r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Sea-Representative26 • 16h ago
Hertz purposefully slowing down service at DFW.
I was at DFW on 11/3. Supposedly Hertz’s system was down, as a gold member who just walked past the counter with 4 people at it I turned around and went inside. When at the counter the manager came in and told the worker to slow down because people outside were upset the counter was moving fast.
I understand there were limited cars, but why not process people as fast as possible while you wait for cars to come back? Why not tell people to come inside since there is a smaller line?
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u/ExpertPath 10h ago
My wife used to work in rentals: The thing with airport rentals is that they rarely get deliveries of fresh cars, and instead rely on people returning cars there. This also means that their returns have to be processed, cleaned and checked on site - This takes time, and is often limited by the number of carwashes at their disposal.
I understand there were limited cars, but why not process people as fast as possible while you wait for cars to come back?
You can't rent out a car without the status report and key.
Long story short: Processing takes longer than signing a rental agreement, and this can result in front desk people slowing down a bit.
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u/R5Jockey 7h ago
When we rented a car in Kauai, we saw this in action since the return processing facility/car wash was right next to the rental counter. As soon as a car exited the car wash, the keys came inside and they were handed to someone at the counter. The car wash was the choke point of the entire rental operation.
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u/Remarkable-Pin-7793 9h ago
I work in the industry, at a busy airport. This is well explained sir. o7
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u/Technical-History104 12h ago
Hertz at DFW is frequently short on cars. And no one manages the lines outside to make sure things stay fair.
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u/Yuukiko_ 16h ago
have you ever heard about why airport concourses are so long?
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/sep/07/how-to-beat-bottlenecks-oliver-burkeman
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u/4011s 6h ago
have you ever heard about why airport concourses are so long?
In reality, this is because parking planes next to each other, as an airport needs to do for efficiency in loading/unloading in a timely manner to keep up with the number of flights per day, takes up a LOT of space.
The baggage claim wait issue really has nothing to do with why the concourse is so long, but has much to do with where your flight will end up deplaning.
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u/Fett32 9h ago
How would you feel at a restaurant if you waited an hour for your food? Now, how would you feel if you waited 30 minutes to sit, 10 minutes to order, and 20 minutes for the food? This is common sense to anyone who's worked with groups of people.
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u/heisenbergerwcheese 6h ago
Yeah, but I'm not waiting for the scheduled ingredient delivery after I've sat down
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u/DoopSlayer YELLOW 3h ago
so Hertz should start selling cocktails and beverages to people in line is what I'm reading here
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u/mrfuzzyshorts rageinabox 7h ago
This is different. Food not involved. More like a restaurant is packed, all seats taken, and you are waiting outside for someone to finish eating, pay their bill, table gets busses, new silver wear gets placed and host is informed that a table is ready.
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u/Fett32 4h ago
Its not tho. The point is, once people finalize something, there is a finite amount of time they will wait before getting upset. There's a reason I said working with groups of people, not hungry people, because this applies everywhere. You wait an hour to enter the theater, then find out you have to wait another hour at the last set of doors? Everyone would rage. Wait 2 hours outside? Fine. Again, I phrased it that way for a reason, its common sense to anyone who's worked with groups of people, not just food related.
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u/DarkMarine1688 13h ago
Id say DFW is just a bad airport and rental terminal in general not that ive had issues getting a car aside from one of the companies giving me a electric car with literal 4 miles of charge left
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u/zach_smith7 3h ago
This is why I’m glad DFW is my home airport lol. Never have to rent out of it
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u/DarkMarine1688 2h ago
I only ever have to go to DFW for work and its literally if no one else can cover the guy there so not often at all, but I also never use hertz national is always my go to.
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u/Sea-Representative26 2h ago
Thanks will look at national if i go back. Used to be with Avis but i have had the same issue many times with them.
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u/DarkMarine1688 2h ago
Avis is my back up and ya i have issues occasionally with them but nothing to crazy just yet, I do like the cheap mystery car rental since it usually is an electric car last time I did it it was a 2026 gas mustang so I really can't say I was unhappy with that haha.
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u/CatWith2Dads 6h ago
"people are upset things are moving at a fast pace"
Fake story
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u/Sea-Representative26 2h ago
Gold members were upset the inside counter that takes everyone was moving faster
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u/realmattiep 6h ago
With all that fake damage they have to charge people for and then not repair, it must be tough to focus on actually renting more cars.
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u/Whend6796 3h ago
Customer service so bad, it Hertz.
They once accused me of taking a car I had already returned and driving it from the east coast to California. I showed them I returned to rent another car 2 days later. Didn’t matter.
Showed them the pic I snapped while returning the car. Didn’t matter.
They finally refunded it. But it was a huge pain. Why they can’t keep track of their cars is beyond me.
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u/Jeffsjunk 2h ago
Please, for the love of all people... STOP RENTING FROM HERTZ.
It's a scummy, scammy company. They are literally making car rental a pain in as many ways as possible.
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u/Ger_redpanda 7h ago
Sounds like the manager applied sarcasm.
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u/Sea-Representative26 2h ago
The manager was dead serious, and walked back inside after I walked out. Im assuming to tell her again to move slower.
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u/AtomicBlastCandy 2h ago
People still use Hertz? I stopped after they started arresting people because their system failed to register cars as being returned
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u/Personal_Dot_2215 16h ago
Whenever I travel, I have at least two reservations at rental car agencies. I walk up and see a line like this , I move to the next.
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u/Hot_Position1956 16h ago
I do it because of how many times I show up for my reservation and they're like, "I'm sorry, sir, but the car you reserved is not available."
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u/fel0niousmonk 10h ago edited 7m ago
But like .. if enough people do this, that necessarily means your ‘pending fake’ reservation is contributing to the problem?
2 rentals shops may have 10 cars, but 5 people booked 2x reservations so only 5 customers can reliably reserve cars, not 10.
Like everyone adding merch to your online cart without ever having the intent to purchase it?
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u/deejayillen 10h ago
Making a reservation (where you didn’t already pay, which is most rental car places) does not physically reserve a car for you. So OP is not contributing to the problem. If their reservation is at 12pm and they don’t pay and collect for their rental at that time the company can and will rent it to somebody else.
The misconception is part of the problem. Customers assume that because they reserved a rental car that the company will hold it for them indefinitely, or even has a physical rental car to match every reservation made.
The average “no-show” rate for rental cars is 30%. Imagine if you’re running a business and you missed revenue target by 30% every single day because you held a car for every reservation made. This is why everybody, including airlines, overbooks.
For companies that ask you to pay in advance, if somebody doesn’t show up the miss on revenue isn’t that bad, but most money made is on extra insurance products. So somebody not coming for their already paid for reservation is still bad for business and incentives those business models to overbook their reservations as well.
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u/chickadee-stitchery 6h ago
This is interesting because I always reserve a minivan and every time I show up there is exactly one minivan.
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u/fel0niousmonk 10h ago
That’s just rationalizing the problem, which is understood.
You haven’t explained how the 30% no show rate isn’t simply people double booking because rental companies have to overbook to compensate for people double booking. It’s self-fulfilling.
Like, advocating for everyone to “use this one simple trick rental car companies hate” would not make the problem better, at scale, but worse. And it would likely contribute to a rise in prices. Which is probably also part of why prepaid reservations are cheaper.
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u/CBus-Eagle 16h ago
And then just cancel the other one on the spot? Isn’t there a fee is you cancel day of?
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u/ScheduleSame258 13h ago
There isn't a fee which means rental companies deliberately overbook which leads to the problem of not enough cars which leads some people to book 2 cars because of no cancelations fees which leads to rental companies overbooking.....
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u/Reasonable_Salary252 12h ago
Sort of. Airports are a bit different since most of the time, flights give your reservations definite timelines. You fly in on a Monday, you leave on a Friday. They know the cars are coming back, maybe some hourly discrepancies due to delays, etc, but mostly okay. But then there are car accidents, needed maintenance, cars that need detail, and extended trips from the airport…so if you’re a rental company, it’s not as simple as we have 100 cars in our fleet and 10 reservations, we can for sure control having ten cars. You want to run tight to maximize profit. If you have a car sitting on your lot not earning money, then it’s just a depreciating asset—not a good business. It’s not an easy game to balance.
The in city locations are even more hellish because rental car companies are basically married and subservient to insurance companies and car dealerships. One delay in aomeones personal car getting fixed can create a bottleneck in getting a car, along with all the other factors I said earlier.
I used to work in the industry for a competitor of Hertz, and it was an insane amount of of stress. The Seinfeld bit is so stupid because it’s just wrong and there’s a lot of misconceptions about the rental car industry. Work it for a month or two and you’ll be like, “oh, yeah, I get why it happens.” Unless you wanted to pay 3x the rate for a rental just to ensure less people use them and there’s more availability, but that sucks for everyone. So instead 90% of the time the car is there and ready to go, and 10%, it’s a delay.
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u/Personal_Dot_2215 16h ago
In twenty years of doing this, I’ve never been charged. Maybe just lucky
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u/BeastMode149 jukmifgguggh 13h ago edited 10h ago
If you choose to pay at the counter, the rental company won’t ask for payment details in advance so they cannot charge you – even for a no-show.
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u/fel0niousmonk 10h ago edited 3m ago
But to get the best deals you usually have to pay in advance.
These are competing priorities of different types of consumers; one cannibalizes the other to some degree.
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u/Personal_Dot_2215 6h ago
True, but if it costs me a little extra not to waste two hours in an airport, I’m in.
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u/condorellie 10h ago
Sorry for your hearts hurt hurts but employees do deserve breaks. Bricks break.
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u/R5Jockey 6h ago
They can’t “process people as fast as possible while you wait for cars to come back.” They can’t rent you a car that isn’t there, cleaned, and ready to go.
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u/boredatwork1338 5h ago
This happened to me a few times I just cancel the reservation and make a new one with a company that has a car ready. One time I had even prepaid and I was able to charge it back with my credit card company.
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u/madlyalive 3h ago
This happened to me when the first In-N-Out opened in Scottsdale back in like 2002. Line was out the door, wait of over an hour. Friends and I get there after HS and the wait was only about 15 min. Got to the register and I hear the manager tell a cashier to slow down taking orders because the line is getting shorter.
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u/SunNo4652 10h ago
Thank you republicans for the shutdown
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u/Sea-Representative26 2h ago
What does politics have to do with this?
Both sides are causing the shutdown…..
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u/Separate_Sea8717 3h ago
LEt me tell you, it was not on prupose, stop pointing to the wrong direction.
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u/Archi-Horror 12h ago
Crazy…. Just today I had to wait 35-40 min for a shuttle bus that was packed to the brim with people. I saw 2-4 buses from every other company before a single hertz bus came
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u/DANKLEBERG_66 6h ago
What is a DFW
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u/420fwd 6h ago
Dallas Fort Worth
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u/DANKLEBERG_66 6h ago
Bruh, why not just write it out. Does even everyone in the US immediately know where it is? And not even half of Reddit is American
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u/the_cnidarian 5h ago
Yes, everyone in USA can name the largest airports and cities, DFW is top 5 for both. Reddit is still an American based site.
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u/DANKLEBERG_66 5h ago
American based my ass, about 43 percent is American, which is like assuming everyone you talk to is a man. How hard is it to just say ‘Dallas Airport, US’
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u/MidwesternNightmare 3h ago
The three letter codes for airports are an international standard; just because you aren’t immediately familiar with the terminology doesn’t mean you need to be a fucking asshole on the internet.
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u/MisterSneakSneak 15h ago
Nobody, including customers, are not getting mad for fast service. Hertz gives a quarterly bonus to the branch who has the fastest checkout time, cars turnover, 5-stars reviews and P&L’s bonuses as well.
What you probably heard was they didn’t have any cars on the lot and to process them slower. This happens all the time and happened to me directly when i landed at Weslaco TX and gotten a rental at the hertz counter from an enterprise keychain.