Confessions of a Rental Car Ninja: The Dos, Don’ts, and WTFs for Renting Cars

Summary

In this episode of The Straight Shift, The Car Chick® discusses her upcoming trip to the UK with her family, focusing on the challenges and excitement of renting a car abroad.  She brings in special guest, and rental car ninja, Doug Hofer to get advice.  The conversation delves into the nuances of rental car experiences, including tips for navigating the rental landscape, memorable car experiences, and the importance of understanding insurance and liability when renting a vehicle. Listeners gain insights into the best practices for avoiding damage charges and ensuring a smooth rental experience.

Takeaways

• Booking a rental car at the right time and right place can lead to better options.
• Taking thorough photos of a rental car can help avoid damage charges.
• Having a loyalty program can enhance the rental experience.
• Rental car companies often try to sell unnecessary insurance.
• Electric vehicle rentals can come with challenges like finding charging stations.

You can view a full list of resources and episode transcripts here.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Planning a Bucket List Trip to the UK
• 3:33 The Best and Worst Days of the Week to Rent a Car
• 4:37 The Best Rental Car Locations
• 6:39 The Benefits of Memberships & Loyalty Programs
• 8:56 Technology in the Rental Car Industry
• 10:11 The Car Chick's Favorite Rental Car Company
• 12:06 Best & Worst Rental Car Experiences
• 17:15 Getting Insurance Coverage on a Rental Car
• 19:27 Driving on the "Wrong" Side of the Road
• 21:06 Dealing with Damage to a Rental Car
• 23:09 The Pros and Cons of Renting Electric Vehicles
• 25:20 Final Thoughts & Rental Car Advice

Transcript

LeeAnn Shattuck (00:00)
Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Straight Shift, the podcast that tells the unfiltered truth about cars, driving, and all the automotive nonsense we deal with along the way. Right now, I am deep in the planning phase for a bucket list trip this Fall to the UK with my husband and my 80-year-old mother. This is something my mom and I had been wanting to do together for a few decades now. So she turned 80 this year. We're like, this is the year we're gonna do it.

And for me, it's gonna hit three bucket list items in one trip. A transatlantic on the Queen Mary 2, seeing Stonehenge, and driving on the wrong side of the road. That's right, I will be renting a car across the pond and driving in a right-hand drive car on the quote wrong side of the road for the first time in my life. And I'm super excited about it, not just to drive on the other side of the road and see if I can do it without wrecking, but I'm planning to rent

a brand of car that I can't get here in the US. So I'm really hoping for something like a Peugeot, just something that you can't get in the US. And I can get a manual transmission because in Europe they rent cars with proper transmissions. So I'm really happy about that. So stay tuned. I will be covering that experience on this podcast after the trip. We'll get back in early October. So probably one of the October podcasts.

And I'm going to do a video blog for my YouTube channel, CarChickTV. Now, this rental is going to be a little more challenging than usual because not only is it a different country, but I have some very specific requirements other than being a car I can't get here and having a manual transmission. But because of my mother's mobility issues, she can't get in and out of really low cars or really high cars. We have to have one that's just right that she can easily get in and out of,

and also have enough room in the back to carry her mobility scooter, which we are taking with us. So I can't just get a little small, sporty, fun car to zip around the English countryside. So in figuring all of this out, I realized I probably needed to turn to an expert car renter to get some advice, because it's been years since I've rented cars on a regular basis, and I've certainly never done it overseas. Plus, there are some secrets, there are scams out there, and there are some strategies that you've got to use to be a smart

car renter. So I reached out to a longtime client of mine who has mastered the rental car game over the past 20 odd years. And he is here to share that hard earned wisdom and tell us the do's, don'ts and what the F's of renting cars. So let's get into it.

I want to welcome Doug Hofer, a good client of mine, frequent traveler, rental car ninja.

Doug, thank you for coming on the show.

Doug Hofer (02:52)
You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

LeeAnn Shattuck (02:55)
How is it that you have become this rental car ninja? You travel for work. How many cars have you probably rented in your life?

Doug Hofer (03:03)
I'd say ballpark probably five or six hundred.

LeeAnn Shattuck (03:07)
Five or 600? Oh my gosh. Like I'm doing math in my head. That's like around 25 cars a year. Wow. Wow. Has that all been in the U.S. or have you rented in other countries too? Oh, this'll be fun. All right, well why don't we just kind of start with the basics before we get into what I'm sure are going to be some fairly hilarious and terrifying stories. But When is the best time

Doug Hofer (03:09)
Yeah, yeah, that's probably about right.

Roughly, yeah, that's probably between 25 and 30.

No, I've rent it in a few other countries.

Thank

LeeAnn Shattuck (03:36)
to rent a car? We talk a about the best time to buy a car, but there's like good times to rent days of the week, picking it up. What's your advice there?

Doug Hofer (03:43)
Definitely.

Definitely the best time to rent a car is first thing Monday morning or even Monday afternoon is OK. Tuesday and Wednesday can be a little dicey. The business travelers like myself are the ones taking all the cars those days. Thursday afternoon, no, no, you're not. You're not. Well, I will say the Wednesday night could benefit you because

LeeAnn Shattuck (03:58)
not going to get your pick of the litter if you go on a Wednesday. Damn. I'm going to be running one on a Wednesday night. Dang it.

Doug Hofer (04:09)
they rent out of cars typically Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday morning. Wednesday night, if you reserve a small or like you were saying, a mid-sized car that's good for your mother, you might get something a little nicer because that's all they have. Which, okay, fair enough, fair enough. Thursday afternoon and Friday and over the weekend is typically not a problem to get a car. All the business travelers start returning the cars around Thursday around lunch and they kind of sit there until Monday morning.

LeeAnn Shattuck (04:21)
Oh, I don't mind a free upgrade. I'm totally up for a free upgrade.

And a lot of us think about renting cars for personal travel, for vacations, and we don't realize just how much of the rental car business are the corporate business travelers, like I used to be when I rented cars all the time. So it makes sense. Now I know that when you and I've talked in the past, because we've been joking about your rental car ninja skills for several years now, you mentioned renting from the airport location.

Doug Hofer (04:41)
Okay.

LeeAnn Shattuck (05:03)
Now is that always true or is that just convenience because you're flying into the airport?

Doug Hofer (05:08)
It's mostly convenience. I have rented for some of the local trips that I take, I rent from a local location. It's like mostly, mostly I typically do all my renting with National rental car. I've been with them for almost 30 years. I use Hertz a little bit, I've had a couple of bad experiences with Hertz and Enterprise, Alamo, National. They're all the same parent company. So if you rent, if you're renting from Enterprise, you're kind of renting from any one of those three.

LeeAnn Shattuck (05:15)
an Enterprise or a.

Do the airport locations have a better selection of cars than the local places?

Doug Hofer (05:39)
I would say

the airport locations have the better cars, the newer cars with the lower mileage.

LeeAnn Shattuck (05:44)
⁓ okay. Well, that's good. Well, I'm to be renting out of the airport in Southampton in England. So it's a, I think it's going to be smaller, like, but I was not going to rent the car out of Heathrow and have the first time driving on the opposite side of the road in a right-hand drive car, a brand I've never driven, be getting out of Heathrow, which is, you know, trying to get out of like JFK or O'Hare.

Doug Hofer (05:50)
Okay.

Yes.

LeeAnn Shattuck (06:11)
after an eight hour red-eye flight. So being jet lag, I just didn't think that was the safest choice. We're going to take a car service from Heathrow to Southampton and then take a nap. And then I'll go pick up the rental car later in the afternoon at the Southampton airport. So hopefully I'll have some good choices there. But you talked about you have kind of a loyalty to National rental car. So what is it about?

Doug Hofer (06:14)
You good?

I like your decision.

Okay.

Good idea.

Mm-hmm.

LeeAnn Shattuck (06:39)
that and you know we're we're not really plugging any particular companies here and certainly none of them are paying me or giving me any benefits whatsoever. Hint hint but I'm just curious as to what you like about National. I certainly have my favorite. What is it about National that you like?

Doug Hofer (06:48)
Gotcha.

I'm

as I told you, I've rented from Hertz as well, but Hertz you reserve quote, quote, almost a specific car. And with National, I belong to the executive action, my executive elite. There's an Emerald Isle and there's an executive area and you get to choose the car you want, which gives you with all the car rentals I've had, I've driven so many different cars and I can put in my memory banks, which ones I really don't like and which ones I do.

LeeAnn Shattuck (07:18)
So the program you're in, and it's not just National doing this, it's because you're a part of this loyalty club and you have reached their like super godlike status with them. So like the rest of us might not get these benefits.

Doug Hofer (07:24)
Correct.

Yes. Executive, it's called.

No, but they have you can if you join the National Club and I believe most credit cards, a lot of the travel credit cards offer it. And I think the fee is only $50. Don't quote me on that, but basically you walk outside and it's an Emerald Isle and you can choose any car in the aisle. It's not you're not limited to a sedan or an SUV. You can choose that.

LeeAnn Shattuck (07:52)
Oh, so you're not even limited to the class of cars. Like pretty much anything in this row, grab the keys, enjoy. Okay. That's nice because there's a huge price difference normally between renting a small sedan and renting a big honking SUV. That's really One of the things that I've done in the past is because I've never really had that level of luxury with the rental cars before. But when I check in, I say, so what have you got?

Doug Hofer (07:56)
No.

Correct. Correct.

Correct. ahead.

LeeAnn Shattuck (08:19)
What is it you're trying to give me? And then I negotiate with them from there because I will reject cars. Like, nope, that's not what that or they'll tell me like, we can, you can have this, this or this. And at least I get a choice sometimes of what it is like, okay, yeah, I'll take the Mazda. Oh my God. No, I do not want the Chevy Malibu, you know? So I kind of get a little picky.

Doug Hofer (08:33)
Mm-mm.

Understood, understood.

Another benefit of joining one of the clubs, they all have it. You don't stand in the line. You go straight to the car, straight to the garage. Or even if I rent from a local Enterprise, everything's already in their system on file. I just show up and we go outside. That's it.

LeeAnn Shattuck (08:46)
that's nice.

Nice.

Now has technology changed? Because I know with so many other things in our lives and we can just kind of show up and there's a kiosk and you know, when I've rented U-Haul trucks, you just show up and you do everything on the app and there's a lock box and you do some things and like you never actually speak to a human. Are the rental car companies doing that now?

Doug Hofer (09:07)
Good.

⁓

Not quite yet, but the shift is coming. You still have to stand in quote, quote, a line to get out of the rental car area in your car, obviously. Atlanta Airport is by far the worst. That can take longer than the flight from Charlotte to get out of the rental car area. That hasn't changed. Yeah, no, it's not. No, DFW is not any better.

LeeAnn Shattuck (09:36)
Dallas-Fort Worth is not any better.

Doug Hofer (09:43)
That's one of the frustrating parts. know that Hertz is in the last couple months, they're doing, starting to do some AI stuff with checkout of rental cars. Some of it's good, some of it's bad because there's an AI  computer or something scanning the car for every little scuff and every little dent. That's something new, something new.

LeeAnn Shattuck (10:01)
Ooh. Wow. Okay. So

we'll come back to that a little bit later, but that's very interesting. My favorite rental car company is a company called SIXT, S-I-X-T, and that's one that not a lot of people in the U.S. have necessarily heard of. They've expanded a lot over the last decade, but they're a very old company. They're almost 100 years old or something crazy like that, it started in Germany. And what I love about them is that

Doug Hofer (10:07)
All right, that's fine. That's fine.

in

LeeAnn Shattuck (10:28)
You can rent real cars. You can rent BMWs. You can rent Mercedes. You know, you're not just getting the normal junker rentals that we're so used to. And, you know, that's enough for me to have a loyalty to that company because I can have a much nicer rental car. But they kind of solidified my loyalty to them. I making a trip out to Hollywood for some business and

I did just rent with them the cheapest little thing that I could get. I think I reserved like a Hyundai Accent or something like that. And when I, it was a small car, but it was just me and one other person. And you know, we just had overnight bags. It wasn't too bad. So I was more concerned about, okay, I know I can park that in LA, but when I got there and I was checking in and chatting with the guy, he actually recognized me and my brand.

Doug Hofer (11:03)
That's a small car. That's a small car. All right.

you can.

LeeAnn Shattuck (11:23)
from the podcast and some television work that I had done. He said, wait a minute, wait, wait, you're The Car Chick! You can't drive a Hyundai in Hollywood. And so he upgraded me to a Mercedes. I was like, my God, thank you. So yeah, that one experience pretty much solidified my loyalty to that rental car company for life. So I'm looking forward to renting with them in the UK. I have scoped out some, I've scoped out a

Doug Hofer (11:35)
Okay, that worked out well.

Okay. They're very

big. They are very big overseas.

LeeAnn Shattuck (11:52)
A Peugeot,

yeah, there's a little small Peugeot SUV that I'm really hoping that I can get one of those because it's just the right size. It's a manual transmission and it's a great car. So keeping my fingers crossed. Let's talk for a minute about... you had mentioned, some of the most terrible cars and you like being able to pick the exact car because you have had some less than optimal, shall we say experiences. What is seriously like the worst thing you've ever had as a rental car?

Doug Hofer (12:21)
That would be last spring in Tulum, Mexico. I reserved the car. There is no National Alamo or Enterprise at Tulum. Tulum is the latest fad in Mexico, south of Cancun. They've got a brand new airport. It's kind of just getting up and running, so to speak. I mean, the whole area of Tulum is getting up and running. I made a reservation at Hertz, and we got off the plane. We weren't the only plane to land. No, they didn't have any

whatever Hertz is called President Circle. There was no special line. And I got down there and I was with my wife and we stood in the line for a few minutes and it was not moving. There was only one or two people, you know, checking at the counter doing the work. And I looked over at this company next to them called Euro car, E U R O P C A R. I've seen it before. Anyway, I walked in there and I just said, do you have any cars? Which that's not normally my style. Right. And, ⁓

LeeAnn Shattuck (13:09)
Hahaha!

Doug Hofer (13:11)
He said yeah, and it was ended up costing about the same thing, but the car we got. Wow, I it was a brand I'd never heard of. This is in Tulum, Mexico. It was something I think it came from Asia somewhere. The car had 116,000 miles on it. It was it was a four door sedan and the car was in such rough shape. I didn't take any pictures. I didn't write anything down. There was stains all over the inside of the car. I mean it was it was bad, but.

LeeAnn Shattuck (13:27)
Wow.

Doug Hofer (13:40)
We made the best of it, but it did work out because we did quite a few things in downtown Tulum, which is not the nicest area. So we had no problems parking that car because it blended right in with the environment. And it did make it. It did make it. That's right. That's right.

LeeAnn Shattuck (13:40)
Wow.

You know, sometimes having that, you know, that local camouflage vehicle is not necessarily a bad thing. You

probably wouldn't want to be driving a BMW or Mercedes around some of those places. So did it at least have air conditioning?

Doug Hofer (14:02)
No, not definitely not Tulum. No, that'd be my worst experience. So I would have to say that was just recent.

It did have air conditioning, but it didn't work very well. I mean, it worked, not spectacular. So yeah, it was bad.

LeeAnn Shattuck (14:16)
Well,

Nice. Well, what was the best thing? What's the coolest car you've ever been able to rent? Or what do you like the best?

Doug Hofer (14:23)
I would have to say we went to South Beach one time. It's been quite a while ago. Well, when I tell you the car, you'll understand what I mean. I went to South Beach, played some golf and we got a Cadillac Sedan Deville, the big, big white Sedan Deville, but it had the V8 North Star engine in it, which yeah, that, that I love that car. I love that engine. And we ended up going to Key West in it and

LeeAnn Shattuck (14:43)
Nice.

Doug Hofer (14:49)
So we were in the car a lot, obviously. It was good. That was probably the best rental we've ever had. And no, I did not reserve a Cadillac. I reserved like a full size. Back then, this was quite a while ago, they didn't have the executive aisle, Executive Elite, that that didn't exist. So that was probably the best upgrade I've ever had. They did. They did.

LeeAnn Shattuck (14:57)
Gotcha.

But they gave you something nice. So it was comfortable because

Cadillacs are extremely comfortable and it had the umfp. Did you guys get any speeding tickets going down to Key West? Wow. Well, my probably my favorite was either that Mercedes, you know, that I got upgraded to because it's way cooler

Doug Hofer (15:11)
It was. It was.

No, I did not. did not. A

Correct.

Good.

LeeAnn Shattuck (15:24)
to drive around Beverly Hills and West Hollywood in a Mercedes, even a low level Mercedes. It wasn't a fancy one. It was a C-Class, but still better than driving around Hills in a Hyundai Accent. Honestly, one of my favorite rental cars, and it's just more for the ridiculous fun factor, I was traveling out to San Diego for

Doug Hofer (15:32)
Okay.

For sure.

LeeAnn Shattuck (15:46)
I got a PT Cruiser. This was a long time ago. This was gosh, probably 20 years ago. So, you know, they're cute, not a quality car in any way, shape or form, but I had more fun driving that stupid thing. I mean, it was very bouncy. And so as I was like flying full speed around the corners and over, I mean, we were just like, we, it was kind of like a little roller coaster car and it was just hilarious. That's one of the most

Doug Hofer (15:50)
Mm-hmm.

They're cool. They're cool to drive. They are.

LeeAnn Shattuck (16:16)
fun experiences I've had in a rental car because I did not care if I beat it up. It was a PT Cruiser. But it served us well. It was pretty hilarious.

Doug Hofer (16:22)
Understand. Yeah, I've rented a few of those many years ago, but I've rented a few. They're a nice little

ride, let's put it that way.

LeeAnn Shattuck (16:30)
I did have a really nice last few times we've been to Alaska and when we get Skagway, we always rent a car and drive into the Canadian Yukon and stuff like that. it's, know, there's one rental car agency in Skagway, Alaska, and it's, you know, rent out of a little small trailer. These two ladies own it. It's a Avis franchise, but so you get a Toyota 4Runner. And I actually three years apart, got the exact same 4Runner both times. Granted, they probably only have two or three of them, but.

Doug Hofer (16:54)
Of course you did. Of course you did.

LeeAnn Shattuck (16:58)
But you you get a lunch for everybody and you get this little tour thing. So it's just more than just renting a car. You're kind of renting the little experience of driving around there. And it was fantastic. So had a lot of good experiences driving around the Canadian Yukon and a nice Toyota 4Runner. So those were good. One of the challenges that we have with renting cars and something that I'm trying to figure out for this England trip is insurance.

They always try to sell you on their insurance. And when I rent here in the US, I usually don't take it because I have confirmed with my rental agency and I'm with State Farm. So I feel comfortable that I'm covered when I rent locally. They have informed me that there is no coverage whatsoever outside the United States. And so I'm going to have to figure out what to do in England.

But tell me about your thoughts about that and what your experience has been with rental car insurance.

Doug Hofer (17:47)
Mm-hmm.

I agree with you domestically. Yeah, it's you don't really need it. And there's also a few three or four credit cards out there, travel credit cards that are not not secondary insurance. They are the primary insurance. If you use that credit card to pay for the They're the higher end cards, but they're the primary. So basically, if you total the car, as long as you weren't being stupid or doing something dumb, they would cover it. ⁓

LeeAnn Shattuck (18:15)
I have no idea

what you're talking about, doing something dumb.

Doug Hofer (18:16)
Internationally. Internationally

is a whole different ballgame. It was funny when we went not funny, but I was kind of surprised in Tulum when we rented that POS. ⁓ You have to take their liability. That is not a choice. And it's actually it was built into the rate so you cannot decline. You can't do that in Mexico. You have to rent the car with the Mexican liability. ⁓

LeeAnn Shattuck (18:27)
Hahaha!

Okay.

But that was liability

part, not collision on that thing. I would hope you wouldn't have to have collision on that thing.

Doug Hofer (18:44)
I didn't take the collision on that car.

Most of the international cars I've rented, including Europe, I have declined the insurance. I've kind of rolled the dice, but it's expensive, the insurance. It really is.

LeeAnn Shattuck (19:01)
I'll have to see what the insurance will be like because I'm not sure I'm willing to roll the dice given that I've never driven on the other side of the road before.

Doug Hofer (19:04)
I would, if you're only, no, if you're only renting the car, no, no, I understand. I agree with you. If you're only renting the car

for one or two days, I would take the insurance. I would, I would, yeah.

LeeAnn Shattuck (19:14)
I probably will just be

on the safe side. I rented in places like Aruba and I didn't worry about it there because I know how to drive in Aruba, but this will be a new experience.

Doug Hofer (19:21)
Mm-hmm.

Right? Driving on the

other side of the road is not that big of deal. I was just in the Cayman Islands about two weeks ago. Their roundabouts are a little tricky. Now I'll just give you a little warning.

LeeAnn Shattuck (19:35)
Well, people

here can't drive on the roundabouts that we have, at least in Charlotte. I love roundabouts.

Doug Hofer (19:38)
That is true. That is true.

I love roundabouts too, but unfortunately, like you just said, most people don't know how to use them properly. And when you're going the opposite direction and you're sitting on the wrong side of the car, the roundabout is a little bit of a different experience.

LeeAnn Shattuck (19:53)
This is true. Now I can't remember in the Caymans. The Caymans is purely British, right? It's right-hand drive, opposite side of the road. Sometimes in the Caribbean, and my father used to love this because he loved renting cars and I learned all my driving from him. But I do remember in some places in the Caribbean when I was a kid, we'd rent a car and it was British roads, but American cars. So you're driving on the wrong side of the road, but the steering wheel is still on the left.

Doug Hofer (19:59)
Correct. Correct.

Okay.

Yeah.

LeeAnn Shattuck (20:23)
So trying

to make those turns when you're not next to the lane... some of the turns are like really weird and wide and like where's the road? Where's the road? So at least I don't have to do that. But I do plan to train for it. Because anytime I've raced a new racetrack, I've trained the track by going on YouTube and finding YouTube videos of other racers who have similar cars. And I just watch those videos over and over again to learn the track. And I think I'm going to do the same thing

Doug Hofer (20:30)
Thank

Yeah.

LeeAnn Shattuck (20:52)
and watch some driver point of view videos from the UK to kind of get used to what it looks like and feels like to drive on the wrong side of the road. Hopefully that will help. I really hope. Now, have you ever been dinged for damaging a rental car, whether you actually did or not?

Doug Hofer (21:01)
Fair enough. That should help. That should help.

Couple times, Yeah, I was, ⁓ I can give you a lot of details for that. I was lazy the two times I got dinged. One was a windshield. It was only 150 or $200. It was a big star in the windshield and I missed it when I looked. Unfortunately, these rental car companies where they park their cars is not the most well lit area. No, they do that on purpose, but that's another story.

LeeAnn Shattuck (21:14)
So what happened there and what can you do to avoid that?

I

It's not.

Doug Hofer (21:38)
And the other time I think there was a scuff on the bumper that I missed and it was a couple hundred dollars. I mean, it wasn't wasn't the end of the world. I haven't missed anything dramatic. My best advice is if you rent any car, walk around it very thoroughly, especially the windshield and the roof. Get open the door, stand on the whatever you call it. You know. Now you've got to look at the roof. That's the most expensive part of the car to repair.

LeeAnn Shattuck (21:55)
You don't think about looking at the roof.

Especially now if they've got those AI things that are going to be scanning the cars. When you returned it before, you were kind of at the mercy of whatever person checked you in. And I've never had one of them look at the roof of the car, but an AI is going to look at the roof of the car.

Doug Hofer (22:01)
the roof and a lot of the

That is.

They're doing it now.

And no, they're doing it more now than the last couple of years I've noticed. They're standing on the door well or whatever you call that door seal and looking at the roof. Because I once picked up, I didn't rent this car, but I got in a car and when I climbed to look at the roof, the whole roof had been scratched. Somebody went into a garage and rubbed the garage and the whole roof was scratched and I did not take that car. But if I wouldn't have a look.

LeeAnn Shattuck (22:31)
huh.

I would think not.

Doug Hofer (22:38)
If I wouldn't have looked, I could have been held responsible for that. And take photos. I recommend taking photos of it. And if there's damage in the interior, definitely take a picture as well, like a cigarette burn or something like that.

LeeAnn Shattuck (22:50)
And it probably wouldn't hurt to even take a good walk around video too, and then take individual pictures of any specific thing you find just to cover your rear end on that. don't want to pay for damage that you caused, but you really don't want to pay for damage that the person before you, however many times caused.

Doug Hofer (22:55)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yes.

I

LeeAnn Shattuck (23:07)
That is excellent advice there.

LeeAnn Shattuck (23:09)
Doug, have you ever rented an electric vehicle?

Doug Hofer (23:12)
Yes, I have one time ⁓ actually in Kansas City. I showed up on a late Tuesday morning doing something I said not to do and the only available car was an electric vehicle. Fortunately, I was staying pretty close to the airport only about you know, maybe 50 miles total. So I ended up taking it worked out okay.

LeeAnn Shattuck (23:20)
you

Did you have to find a place to recharge at all? I know that can be stressful. ⁓ nice.

Doug Hofer (23:35)
Nope, no, I did not, I did not. It was only a one

night rental, so.

LeeAnn Shattuck (23:41)
So you didn't have to worry about range anxiety. You didn't have to figure out how to plug it in and refill it with electrons. And they didn't require you to refill the electrons before bringing it back, like you have to put gas in a gas car before you bring it back.

Doug Hofer (23:44)
No.

No, I did not know

No, no, that was not a requirement of renting it.

LeeAnn Shattuck (24:00)
that. So, okay, so there's an advantage. I've had some clients rent electric vehicles again, not by choice but because that was all that was left. I think they were in Florida, and they had no idea how to drive one, and the agency was like, there's charging stations everywhere. Yeah, they had trouble finding charging stations. If they found one, they weren't working or they were full. They said it really put so much stress on their vacation because they were constantly worrying about...

Doug Hofer (24:19)
Good.

LeeAnn Shattuck (24:29)
how do I fill this thing up with electricity instead of just being able to go to a gas station? Did you have any problems actually driving the car? Because I know you guys do not own an electric vehicle.

Doug Hofer (24:32)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I understand.

It was different and the biggest difference not driving itself, but there's no brake on it. This was a Tesla little sedan and there is no brake on the car, which is very different because you you pick your foot up off the gas or the accelerator, whatever Tesla calls it, and the car slows down. But it's it's different. There is no actual brake. No, there is not.

LeeAnn Shattuck (24:52)
it.

But there's no actual brake. Yeah.

Yeah, that I like my three pedals. Thank you very much. I even freak out when there's not a clutch. I will not be renting an electric car like ever if I can help it. I would rather just ride in a robo taxi or something like that than have to deal with an electric vehicle.

Doug Hofer (25:18)
Okay.

LeeAnn Shattuck (25:20)
Thanks so much for being here and sharing your wisdom, Doug. Everyone. I hope you found this useful. What I got out of this was you don't necessarily need the insurance they try to sell you at their ridiculous rates from the rental car company, but check with your

insurance agency first to be sure what coverage you do and do not have, especially if it's international. Don't rent from sketchy rental car companies in Tulum, Mexico. That's one case where it's probably worth standing in the Hertz line to get a car that is not a piece of junk, although blending in can be useful. And definitely the car made it. You guys made it. You you blended in.

Doug Hofer (25:49)
Yeah.

And it made it. The car made it. It made it. Yep.

LeeAnn Shattuck (26:05)
And be sure you do an extraordinarily thorough walk around of the car before you sign that rental

If you want to upgrade your own personal ride and you didn't know, and you're not sure how to do that... You can check out my online car buying course at CarBuyingCourse.com or go to my website, TheCarChick.com and check out all of my full service packages where I can do all the buying for you. Like I have for Doug and his wife, Lianne, over the years.

Thanks everyone. Drive safely out there. We're out of here.