Granted, I have traveled quite a bit in my life and have probably declared more hotel rooms than 95% of the population. In fact, I have traveled to more cities than 99% of the population, and have also been banned from more car rental agencies than I care to remember. Why do you ask? Because at my company I put way too many miles on rental cars, no it’s not because I’m afraid of flying, I’m actually a pilot, it’s because I’m a retired franchisor, and building my company I would drive from city to city, and I wouldn’t take a lot of plane because it had too many stops on the way.
I can remember once renting a car in Georgia, and I did 48,000 miles in five weeks. In fact, I rented the car for $260 per week. You can imagine when I returned the car how shocked and angry they were, and how they wanted to pay off my credit card for $10,000 more. I made them stick to the $260 a week though, and told them that’s the deal, that’s what I signed up for, and it wasn’t my fault I put their car through 26,000 miles, which is usually the point where they exchange the car because they have a deal with the car auction.
You can understand that obviously putting almost 50,000 miles on a car in five weeks and running out half its life and just paying over $1200 costs the rental car company a ton of money. They lost and I won, but that was the deal. In fact, they felt that I took advantage of them, and they banned me for life from renting a car from that company again. Similar scenarios had occurred over the years, though not as many miles. I am currently banned by four different car rental companies, for life.
You might laugh, but this isn’t much fun because car rental agencies and brands often merge, and there aren’t as many as before, so now I can only rent a few. Suffice to say that I recommend you try not to take advantage of Rent-A-Car companies, but still get the best deal for yourself.
Otherwise, you may also be barred from Rent-A-Car companies, which could affect your ability to travel in the future. In fact, I’ve been to a few airports where three-quarters of the Rent-A-Car companies ran out of cars, and the only company that had a car, well, was one that I’d already been banned from renting. Maybe consider all this and think about it.