[mho]

This weekend, I tried to rent a Prius on my trip to Burbank, and for the third time in a row, EV Rentals fouled up my reservation. At this point, I'm giving up on them. They will never get their act together.

Each time, I've gone through the whole, onerous booking process on their web site, I specifically reserve a Prius, and then...

* Last summer, I reserved a Prius at San Francisco, and upon arriving at the counter, all they had was an Insight. This was fine at the time, as I'd never driven an Insight before.

* In December, I reserved a Prius at San Francisco, and they had no hybrids or EVs of any stripe at all. I walked away and got a regular car from Hertz, which is my normal rental company where EV Rentals isn't available.

* This weekend, I reserved a Prius in Burbank, and they tried to swap me an Insight again. This time I had luggage, so I walked away again and got a Hertz car.

When they first appeared, I was happy to have a cleaner option for car rentals, and two of my first three rentals back in 2001 went without a hitch (and even two of three, by the way, is no stellar customer service record). In 2002, things deteriorated markedly.

I have been waiting for them to get organized and eliminate these reservation problems, but they've been around for three years now and their service has not improved. I would definitely avoid them.

 

[Phoenix]

Prius Auto Rental Availability

Check with your local Toyota dealer. Some of the dealers use the Prius as loaners, and they rent them out on the weekend.

Before I bought a Prius, I rented one for a weekend; just called on Thursday and picked it up Friday after work. The dealer even let me turn it in on Monday morning and only charged me for two days.

That's what sold me; a whole weekend to test drive the car on the highway and around town, without a salesman in the car. Got to find out how it would work in my family, and without any high pressure sales.

This weekend test drive sold me on the car.

 

[Guest]

Prius

Phoenix, how do you like your Prius? How does it drive? Does it have good power? Does it handle well on the interstate? How well does it maintain speed?

 

[Guest]

Dealer Rental

Just rented an 04 Prius for next weekend from my local dealer in So. Cal. The cost is $150 for 3 days with no mileage limit.

 

[bradca21]

Re: Prius Auto Rental Availability

Check with your local Toyota dealer. Some of the dealers use the Prius as loaners, and they rent them out on the weekend.

Before I bought a Prius, I rented one for a weekend; just called on Thursday and picked it up Friday after work. The dealer even let me turn it in on Monday morning and only charged me for two days.

That's what sold me; a whole weekend to test drive the car on the highway and around town, without a salesman in the car. Got to find out how it would work in my family, and without any high pressure sales.

This weekend test drive sold me on the car.

It MAY be different with Toyota, but back when I was car shopping and looking at a couple cars from GM, they offered a 24 or 48 hour test drive... You get a couple days, take it home, go grocery shopping in it... all the good stuff. Downside, you have to have a car that you can leave with them AND a creit card number. I think they wanted to run a credit check too (might be wrong on that part)
Being that I had not had a car for 3 years before I bought my Prius (lack of $$, not a Begley Jr. in training, lol) I did not have a car to leave THERE. Being that I was 21 at the time and had HORRID credit, I didn't have an active credit card, nor any desire to have a credit check run to further fowl my credit up...

Granted, now I have a car, and better credit (buying a house next week) but if anyone out there is thinking this is a great idea, but doesn't currently have a car and/or credit card... Call them up first... just to be safe :wink:

 

[mpk]

Re: Prius

How does it drive? Does it have good power? Does it handle well on the interstate? How well does it maintain speed?

I've rented an 04 Prius several times, once for a LA to San Francisco run. No problem on the power, and it even did fine on the "grapevine" (long hilly portion of I-5). There was nothing that I disliked about it.

It was kinda funky how that had a pad of Valet instructions in the glove compartment. You're supposed to tear off a sheet and give it to the valet so that they know how to start the car.

 

[LouieNet]

This weekend, I tried to rent a Prius on my trip to Burbank, and for the third time in a row, EV Rentals fouled up my reservation. At this point, I'm giving up on them. They will never get their act together.

Since EV Rentals partners with Budget, I decided to call Budget directly to see if I can get a Prius for my trip to the ARIN conference next month. Even though Budget says that they won't guarantee reservation of a particular car model, they were able to look at the inventory at Dulles to tell me that their Dulles location doesn't have a Prius. The only why they'll get one is if someone drops one off on a one-way rental.

Now, I don't see anything on the EV Rental website saying that they will use "best effort" to get you a particular model. The site still says that they have a Prius available at Dulles. Maybe they'll bring one to you if there isn't one?!?

In any case, I am placing a request with the Vienna (or was it Leesburg?) Toyota dealer to see if I can rent a Prius from them. I just gotta get myself there from Dulles.

Louie

 

[mho]

So here's something fascinating. EV Rentals had trouble with Budget (obviously) and has switched its partnership to Fox Rent-A-Car, a discount rental company. Which is all well and good if you're flying in, or if you look like cash money. But if you don't have Donald Trump's clothes or skin color, read on to find out how Fox will use its "Local Renters" policy to redline you, and maybe turn you away without a car.

http://www.kron.com/global/story.asp?s= ... =Printable

 

[slo007]

Re: Prius Auto Rental Availability

Check with your local Toyota dealer. Some of the dealers use the Prius as loaners, and they rent them out on the weekend.

Before I bought a Prius, I rented one for a weekend; just called on Thursday and picked it up Friday after work. The dealer even let me turn it in on Monday morning and only charged me for two days.

That's what sold me; a whole weekend to test drive the car on the highway and around town, without a salesman in the car. Got to find out how it would work in my family, and without any high pressure sales.

This weekend test drive sold me on the car.

That's really smart. I should have done this before buying.

 

[ehurtley]

I know back with the 'Classic' Prius, in order for a dealer to sell the Prius, they had to offer one as a rental. This doesn't seem to be true for the current Prius though.

As for my experience? I had test driven a Prius twice before buying mine. One was right after the '04 model came out, and was more of an 'out of curiosity' thing than from any serious intent to purchase. Then when we started looking for a new car in earnest, my wife and I went and test drove one together. I looked around seriously for a place to rent an '04 to take an 'extended test drive', but just couldn't find one. So I bought it after very little test driving. (Mostly for the same reason I'm sure most PriusOnline residents bought one, for the geek/green factor.)

My only other experience with dealer loaners was back in 2002, when my wife and I first got married, and were looking into a new car. We looked at a Prius, but weren't impressed with the classic model. We had settled on a Hyundai Elantra GT. I owned a Hyundai Accent at the time, and was happy with it. (Hyundais really are a lot of car for little money.) My car happened to have electrical issues at the time (since resolved happily; it was blowing various external light bulbs at the rate of about one a month,) and was in at the dealer for repairs. The dealer said that the repairs should only take one day, and I had the day off, so it wasn't a big deal to be without a car (Portland has an excellent bus system.) Well, I came in to pick up my car that evening, and the repair shop was already closed. I had been told over the phone that I could pick my keys up at the sales reception desk. Well, they weren't there. The sales receptionist tried calling the service manager, but couldn't get ahold of him. I was rather pissed at this point. I *NEEDED* my car the next day. I had that poor receptionist trying about five people at home, to no avail. While she was trying, the salesman I had been talking to over the past couple days about the Elantra GT called to see what the status was. I basically ranted at him about how horrible the service department is, and how I liked the Elantra GT, but the horrible service dept was turning me off on this dealership. (It was one that was owned by the same chain as where I bought my Accent, but it was a recent addition, still having the old dealer's name on the sign.) He called his sales manager, who was also not able to get a hold of anyone in the service dept. (Apparently the old service manager had just quit with no warning the day before, and it was chaos in the service dept.) So the sales guy offered (apparently without checking with his manager first,) to let me borrow the Elantra GT until I could get my Accent back. It was their only Elantra GT on the lot (it was a new, hot model at the time.) The next day, after work, I came by the service department, ripped the supervisor a new one, while complementing the sales staff. That night, I wrote a letter to the owner of the dealership (and to Hyundai USA headquarters,) about how helpful the sales person was, and how UN-helpful the service department was. That salesperson's actions convinced me to buy the Elantra GT from him. Sadly, the deal fell through because the dealer wasn't willing to lower the down payment by a measly $500 dollars. Within a week, my wife and I had decided to go ahead and pay the extra $500 up front, but I lost my job the same day. (I guess when the CEO said to 'speak your mind' he didn't really mean it.)

It ended up being lucky for us, because it meant we didn't get a new car. Which meant that we ended up getting the 2004 Prius a few years later.