Rental Car Customer Satisfaction Declines Amid Vehicle Shortage, Rising Prices

The COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a blow to the rental car industry, resulting in fewer vehicles and higher prices that have ultimately hurt customer satisfaction.

According to the J.D. Power 2021 North America Rental Car Satisfaction Study released on Wednesday, overall customer satisfaction declined a total of 11 points on a 1,000-point scale, with the industry average falling to 830 this year.

The report is based on responses gathered between September 2020 and August 2021 from nearly 4,300 business and leisure travelers who rented a vehicle at an airport location from August 2020 through August 2021. J.D. Power found that prices rose 58 percent during the last nine months of the study to an average customer-cited price-per-day rental fee of $90.40 as companies worked through shrunken inventories and labor shortages.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car fared the best in terms of customer satisfaction over the past year, overtaking 2020 champion Hertz to rank highest with an overall score of 861. Meanwhile, fellow Enterprise Holdings, Inc. subsidiaries National (852) and Alamo (837) ranked second and third, respectively. The three brands were the only ones to score above the industry average (830).

Avis (826), Hertz (826), Budget (807), Dollar (786) and Thrifty (768) all scored below the average for overall customer satisfaction in 2021. Dollar and Thrifty experienced the most dramatic dropoff in customer satisfaction after scoring 836 and 835, respectively, in last year’s study.

“Rental car companies have been facing significant challenges, both in terms of vehicle supply and staffing—and a combination of rising costs and long lines at the airport is having a negative effect on customer satisfaction,” Michael Taylor, travel intelligence lead at J.D. Power, said in a statement. “The fact that the average price per day for vehicle rental is now above $90 sounds almost hard to believe, but I’ve seen instances in which a subcompact—booked a month in advance—cost $140 a day. Even when customers are aware of the macroeconomic challenges, their personal experiences quickly outweigh economic theory, and the result is lower customer satisfaction.”