Here's our story:
We had a reservation to pick up a car here on the morning of Christmas Eve, for a one way rental, so that we could drive to Newark, NJ. (Note: with one-way rentals, Avis was charging us for mileage. This will come up later).
On 12/23, we found ourselves stranded in Annapolis and needing to be in DC, so we decided to do a local rental for the day, and reserved a car online.
We showed up to a location that was theoretically a Budget-Avis shared office (but the only indication that it had anything to do with Avis was a tiny sign). Avis did not have its own counter area or representative (and therefore certainly no preferred line; nor was our car ready with the keys waiting, as is supposed to happen with Avis Preferred - I know, 1st world problems, but still). The line was slow, but finally we had our car, and were on the road. Yay! If that were all, I'd probably be giving 2 stars.
The representative told us that we still had to bring our car back the next morning, to close our "local" rental contract and open a "one-way" contract (because of the different rates & mileage). We showed up at 7:30am the next day to a locked door, no signs of life (posted hours said the location opened at 7am; no signs indicating that the location was closed or had different hours on Christmas Eve, nor had the representative mentioned anything the previous day).
We called Avis, and they were able to let us keep the car (and contract) we had, without additional charges, and we only lost 15-20 minutes on the phone with them. *However* - I have no clue what would have happened if we hadn't accidentally stranded ourselves, necessitating renting a car the previous day. Would Avis have sent a car to Annapolis for us? How long would we have waited? I'm sure that it would not have been pretty, with holiday traffic getting worse by the hour, and family expecting us in New York.
So, if you find yourself needing a rental car in Annapolis, I recommend Enterprise, which looked like it had an actual location. read more