Someone asked about local rental outlets, and after I responded I realized I should have posted this earlier here. Bearing in mind that this experience happened in 2010, here is our negative experience with this location:
A few years ago, my wife needed to drive to upstate NY for a test prep course during the winter and didn't want to take our one and only car. The Somerville Ave Hertz offered a deal online that was a few dollars cheaper per day than the next-highest offer (Enterprise), so she booked it for noon on a Saturday. We show up a few minutes early and are informed that this location closes at noon, so it was a good thing we showed up early or they would have been closed. Okay, concerning attitude considering that we reserved a noon pickup via their website, but whatever.
They then bring us to the car they have, which the previous renter had smoked in and they hadn't had a chance to clean it. And by smoked in it, I mean cigarette butts in the ashtray and on the floormats, hot-boxed chainsmoking, not just a light odor that would dissipate in ten minutes with the windows open. That was all they had on the lot, and didn't really seem to care about it. We asked what our options were, and they said they would move our reservation to the Hertz location near the Park Plaza down by the Public Garden in Boston.
So we drive down there, now approaching 45 minutes after she should have been on the road. I drop her off and return home, figuring all was good. She calls nearly in tears because even though the Hertz location we reserved at said they were transferring the reservation with the same terms (price, size, etc), the new location didn't know about or honor the reservation at all. They were requiring her to get a new one with them at a price 3-4 times the original, and wouldn't budge. So the slackers at the Somerville Hertz basically lied to us so they could go home and left us holding an expensive bag.
I went back into town, picked her up, and after some frantic calling around the Enterprise in Central booked us at a discounted rate even though we hadn't done the usually required advance reservation and even stayed open a few minutes late as we raced over. All for a cost that was the same as the original Hertz reservation that was such a "deal".
We could have saved 3 hours of high-stress running around town if we had just gone with Enterprise to begin. The experience was so bad that even with my frequent business travel (15-20 business trips a year) I never rent from Hertz, but even if I did I would never go to the one on Somerville Ave. read more