![]() ![]() If you’re going on a long vacation this can save you a fortune: that minivan that cost you $69.99 per day retail goes for $37.99 if your car is in the body shop and Allstate is footing the bill, the SUV we roll for $109 per day retail is $50.99 if you’re renting because some State Farm customer smashed up your car. The only substantial difference between a retail deal and an insurance deal (other than price) is that insurance clients are billed in a calendar day instead of a 24-hour clock, this means you can return a car anytime until closing and you’re still charged the day’s rate (conversely, if you have the car at 8am you may as well keep it until 6). Insurance customers pay a lot less and all insurance contracts have unlimited miles. This is the big money tip: Most of Enterprise’s business comes from insurance replacement rentals. so you can get the same deal again and again), take your rental by any Enterprise in the region the next day and remove the extra coverage, you can take that coverage off at any time but if you pay for one day’s coverage the person that sold you the waiver still gets credit for the sale and you get the cheaper daily rate for the rest of your rental, win-win.Ĥ. If you want to secure a really low daily rate but stay on that employee’s good site (i.e. The branch manager or assistant manager will be just as likely–if not more so–to drop the daily rate in order to sell you his pricey insurance package. Managers are the ones responsible for how much insurance (usually called “waiver”) their branch sells–frontline agents (“manager trainees”) aren’t commissioned, they just look a lot better on paper if they sell lots of waiver, this is also how they get promoted. Nothing says you can’t initial the “decline” box instead once your contract is printed, thereby declining the insurance and paying only your lower rate.ģ. One of the lines that I used to use was, “For just a few bucks a day you got a million dollars of coverage.” True, but the full million dollar payout from the supplemental liability doesn’t come due unless you die. By now everyone knows that you don’t need that extra rental insurance but just like service contracts at Best Buy, you can negotiate the daily rate of your rental down by agreeing to add all the insurance (we call it “full boat” when some poor soul gets soaked for all of the extra protections–damage waiver, personal accident insurance, and supplemental liability: the trifecta of consumer stupidity). ![]() It also means someone walking in saying they need a car no matter the price, that customer might get charged twice what he would have paid just asking for a car.Ģ. ![]() A good branch manager trains his employees to adjust the price as needed to keep the lot sitting tight, that means making some way-too-cheap deals when there are too many cars around. When an employee makes a reservation it’s critical to key in the rate quoted so the branch knows what to charge the customer when she comes in otherwise nobody would know what to charge. There are three main categories of rentals: personal (retail), corporate, and insurance, but on every single contract that goes out the agent manually types out how much you pay per day and he has authority to make it pretty much whatever he thinks you should pay. That rate you got when you called in was either the full retail rate, or the first number that popped into the agent’s head. Now, Confessions from the Enterprise rental counter:ġ. I assure you every bit of this is accurate as of February when I left my post, minor details may have changed but I highly doubt it. This list is truly the tip of the iceberg I left the company because I had some misgivings about corporate policies toward customers and employees, but needless to say I picked up a lot of information along the way. I know every sad angle of the rental car business and I think people should be educated about some of the games that go on behind the counter. In more than six years of employ with ERAC I worked as a grunt (“management trainee”), assistant and branch manager, and finally a manager in the fleet sales division. I sat down wanting to send you a quick list of ways customers can get the upper hand at the Enterprise rental counter, but I know entirely too much about this business to make this brief. They’re just there so you know how the game works. Despite the commercial with the brown-paper-wrapped car, Enterprise employees hate picking you up and dropping you off.ĭon’t use the tips that require lying. Prices are liquid, and depending on the day of the week and how you butter your agent in certain ways, you can get a good deal. Car rental insurance is a scam, but you can flip the script and use if to your advantage. 9 tips, 5 pages of insider info about how the car rental game really works. A former manager in the Enterprise fleet sales division has a guilty conscience to unload at your feet. ![]()
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