Rental Car Reviews
I’ve Changed My Mind About Enterprise Rental Cars
Seven years ago I quit renting cars from Enterprise after one final bad experience in a string of irritating experiences. I vowed never to use them again.
Well this weekend I got off my high horse and tried out the Portland, Oregon location. The prices at Avis, Hertz, National, etc were all coming in at $150+ for the weekend and Enterprise was half that. So was Payless. And not even AutoSlash.com could help me find me a better deal.
In the past I would have sucked it up, paid the extra, and enjoyed the elite status perks from Avis or National. But there were no great promos to justify it and since I’ve recently struck out on my own professionally I’m more cost conscious.
My experience was great! They now have check in kiosks so I skipped the line of 10 people and was headed out to the garage with a reservation slip in less than 5 minutes. I was greeted by a friendly guy who gave me the option of several intermediate sedans or a cute little Buick Enco SUV that was spotless.
There was the usual walk around the car, but he didn’t belabor the point. And when it came to asking if I wanted extra coverage, it was condensed into “Do you want to run through your extra coverage options or are you already covered with a credit card.”
Wow! Instead we chatted for a few minutes about recommendations for Portland and the right way to pronounce Willamette Valley (“will-lamb-et”).
When I returned the car I had equally friendly, agreeable service with no painstaking walkaround to see if I’d incurred any minute scuffs. It’s possible it’s just this location that’s so awesome, but it was a great enough experience for price and feeling like a valued customer (and without elite status), that I’ll be willing to try them again next time they’re the cheapest price.
Full Disclosure: I may receive affiliate credit from links in this post or on this site which will help fund my travels. Thank you for your support!
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Lu
May 30, 2015 at 8:05 pm
Keri – like you after many disappointed experiences with Enterprise and a extremely poor customer service issue after a monthly rental, I have vowed to never rent from Enterprise ever again. I tell everyone that I can I would not recommend Enterprise based on the number of poor customer service experiences. In my opinion, there are other options and even for the more money, I will go with a service provider that appreciates my business. Thanks for the opportunity to post this on here.
Lu
Susan
May 30, 2015 at 8:32 pm
I have been renting from Enterprise in San Fran, and they are wonderful there too. Same experience as you had in Portland. Really easy, clean cars and friendly employees.
Faye
May 30, 2015 at 8:38 pm
I’d absolutely rent from Enterprise again! In Baltimore, Phoenix and Richmond the price was great, the people were friendly and helpful and the facilities were very nice. Very impressive each time. Fantastic deal when combined with a Discover Cash Back certificate.
Rick
May 30, 2015 at 8:52 pm
Enterprise is the worst! You get what you pay for. This time you got away hassle free but next time maybe not so lucky. This time you got an employee who doesn’t really care about his job because if he did he would have beaten you over the head till you bought the insurance. And yes the walk of shame around the car to inspect it. Than at return when they look at your contract and see you did not buy the insurance then they try to nail you for damages! They are not consistent and that is why they are not good. I can’t roll the dice every time and hope this time I won’t get screwed by them.
RR
May 30, 2015 at 9:33 pm
I’ve found Enterprise in BNA, SLC, DFW, MCO to be outstanding…which is why I use them over Hertz. I just got bumped from Hertz President’s Club because I found no value in their program.
Enterprise is efficient and very customer service oriented. Never had a bad experience…always got great value.
Carlh
May 30, 2015 at 11:35 pm
Until 2008, I rented exclusively from Enterprise for more than ten years. I was very happy until 2007-2008, I had so many bad experiences I stopped renting from them completely. A month ago, a woman ran into my wife’s car while she was parked. The insurance provided a rental car for a few days from Enterprise. What a mess. I saw one woman return a car and they said she had a gash in the side of the car. Not only could she not see it, but I looked for her as well and there was nothing but a slight bit of dirt. They were trying to create damage where it did not exist. They also used high pressure to get my wife to buy the CDW. She did buy it not realizing that our Sapphire Preferred covered everything. It also appears that if you do not pay the CDW extortion, they will find damage whether it exists or not. They also tried to say that my wife had a full tank of gas to start even thought the receipt showed 3/4 of a tank. With only a few people returning cars, it took almost an hour to return the car. This was a local location. I have found that the local locations are a lot worse than airport locations for games like this, but I still have trouble trusting Enterprise. It’s a shame because I used to be like a walking advertisement for them.
AutoSlash
May 31, 2015 at 1:26 am
Hi Keri, feel free to reach out to us at support@autoslash.com if you think we could have done better for you here. We’re always striving to get our customers the lowest possible rate for any rental, so when we hear that did not happen, we’re always curious about how we can improve.
Keri Anderson
May 31, 2015 at 1:38 am
Thanks! I have no complaints at all, I love Auto Slash! You’ve saved me hundreds of dollars in the last year. It was just a sign of how bad prices were that not even you could find cheaper rates than Enterprise on my preferred companies 🙂
DaninMCI
May 31, 2015 at 10:54 am
Good review. Maybe there is still hope for enterprise 🙂
kenny
June 1, 2015 at 5:37 pm
“Do you want to run through your extra coverage options or are you already covered with a credit card.” That just means they’re gearing up to ream you with some damages that were noticed only after you left the car without a walk around.
Jay
June 6, 2015 at 8:12 pm
Enterprise is the absolute worst. Everything everyone is saying about finding damage is true. Tried to return a different location, a car I had for less then 24 hours after my wife got in a car accident. Literally drove it to the hospital and home again where it sat all night. Tried to say I caused dents in the roof and wanted to do an insurance claim. I told them F off and drove back to the original rental location. Guess what? No damage found by them. Enterprise does everything they can to screw their customers. I put in multiple calls to the area manager, not one call was returned. They simple do not care about their customers and are out for insurance money on their worm out cars.