dailyjo2003

I have reserved a car at LAX next week from Thrifty. However, their "reservation" does not require or allow you to pay or put down a credit card.

This makes me nervous as to whether they will honor this reservation.

Anyone have experience with Thrifty or know if they'll let you prepay? If they do suck, what is a good rental company? (I need pick up in LA and drop off week later in San Fran)

Thanks!

wooÐs

I always use Enterprise. Never had any problems.

The_Jazz

Thrifty is ok - not great, but ok. If you've reserved something particular, you want to call the actual location a few days in advance and confirm everything. If you're worried, do the same.

However, this is standard operating procedure for car rentals. They do not worry about deposits until you are actually at the facility. Rental companies also rarely let you prepay, if at all.

Also, you should be aware that they may not take a deposit on debit card.

Personally, I like Hertz, and I rent almost exclusively from them - about 40 times a year.

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dailyjo2003

Cool thanks. So nobody takes the money up front or a deposit?

The_Jazz

I've never run into that situation. There's probably a few franchise owners that do, but my experience has never been that anyone requires one, especially since you could get delayed or cancelled outright due to circumstances out of your control (storms on the East Coast and/or weather in Chicago can grind air traffic to a halt if it's bad enough).

I'm sure that you could convince them to take your money if you absolutely had to, though.

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Cynthetiq

I've been using an obscure car rental website aggregator, carrentals.com that allows me to rent cars around the world without having to put a deposit. I have yet to have a single problem. It takes reservations from the big guys, Hertz, Avis, National, Enterprise, and the smallers like Fox, Thirfty, U-Save, Deluxe.

What I like about this is that I can lock in a reservation, and continue to search for cheaper prices weekly or daily. I have in effect, secured a car reservation, but been able to jump to another company without jeopardizing my reservation or my wallet.

By the way, if you are going to LAX Deluxe is a piece of shit rental company. Better cars, cheaper price, but CRAP customer service and they don't even have their own shuttles you have to use Johnny Park to get to them. Because of my system of having other cars saved, I happened to have a back up reservation with Fox which was a much better experience, and the agent gave me a free upgrade to the same class of car that I wanted from Deluxe without any extra charge.

I know that if you use other aggregate websites, they take your money up front. That's something I do use for some European rentals when I rent from autoeurope.com. I've used them for a number of years, and they will take the reservation as well, but if you pay for it it's guaranteed 100%. I had a problem where my reservation wasn't held and we were overseas. A phone call from the rental company to autoeurope cleared it up quickly and I got my rental car.

If you have to do a one way rental, I'd check the larger ones like Hertz, Avis, but check Fox as they are a Southwestern regional company serving LAX and SFO. I've had good experiences with them and their cars.

good luck!

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mrklixx

Alamo and Budget both have the option to prepay for your rental. Also if you use Pricelines "name your rate" or Hotwire, you will prepay for your rental. I agree with Cynthetiq that it is probably a good idea to have at least 1 "back up" reservation. I have also used Deluxe @ LAX, and was able to get a great deal (a premium car with full insurance coverage for less than what all the others were charging for a full-size without coverage), but it can be pretty scary, especially for someone not used to renting cars or for someone in a hurry.

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Cynthetiq

How long did you wait for Deluxe? I waited about 1 hour for the bus, then 30 minutes for the line that was about 2 hours long. People returning cars were pissed because the line went out the office, through the parking lot, and out onto the sidewalk. They were just abandoning the cars in the lot so that they could make their planes.

Just as aside, I ended up missing the last hour that my aunt dying of cancer had on the planet because of them. She died while I was 30 minutes away on the 405 with little to no traffic. Of course I could have been like the rest of the family and been in LA for the previous week on the deathwatch.

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mrklixx

I waited 30-45 minutes for the bus to get there. I must have been at an "off peak" time/day because both when I picked up the car, and when I dropped it back off, there weren't more than 3 or 4 people in line. And when I dropped it off, there was already a bus there.

Sorry to hear about what happened with your aunt. Even with my relatively quick in and out, they are still definitely not the place to go if you have any kind of time constraint, especially since they are so freakin far from the airport.

I would never recommend them to any kind of novice car renter, and I'm not quite sure if I would use them again even with the huge price difference.

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