Needed a car to rent for twelve days for my wife and me during our 10 day upper Midwest road trip…read more Decided to spurge a bit to get a nicer car, and surprisingly found the Hertz at O'Hare to have the best price for an airport rental of a luxury mid-size SUV (Volvo XC60 or comparable) at $572.32. I booked directly with them and there was no mention of additional charges collected at time of rental, just that it had to be prepaid and was non-refundable.
We had the last Delta flight from LAX to ORD so my wife, her mom, and I got into Chicago around midnight. The Airport Transit System (train) will take you to all the terminals and multi-modal facility where all the rental car agencies are. Terminal 5 is the last stop before it, and the train cars were pretty full by the time it came to us, even this late. We had to abandon our luggage cart, and hand-wheel our luggage, finding space. I've been a member of the Hertz Gold program for a while, back to my corporate days, and knew to skip the rental counter and go directly to the garage to see my name in lights. It didn't matter since, the main rental counters were all closed this late at night, so everyone had to go to the garage.
Sure enough, my name was listed, but instead of showing where I could pick up my car, it said to see the counter attendant. There was only one person there, and there was a line. Once it was my turn, it turned out the car wasn't ready for us. I think they don't want to have the XC60 for others to choose, so they had to get it 'from the back'. It didn't take very long to do that, and everyone was perfectly civil about it. However, they hadn't checked me out, so when we got to the gate to leave, we had to do the checkout process with the attendant (she was not happy since someone before hadn't their job). We went through a car scanner which recorded the outside condition of the car.
As for the trip, I was really happy with the car. It had some of the most comfortable car seats I've ever used (fully adjustable for both upfront seats, with lumbar support) and the back seats were heated. The power moon roof was so large, though we couldn't use it much open since it was hot and sunny during our trip. It also surprisingly didn't have wireless Apple Play, so had to find a USB-C cable, and then it worked fine with Navigation and Spotify. It was a really good trip, and the SUV had a lot to do with that.
Bringing the car back, once you got close to O'Hare, it was important to follow the signs for rental car return, vs following the directions on Google Maps. We passed through a similar car scanner when we entered the lot. We didn't have to wait for anyone to check us out, just leaving the keys on the dash. For once, we didn't forget anything in the car. We got an itemized bill by email in a couple of hours. We took the train back to Terminal 5.
A couple of days later, we got another email saying that the car had been returned with no damage. However, they also charged the additional money as well, so I opened up an incident to explain the charge. We'll see where that goes.
Stats: 10 states visited (IL, WI, IA, MO, KY, TN, AR, MS, OH, IN), missing two of the Mississippi River States (MN, LA). 7 gas stations visited on trip, $294.20 spent, 72 gallons used, 2,133 miles driven.