I've been researching Hertz Rent2Buy. It seems like an interesting an option to "try before you buy." Basically, its a free 2 hour test drive or $50 a day for Three days. For the Gen III 2010 models in my area, they all apper to be Prius IIs between 20K - 30K in miles. Has anyone tried their free 2 hour test drive offer? I'm wondering if its a hassle. hertzrent2buy.com
I tried it and I was not impressed. The car I reserved was in Orlando. My wife was attending a conference there anyway so I went along for the ride. The selected car had many dings and scratches on it. In fact, some of the body damage was so old that there was visible rust on the car. Also, the dashboard display looked like it had been damaged a little (still legible, but fuzzy). It had more damage than our 1994 Chevy Cavalier station wagon! It would cost thousands of dollars to repair the body damage on the Rent2buy Prius. I returned the car within the 2-hour complimentary drive period and was promptly billed $65 by Hertz rental car. When I turned it in, I asked the fellow who recieved my car about the complimentary 2-hour rental. He said that I needed to contact Hertzrent2buy about that. I will contact them tomorrow; however, even if they do cover the bill, it is another hoop to jump through that I don't want to deal with. Given that one cannot look at a group of available cars in advance and select the one one wants, I think it is a waste of time (and money). I won't bother trying it again.
Sounds like a hassle. I didn't get any farther than looking at their prices. Not sure if they negotiate or not, but for just a little more you could get a new one. If you are renting one with the idea of buying it you would think you could pick the one you wanted.
I tried a gen 3 red one from ontario airport hertz.... Only kept it for one hour...it wasn't clean and didn't impress me.... I ended up buying one from another dealer, which had also been a rental; but was much cleaner and only 13,000 miles.... I paid $17,500 i like it so much, i just bought the optimum no rinse one gallon and gave it a good wash.... The blue metallic is hard to keep clean, so this optimum did a good job....
I thought about buying a post-rental car once. A wise friend told me "Nothing inproves the off-road ability of a car as much as a rental contract in the glove compartment." I decided that I didn't want to buy a car that may have been abused by one or more renters. This is stuff that won't show up on the oil change report!
