Hertz hurts: Would you pay double for some convenience?

Actually, the question is: would you let your company to pay double for some convenience?

Recently, I started a new job that required me to commute weekly from the SF Bay area to Denver.  My company is nice enough to pay for all my travel costs.  I used to travel a lot and I loved Hertz.  I have told many people about the great Hertz Number One Gold service.  It was the gold standard in customer service and customer satisfaction even 15 years ago.  You walk out of the Hertz bus, look up the board to see your name and which stall is your car, walk to the car, and drive away.  It's always a fantastic experience especially appreciated by frequent travelers.

In contrast, years ago when our team used to travel to UK frequently, and we had a special deal with Alamo.  After 12+ hours of international flight (it was very long even though we were flying first class back then), took the long bus ride from the gigantic London Heathrow airport to the Alamo property, waited in line for 15-20 minutes, and then we had to endure and resist the up-sell pitch by the agents.  Once the car was finally selected, the contract done, you have to wait another 15-20 minutes for them to send the car through the mandatory car wash (note that it's raining outside, who cares about getting a car wash?).  All this time, we were thinking about our 45-minutes drive in the rain, driving on the opposite site of the road to the hotel to get some sleep.  This torture would be the total contrast from the Hertz Number One Gold Standard.

Back to my recent Denver experience, the excellent services have not changed and I very much appreciated the tremendously fast  and convenience service.  The first couple of rental reservations were fine, I went to hertz.com via united.com after I bought the ticket. This way, I got a 10-15% car rental discount for the company, and I got 1,000 bonus miles (which I have not yet seen).  I did this for a couple of weeks, and saw the rental price jumped up quickly each week.  As a busy frequent traveler, I didn't have much incentive to change my routine, and I did not have much time to shop around...  until in one of my expense reports, I noticed that with tax and other long list of fees, my 4-day car rental charge was higher than both my air fare and my hotel bill!  This was getting ridiculous. Since I am a reasonably responsible corporate citizen, I asked myself, how much would you pay for a medium size or a compact rental car?  $30? $40? $50 per day?  How could it cost more than a $99 hotel room?

I was kind of hoping my company offers the Web 2.0 comparative pricing business travel services from Rearden Commerce (where I used to work), unfortunately it did not. We are using ADP Expense eXpert, and just a week ago, they brought in the travel agency sponsored Concur service.  The interface is definitely not as pretty as what we had at Rearden, but I had to use what I have.

After I put in my itinerary, it was SHOCKING to see the comparison: Hertz' rate was $62 per day for a mid-size car, comparing to Enterprise, which has the next highest, at $31 per day for a mid-size!  Wow, Hertz, this really hurts.  Can I really justify paying double for the convenience?  I guess I will find out next Monday.

Now comes the news of Hertz buying Dollar.  Will this give Hertz even more muscle to charge a premium, or will Hertz keep Dollar as a value brand just like Enterprise, National and Alamo?  Event thought these three are one company, but the three brands compete in their own individual pricing tiers.  We shall see...  In the mean time, I'd better remember to jump on the green (Enterprise) bus instead of the yellow (Hertz) one next week.