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rental cars with high milage

BarbmC

BarbmC

TUG Member
Joined
Nov 27, 2016
Messages
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Location
Phoenixville, PA
Resorts Owned
Marriott Ocean Club
Marriott BeachPlace
Marriott Vacation Club points owner
The last 2 rental cars I booked with Budget (using Costco for best price) both cars had over 55,000 miles on the cars. Is that unique to Budget, or is that the industry new normal?
 
I had a Hertz local (non-airport) rental this past May that was a 2020 with 62k miles. I put another 2500 miles on it. No issues but I was also surprised at the age and miles of the vehicle.
 
We get a combination of high-mileage and low-mileage vehicles. This last one was at Advantage Rental Car at Orlando off-airport, and it had about 18,000 miles, so not bad for an off-site company.
 
There was been a pretty significant decline in total vehicle manufacturing for the past couple of years--mostly from the chip shortage, but for other reasons too. Fleet sales were correspondingly down, which means that rental agencies have to make do with cars for longer before turning them over.

The backlog seems to be clearing, but it might still take a bit to make it to the front lines of the rental counters--especially at lower price points.
 
I can live with the miles, but do they really need to provide the least expensive stripped-down versions of the brands. I guess one should always ask if the vehicle has air conditioning, a radio, and a spare tire. It might just be the rental agencies are a dumping ground for less marketable vehicles.
 
We’ve seen it both ways the past few years. Recently, our last 3 or 4 rentals have been pretty new cars. One of them we were only the second person in the car. But this has been over this past year. Last year it was a lot of rentals with 50,000+ miles, which surprised us.

FWIW, we were renting thru Budget a lot last year, but their customer service was falling off the mark and we’ve been renting with Alamo this year
 
Budget cars are getting pretty old/high mileage recently. I have since avoided Budget and booked with Alamo instead. I just returned an Alamo rental which had 15K miles. The Budget car which I rented in April had 45K. To add insult to injury, when I returned the car, the agent used a highlighter to mark on every little nick on the car. I protested that it was an old car and I had been assigned the car that way. I also reminded her that I had always been told by the agents that if anything that was smaller than a quarter coin size, it was fine. She said they changed the policy a week ago and now renters needed to take a video and snapshots of the Budget rental car if we wanted to fight their report. In the end, she made up a card with backdate to pickup date which she wrote down several of the larger nicks and handed to me and said that I should be fine. I am so done with Budget.
 
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VacationForever said:
Budget cars are getting pretty old/high mileage recently. I have since avoided Budget and booked with Alamo instead. I just returned an Alamo rental which had 15K miles. The Budget car which I rented in April had 45K. The add insult to injury, when I returned the car, the agent used a highlighter to mark on every little nick on the car. I protested that it was an old car and I had been assigned the car that way. I also reminded her that I had always been told by the agents that if anything that was smaller than a quarter coin size, it was fine. She said they changed the policy a week ago and now renters needed to take a video and snapshots of the Budget rental car if we wanted to fight their report. In the end, she made up a card with backdate to pickup date which she wrote down several of the larger nicks and handed to me and said that I should be fine. I am so done with Budget.
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I wonder if this was a franchise location that makes up its own rules? If not Budget’s business will take a hit as it won’t take long before the internet lights up with warnings to stay away from Budget.
 
dougp26364 said:
I wonder if this was a franchise location that makes up its own rules? If not Budget’s business will take a hit as it won’t take long before the internet lights up with warnings to stay away from Budget.
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This is at Sacramento airport. I hate this Budget business. Out of the 6 or 7 times that I have rented from them, 3 times I had to wait for almost 2 hours for a car and it was in the afternoon of a weekday. Pickup was supposed to be 2:30pm to 3pm and I didn't get a car until 4:30pm to 5pm. This last experience was my last straw.
 
My 2003 Toyota Avalon in the garage has 226,000 miles on it, and we are taking it on a long road trip again next Saturday. But I wouldn't want a rental car with that many miles on it. :) I know Rick maintains our car constantly. No problems with it in 20 years, knock on wood.
 
We rented from Budget recently. The car was pretty new and was a hybrid. I wasn't sure what was going on when it sounded like the engine wasn't running as we exited the highway. Anyway, my main issue was they told me it would be a 45 minute wait for the car. They also tell me the spot number. I go out to the garage after about 20 minutes to wait there. I later realize that the car had been ready for a long time just in a different spot. I identified it by looking at their number on a sticker on the windshield and matching it to my paperwork. I could have been out of there a lot sooner if they had just parked it in the right spot as I was waiting for them to pull a our car into that spot.
 
dioxide45 said:
We rented from Budget recently. The car was pretty new and was a hybrid. I wasn't sure what was going on when it sounded like the engine wasn't running as we exited the highway. Anyway, my main issue was they told me it would be a 45 minute wait for the car. They also tell me the spot number. I go out to the garage after about 20 minutes to wait there. I later realize that the car had been ready for a long time just in a different spot. I identified it by looking at their number on a sticker on the windshield and matching it to my paperwork. I could have been out of there a lot sooner if they had just parked it in the right spot as I was waiting for them to pull a our car into that spot.
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That's terrible.

Rick was assigned a different car at Advantage this last trip. The first car had an empty gas tank. He had to wait in line again. Took him 90 minutes to get a car and get back in the airport to get me with the luggage. The waiting in line twice was terrible. And the shuttle took a while too. That was MCO.
 
rickandcindy23 said:
That's terrible.

Rick was assigned a different car at Advantage this last trip. The first car had an empty gas tank. He had to wait in line again. Took him 90 minutes to get a car and get back in the airport to get me with the luggage. The waiting in line twice was terrible. And the shuttle took a while too. That was MCO.
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Couldn't he have just had them note the gas level and fill it up himself? That's what I have done the few times the tank wasn't full. Then you just return it at the same or higher level and there is no refuel charge. Would have saved him that 90 minutes.

Kurt
 
A friend of ours told us recently that Hertz is going bankrupt as invested in electric cars, I have not researched it myself.
 
BarbmC said:
The last 2 rental cars I booked with Budget (using Costco for best price) both cars had over 55,000 miles on the cars. Is that unique to Budget, or is that the industry new normal?
Click to expand...
My experience with Alamo in Orlando lately has been the same. Cars with 50k+ miles.
 
We rent about six cars a year. Most of them through Avis / Hertz. Recently, all of the cars have been hybrids with under 20,000 miles.

We have rented from Budget in Puerto Vallarta and the car was an older pos with really high miles. I doubt any of the tires matched, lol. We rented from Budget in Cabo and it was a newer car with low miles. Budget in Mexico currently has the best rates that include the 3rd party liability and they allow a person to use their credit card to cover the car.

For Hawaii we started off with an Avis reservation , then a Costco reservation, then an Amazon linked reservation and finally a Hawaiian Car rental reservation which is through Thrifty.

Bill
 
PigsDad said:
Couldn't he have just had them note the gas level and fill it up himself? That's what I have done the few times the tank wasn't full. Then you just return it at the same or higher level and there is no refuel charge. Would have saved him that 90 minutes.

Kurt
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They don't have the checkout area at Advantage with a person standing at the exit. They give a key and you go. But that would have been better over waiting. I had dining reservations at Epcot I had to cancel for that night.
 
rickandcindy23 said:
They don't have the checkout area at Advantage with a person standing at the exit. They give a key and you go. But that would have been better over waiting. I had dining reservations at Epcot I had to cancel for that night.
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If that were the case, I would have just documented it via a timestamped photo and video on my phone to prove the tank was not full, and then come armed with that when I returned the car. Even if I had to buy some extra gas, it would have been better than waiting so long when when I have a time commitment.

Kurt
 
I think I hold the record for the oldest high millage rental car. It was a 84 Land Cruiser with a broken instrument cluster from a local Cabo San Lucas car rental company. We rented this to drive on the beach and go wheeling. I wanted to test it before we went out on the beaches and buried it by a bridge. We lucked out with a group of Canadian fisherman near the bridge who helped me push it out. I told my wife to drive to the road , meaning dirt road. She drove it all the way to the asphalt about a mile away. At least she knew to have a beer ready when I caught up to her.

Bill
 
I once had a boss who had written software for one of the big rental agencies. He said that a big or primary part of their business model is in selling used cars. So, perhaps the combination of a previous shortage of new cars, and the higher cost of new replacement cars and perhaps the increased difficulty of buying at highly discounted fleet rates has changed the paradigm and they have to hold onto cars longer. I suppose also, that used cars with, say, 50K miles on them may sell at an attractive rate. Also, the Covid virus made people cut way back on travel, so the Free cash flow of the rental companies was cut and they probably stopped buying new cars. So they have a fleet of older cars that are being replaced slowly.
 
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