I am having some bodywork done on my 2003 Subaru Legacy and I was was told took it would between 1-2 weeks so I decided to rent a car in the meantime. At first, I was going to rent what they call a "full size" car, a Ford Fusion or similar. I was booking online and there was an option to "Upgrade your car - Premium - Chrysler 300 or similar". I figured, "What the hell I almost never rent a car and Chrysler 300's seem kinda cool so maybe I'll pay a little more to drive that for a week or so", so I decided to do it.
I get to the rental place (Enterprise) and I'm told they don't have any Chrysler 300's. I tell them that's OK I'll just go with the Fusion instead. They tell me they're also out of those too, but they have a Nissan Rogue Select they can offer me until they get more 300's in, and the salesman told he thought that would be in a day or 2. Now if you're not familiar with Nissan's models, the Rogue Select is basically a carry-over of the previous generation Nissan Rogue crossover vehicle, which was redesigned last year, and this was a base model at that, the only option I could tell was AWD.
A few days later and I call Enterprise and they tell me they still don't have any 300's or Fusions. So I figure at this point I'll just keep the Rogue Select for the rest of the time, and all I asked for was for them to put me back at the pre-upgrade price, and the lady on the phone told me they didn't want to do that because the Rogue Select rents for almost twice the rate of the 300. I thought that was odd considering the 300 seemed like a considerably more expensive car (I confirmed this later, a Chrysler 300 starts at about $32000, while a Nissan Rogue Select starts at about $20000. The Fusion has a a higher starting price too at about $22500), and after some back-and-forth, I finally convinced her to put me back at the pre-upgrade rate, but she was really hesitant to do it, saying "Just letting you know we normally don't do this but I'll do it this one time".
I think that's a little annoying.
Now while it is true that enterprise does charge considerably more to rent the Rogue Select than a 300 or Fusion (about $400 per week versus $240 or $200), I cannot figure out why that would be! I get that the Rogue is a CUV and maybe there's a "CUV upcharge" or something, and I also concede that starting prices of new cars may not exactly reflect what rental costs are, but why such a large price difference for a less-desirable (at least in my mind) car? It seems ridiculous to me that I would pay for an upgrade, find out the upgrade car is not available, be given one that is actually less expensive in the normal world, but still have to pay the upgrade price?
It's like they dangled a carrot in front of me, and said "If you pay a little more, you can have this!"
And after I say "Sure, I'll pay more for that."
They go "Oh, we actually don't have carrots, we have cauliflower instead."
And I go "But I don't want cauliflower and wouldn't've paid to upgrade to cauliflower instead of carrots! If I can't have it then please don't charge me for it."
"But cauliflower is more expensive than carrots, it doesn't matter that you didn't pay for cauliflower or why cauliflower is more expensive than carrots, this is what we're charging you."
I'm happy they did eventually put me at the pre-upgrade price, but just wish I didn't have to be so pushy about it over the phone to get it. It's like they made out to be a problem customer, but I didn't think that what they were proposing was very fair.
Thoughts? Is this a common thing rental shops do?
tl;dr: Cauliflower instead of carrots!
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