I had a couple interesting experiences with Enterprise on my slightly doomed Florida trip that I thought were worth sharing.
@Chrisgoesflying also learned a hard lesson about Hertz: https://www.pilotsofamerica.com/community/threads/that-trip-was-cut-short.136721/#post-3217523. I've had a couple lousy experiences with Hertz so I avoid them if possible, but his takes the cake.
Back to my Enterprise car....I use them as I seem to have better experiences with them and they have a dedicated G.A. service desk that can arrange cars delivered to fbo's. I used to have good luck with their dedicated G.A. website, but it is basically non- functional since covid started.
Anyway, we were stranded in Macon, GA, and the local office wasn't answering the phone. I called the general aviation line and the woman who answered told me they appeared to have a van and were supposed to be open, but weren't answering the phone for her either. She reserved the car for me, and one of the flight school mechanics was kind enough to drive me to the office.
Lesson 1: she quoted me both the G.A. rate and the counter rate. The difference being if the car is delivered to the airport or picked up at their office. The G.A. rate was $30 per day higher. I had always assumed there would be a "delivery fee", but for a longer term rental like this the difference was significant.
I got to the office, and there were three employees, one of which was helping a costumer, and two who were.... not answering the phone. One of them came over (she was very nice), found my reservation, confirmed they had a van and took me out to it. She ran my card... and it was declined. Apparently Citi's fraud department assumed there was no way I got from IL to GA in 3 hours and wanted to spend $900 on a rental car. Here's the maddening part....I got the message from Citi asking if it was fraud and responded "no", but the girl from Enterprise wouldn't re-run the card. She claimed their system wouldn't let them re-run the same card for 24 hours. I had another card, but it's also a citi card, so I called their number and spent 15 minutes trying to explain to an Indian woman that I needed them to not decline the charge I was about to make on my second card. All in all about an hour to actually get the car.
Lesson 2: call the credit card company before long trips because G.A. confuses them.
When it became certain that I was going to have to drive the car home, I called to request a two day extension. No problem they said, someone would call me to confirm. About 30min later the macon branch manager calls (they can use the phone!)...."no problem just use it as long as you need". I explain it will be a one way rental now and asked if he needs to know where I'm going to drop it off...."nah, we'll find it"
So that settled we proceed to put about ~1600 miles on it over 11 days. Retrieve our car from our hanger, and take the rental over to the terminal, where the airport office is open. Rather than drop the keys in the box, I took them to the counter in hopes I could avoid an extra day's rental charge, as we were about an hour past the pick up time. The guy scans the keys in, finds the rental info, asks if everything was okay, then says "hmmm... let me see if I can apply the U of I rate to this". He does, and it cuts the rate basically in half. $550 for 11 days. Unreal. The only reason I can fathom him doing this is I had my airport AOA badge on still, and the airport is owned by the university, so he must've assumed I was an employee.
Lesson 3: there are corporate rates that are less than half of the counter rate, and 1/3 of the G.A. rate. I need to figure out how to access that.
@Chrisgoesflying also learned a hard lesson about Hertz: https://www.pilotsofamerica.com/community/threads/that-trip-was-cut-short.136721/#post-3217523. I've had a couple lousy experiences with Hertz so I avoid them if possible, but his takes the cake.
Back to my Enterprise car....I use them as I seem to have better experiences with them and they have a dedicated G.A. service desk that can arrange cars delivered to fbo's. I used to have good luck with their dedicated G.A. website, but it is basically non- functional since covid started.
Anyway, we were stranded in Macon, GA, and the local office wasn't answering the phone. I called the general aviation line and the woman who answered told me they appeared to have a van and were supposed to be open, but weren't answering the phone for her either. She reserved the car for me, and one of the flight school mechanics was kind enough to drive me to the office.
Lesson 1: she quoted me both the G.A. rate and the counter rate. The difference being if the car is delivered to the airport or picked up at their office. The G.A. rate was $30 per day higher. I had always assumed there would be a "delivery fee", but for a longer term rental like this the difference was significant.
I got to the office, and there were three employees, one of which was helping a costumer, and two who were.... not answering the phone. One of them came over (she was very nice), found my reservation, confirmed they had a van and took me out to it. She ran my card... and it was declined. Apparently Citi's fraud department assumed there was no way I got from IL to GA in 3 hours and wanted to spend $900 on a rental car. Here's the maddening part....I got the message from Citi asking if it was fraud and responded "no", but the girl from Enterprise wouldn't re-run the card. She claimed their system wouldn't let them re-run the same card for 24 hours. I had another card, but it's also a citi card, so I called their number and spent 15 minutes trying to explain to an Indian woman that I needed them to not decline the charge I was about to make on my second card. All in all about an hour to actually get the car.
Lesson 2: call the credit card company before long trips because G.A. confuses them.
When it became certain that I was going to have to drive the car home, I called to request a two day extension. No problem they said, someone would call me to confirm. About 30min later the macon branch manager calls (they can use the phone!)...."no problem just use it as long as you need". I explain it will be a one way rental now and asked if he needs to know where I'm going to drop it off...."nah, we'll find it"
So that settled we proceed to put about ~1600 miles on it over 11 days. Retrieve our car from our hanger, and take the rental over to the terminal, where the airport office is open. Rather than drop the keys in the box, I took them to the counter in hopes I could avoid an extra day's rental charge, as we were about an hour past the pick up time. The guy scans the keys in, finds the rental info, asks if everything was okay, then says "hmmm... let me see if I can apply the U of I rate to this". He does, and it cuts the rate basically in half. $550 for 11 days. Unreal. The only reason I can fathom him doing this is I had my airport AOA badge on still, and the airport is owned by the university, so he must've assumed I was an employee.
Lesson 3: there are corporate rates that are less than half of the counter rate, and 1/3 of the G.A. rate. I need to figure out how to access that.
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