Car rental pick up/dropoff times at DTW?

June 27, 2021 11:00 AM

Hello - I know that Detroit is experiencing some heavy flooding this week, but I am planning travel in the next many weeks there, and reading about hours-long waits to pick up and or return rental cars to other destinations is making me a little anxious about how it is there (under non-flooding conditions.) Has anyone been there recently and picked up a rental car at the airport?
posted by 41swans to Travel & Transportation around Detroit, MI (4 answers total)

There's a nationwide rental car shortage and I don't think Detroit is immune to that and if anything the recent flooding might exacerbate it a little bit, calling whoever you're renting through a day or two beforehand to ask how long their check in and out process has taken in the last few days might be helpful.
posted by julie_of_the_jungle at 12:04 PM on June 27, 2021 [1 favorite]

Best answer: My boss was there last week. She said it took over an hour to pick up the rental car because there were only 3 people working.
posted by shiny blue object at 5:24 AM on June 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

Anecdotally, average wait times for an Avis rental pickup were 30 minutes to 1 hour for me, without any extenuating circumstances. Retuning rental cars to the airport is an immediate process.
posted by dobi at 9:17 AM on June 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: UPDATE: we went to Detroit. My spouse booked with Gold (or whatever that tier is called) and he said that he noticed people were just...walking in without having made reservations first (?) and being turned away. We were concerned because usually when he reserves a car this way there is a board, your name is on it, etc. His name was not on the board, so he went to go stand in line and see what the deal was. Turns out it wasn't on there because they didn't have the specific car we had rented, so we got to pick a different one instead, a lovely new Subaru, we drove around in it for a week with no issues. It was nicer and definitely newer than any car we have at home.

It had a lot of what looked like car wash scratches on the roof which we took photos of. We pointed that out to literally the most cheerful rental employee ever who took the car back at the end of the trip so we wouldn't get dinged for what we didn't cause, she seemed literally thrilled just to get the car back, and waved us off with a smile.

I would say this wasn't any more lengthy or annoying than picking up a car at any other time during any other trip, in fact in a few ways it was LESS. We didn't have to wait untoward amounts of time at any point in the process. We used Hertz.
posted by 41swans at 11:42 AM on July 28, 2021