Clark Howard's Tips

Thrifty rental car redeems itself

January 5, 2005

In the fall of 2003, Clark trashed Thrifty Car Rental on the air. Thrifty was developing a pretty bad reputation for doing business, in part because J.D. Power & Associates ranked Thrifty as the worst company.

Clark gave the company a chance to go on the air and the representatives were very apologetic. They even said they played a tape of Clark's original broadcast at a company meeting to impress on employees how important this was.

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They also asked Clark to try the company again — anonymously of course — and he has rented Thrifty cars four times since that challenge. All of his experiences were fine, unlike in past years.

Apparently other people think so too. The new J.D. Power survey shows that Thrifty has moved from 9th place (last) to 4th place. Company representatives said they are more focused on serving customers and that is why they have improved.

In case you're wondering, Enterprise ranked No. 1 in the survey, Hertz was No. 2 and Payless was ranked as No. 9 (the worst). National has just gotten out of a bankruptcy filing and ranked third from the bottom.

Also when renting a car, rememeber that the stated rate price may not be the real rate price. You want to get the quoted rental price. And don't buy insurance products or add-on services at the rental counter. You may already be covered and they are not worth it.

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