I’ve rented a lot of cars, and from almost every agency. I once worked for a company that would pick up rental cars for foreign employees working for us on long-term loan — we had a mini-fleet parked outside. And I used to negotiate contracts with Hertz and the like. It’s been years since I handled a corporate account, but I still rent cars frequently for family trips. I thought I’d use a rental for a weekend trip to Salem, Mass., so I could put my car in the shop for some maintenance.
I stopped by the local Enterprise in Annapolis, Md., and said, “I’m going to Massachusetts for the weekend.”
The rental guy says, “It won’t come with unlimited mileage because Massachusetts is outside a certain range.”
“What?” My conversation with him appears below.
“If you rent in Md., you get the surrounding states with unlimited mileage, but if you’re taking it beyond a certain range, you get only so many miles per day, and then you pay extra over that.”
(We’ll ignore the possibility for now that I would rent the car and then surreptitiously drive it out of the state range on the ‘surrounding’ states unlimited mileage option — not that I would do that because there would be hell to pay if say, I got in an accident — but if someone did that and nothing exceptional happened, how would they know?)
“Huh? I’ve rented from Enterprise before and taken the car from Maryland to the Keys, on unlimited mileage, of course.”
“Well, you can still get unlimited mileage from the airport location.”
“Why would that be? Those are the people that least need unlimited mileage. They’re flying in from a great distance and then using the car locally.”
Then he tries to convince me that a lot of people fly hundreds or thousands of miles only to hop into a car and drive HUNDREDS more, instead of, say, flying to an airport closer to the location they’re driving to. (Maybe a few, a definite minority, but not A LOT).
“People don’t usually do that, trust me. They just pick a closer airport.”
He doesn’t address that, but goes on to claim:
“The extra cost is because of the time the car is out of service because, you know, if it goes that many miles, they have to service it. And we lose money while it’s out of service.”
(We’ll ignore for the moment that many rental cars I’ve had seemed to have been serviced last when Henry Ford was still around).
“Well, that might sound good to you, but how does that work? I mean, after all, I could drive the car in Maryland 1,000 miles in two days (which I’ve done), does that mean because it was still in the surrounding area, they won’t tag it to be serviced?”
Not waiting for his moronic answer, I continue, “If I rent the car for two days, two days is two days, why do you care if I rack up the 900 or more miles in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia (all allowed under the local unlimited mileage option, plus Del., Pa., N.J., and N.Y.), or in Massachusetts?
Didn’t have an answer to that one.
In fact, it sounded suspiciously like it was ONLY Massachusetts that was invoking the ‘long distance’ non-unlimited mileage fees, like maybe they were just inventing reasons to charge people more.
They wouldn’t do that, would they?
Yes, they would, and its troubling because many wouldn’t understand all the ramifications of this policy. The policy is for suckers. In mentioning this to someone else, there was at least one point they missed.
Say I rent the car to go to Massachusetts, it’s not like I really get unlimited mileage driving through Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and then bang, I hit the border of Mass. and the meter starts rolling.
You see, if I really got unlimited mileage in the surrounding states, as the guy inferred in his explanation, that’s what would happen. BUT they have no way of discerning that and charging me ONLY for the more than 200 miles a day I log in Mass.
So in effect, if you get charged for anything over 200 miles a day when you take it out of the surrounding states, you’re really getting charged ANYTIME you take it over 200 miles. So in two days, in reality, I’d get 400 free miles and then have to pay for anything over that. Even if I didn’t make any side trips, according to MapQuest my destination is 884 miles, so I’d get hit for mileage on 484 of those, surely a steep bill.
This is another example of a policy that’s just dumb. It’s prone to misunderstanding, which is poor customer relations, and it seems predatory given most of folks I’ve explained it to don’t initially understand and think they’re paying only for the excessive mileage within Mass.
Rental companies have the right to charge whatever they want, just as I have the right to walk out. That’s what I did.
They most likely have a GPS tracking unit in the car, so if you think you can just happen to drive out of the area and get away with it, you’ll be in for a shock.
Revoking or limiting unlimited mileage for local renters is a common practice, and not entirely without justification.
I think the rationale goes like this: If you are from out of town, you are likely to use the airport closest to your destination, and therefore are unlikely to actually accumulate that many miles, making the “unlimited mileage” option cheap to the rental car company.
If you are local, and you decide to use the unlimited mileage option to take an extended road trip, you have cost the company more in maint. costs than they made off of your daily rental rate.
Since the alternative would be to charge local renters more money for all rentals to make up for the few long-haul users here and there, the policy makes a lot of sense. (Or alternatively, they would have to jack up rates for all rentals, period.) If you are an out-of-town renter not wanting to go on a costly (for the rental company) road trip, this is a good policy; it all depends on your point of view.
Yes, you can indeed run up a lot of miles within a single state, but you are unlikely to, hence the restrictions being written the way they are.
BTW, If you take the car out of the area specified in the contract, you possibly lose liability insurance protection, and will be in very, very, big trouble if you get in an accident.
Let’s make it clear – I would never rent a car and knowingly use it outside of any limitations – and I would strongly caution readers against that – it could invoke severe penalties, everything from extra costs, to lack of insurance coverage, to having the car picked up by the cops (if a rental company confirms you’re using a car outside of a prescribed range and suspects anything illicit, they’ll report it stolen).
However, I once got a rental when someone damaged my car and took it outside the allowed range, without even knowing it. (The counter guy ‘forgot’ to notate I could take it into Virgina – when I was working in DC and there’s always a chance you’ll end up there if you go over the bridge). Technology might have caught up with this by now (this incident was several years ago), but nothing happened. They didn’t even know I’d done it until I made an off-hand comment about it. However, if you live close or work close to state lines, make sure every state involved is included.
So go to the airport for your local rental and the problem is solved. I have done that (not for the this reason), but I rented a car in Akron, OH at the airport and drove it all the way to Virginia and back and they were fine with it.
SirWired – it’s actually not as uncommon as you might think these days for long distance renters to rent from local offices as opposed to airport locations. Thanks to the plethora of bogus fees and taxes being charged at airport rental locations, it can be substantially cheaper to go a little out of your way and rent at an off-airport location. I recently needed to book a car for a week in Dallas for a business trip. The difference in total prices between renting at DFW vs. renting at a Budget local office a couple of miles from my hotel was nearly $150 due to all the fees (and higher rates) they charge at DFW. Ok, so this is a bad example because I’m obviously not going to take the car very far in this case, but let’s say you need to go to drive Florida or something. Even with a $40 cab ride factored in to get from DFW to the off-airport location, you’d still be ahead over $100 in this example.
The conspiracy theorist in me says some of the more enterprising, no pun intended, rental companies put in these “local area” clauses in on purpose to force people to rent at the more expensive airport locations. Of course, these clauses have been around for at least 20 years at rental car companies in Dallas, so maybe it’s nothing.
As an aside – how ludicrous is it to put a “don’t take the vehicle out of state or no free miles” clause in a place like Texas – you can EASILY ring up 2,000 miles in a week without ever leaving the state! From the Louisiana border, it’s closer to South Carolina than El Paso – yet you get unlimited miles for the trip to El Paso, but only 150/day to go to SC.
I do not understand why people rent from Enterprise Rent A Car as they have some of the most deceptive practices in the industry.
For example, they classified the Chevy Cavalier as a midsized car and the Toyota Camry as a luxury car.
For example, their “unlimited miles” are generally only for adjacent states, which is not the industry norm.
For example, their reservation system accepts reservations for periods when they are NOT open and neglects to alert the renter.
To me, it is NOT worth the aggravation to save a couple of dollars as you never know what you are going to encounter when you rent from ERAC.
There may be other logical reasons behind the charges, which still sound like a scam to me as they should be covered by your insurance. In NY, for example, if you get into a crash, any injured party can sue not only the driver but the registered owner (originally intended to protect the chauffeurs of the rich) – and in some counties juries have been known to give the injured a lottery win (which is why Queens, Brooklyn and Bronx residents get surcharged when renting from Hertz and Enterprise).
In NY, I’ve generally found that schlepping to La Guardia to rent from Avis is cheaper than paying the Queens/Brooklyn/Bronx surcharge, notwithstanding the airport fees.
Enterprise had the same rule in Wisconsin last year I was told. Just the sates that touch the state of Wisconsin. I thought it was strange and rented from a different company that didn’t have the restrictions. But it’s their car so they can tell me what to do. I like others worry that if I do break the rule the way they will find out is the dreaded Murphy’s law accident.
Could Enterprise perhaps be in the vanguard of capitalizing on a new trend? With air travel becoming increasingly painful, perhaps more people are now choosing to rent cars for long-distance road trips rather than fly. They may rent because they don’t want to put the wear and tear on their own cars, because they want something more comfortable or reliable than their own cars, or perhaps because they don’t own a car. Since they’re not flying, they’ll choose a local office rather than going to the airport. Thus the targeted gouging. Or else they’re gouging people who do fly and who know enough to avoid the special taxes and fees charged at airports.
Whatever the reason, it’s gouging. And it’s reason to heed this “consumer alert” to call the office you’re thinking of using and insist on a full disclosure of “special” restrictions and fees before booking.
>>more people are now choosing to rent cars for long-distance road trips rather than fly. They may rent because they don’t want to put the wear and tear on their own cars, because they want something more comfortable or reliable than their own cars, or perhaps because they don’t own a car. <<
Last year, when airline prices were high, we were renting vehicles from Hertz Local Edition for $12/day on a three day weekend rental. At THAT price, why would I want to use my late model vehicle? If we were driving over 300 miles TOTAL, it was better to rent. Also, at HLE here in Chicagoland, the tax rate is 7% rather than 26% at the Daley airports.
All good things come to an end. This year, airfares are ridiculously low and the car rental rates are off.