hire downtown or airport it’s just what it is on the day/time you arrive.
I turned up at SLC last week, and even the Avis Preferred counter was 10 deep at 1pm on a Tuesday. They had no cars and each customer was offered what had been washed in the last 2 mins, they could either take it, or wait indefinitely for something else to be returned.
I booked a class C saloon and ended up with a massive group H SUV (Hyundai Genesis) with bald rear tyres that’s cost me around $200 extra in gas over the 1500 miles I’ve driven it.
Stock is low and demand is high wherever you go.
If you hire at a local branch and you don’t like what you get you can always drive to an airport and swap it. Although I would be very careful doing this with Hertz rather than Avis. They ripped me off when I did that once, (1st car had no brakes to speak of and a nail in the rear tyre) and my dad was also similarly ripped off by Hertz many years back. Hertz have form for getting thousands of people arrested for theft due to their incompetent back office procedures.
I had the opposite experience twice at LAX. I am President’s Club with Amex Platinum and was upgraded to a ludicrously big SUV once and a lovely Convertible Ford Mustang the other time.
I guess it depends on the time of year and a bit of luck.
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