Budget Car Rental - lack of maintenance

I put about 15K miles in 3 months from a rental Elantra in 2014 after my car got rear ended. Called enterprise to see if they wanted me to bring the car in for an oil change and they said no, it'll be good. Whatever, it's not my car to maintain.
 
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I put about 15K miles in 3 months from a rental Elantra in 2014 after my car got rear ended. Called enterprise to see if they wanted me to bring the car in for an oil change and they said no, it'll be good. Whatever, it's not my car to maintain.
If it was me in a long-term rental condition, I’d buy the cheapest swill Walmart has and a cheap filter or have a local quick lube take care of it and expense it out.

Rental cars may not have roadside assistance and generally you’re responsible for the car unless you purchase the LDW - not sure if the coverage for rental cars covers mechanical damage - LDW does.
 
I rented a car once from Avis which is also the owner of Budget. The tires were basically bald. I wasn't worried about it too much because it was in Arizona and it didn't rain while I was there so I figured it didn't matter. I didn't check the oil.

A lot of times those stickers are still 3k/3months oil changes so even if you go past the interval, it might have been low to begin with. I did have a friend who rented a new Ford Expedition and it was due for an oil change at 10k and the rental car company said they'd reimburse up to $75 for him to do an oil change. The synthetic oil change started at $79 so it was just a regular oil change for under $70. Of course once you reset the oil minder, it's good for another 10k even if you didn't put synthetic in it....
 
I used to work across a parking lot from an enterprise rent a car. They didn't want to spend Any money on the cars. We stopped working on their cars after the manager made a scene in our waiting room over thin rotors.
When I worked at the tire shop we got their business- they loved the $16.99 bulk 5w30 oil change with tire rotation. They were particularly interested in the tire rotation. In 2011 they still had a lot of Chrysler 300s-- you never see them anywhere anymore. Believe they did a 7500 mile interval.
 
So a while back, 7-8 years ago, I worked in a quick lube local to St. Louis. I was an oil tech and a man pulled in a new to him rental truck, it was a Dodge Ram I believe but specifically it had a topside cartridge filter. Now I’d worked there for about 3 years and had many a car come in that was neglected on maintenance but this truck I’ll never forget. I pull it in and start going through the motions, get the mileage and go about raising the truck. I crack the drain plug and as soon as the oil began to drain I new something was wrong, enough so I called another tech over to check out the thickness and darkness of the oil. I put the plug back in lower the truck and go to remove the cartridge filter, it was extremely tight, more so than one that was over tightened and required me to get a few extra hands to break it loose. What I pulled out of the depths of that filter housing was pretty well unbelievable, the filter had become something ungodly full of sludge and thick black almost a hard, chunky tar. I immediately got my service manager to show him something was terribly wrong and after retrieving the oil change reminder from the window did we realize the oil change was something around 30-35k miles over due and we believe it would have been it’s second oil change since it only had around 40k on it. Customer was oddly enough pissed at me because somehow I caused this but yea long story short easily top 5 craziest things I seen while working there.
 
I used to work for a rental car company. Airport locations usually do the oil changes. Stickers are typically from shops smaller locations take them to. It's unlikely that it's that far over the oil change, but it is possible. Rental cars are usually driven into the ground. It wasn't long ago that almost no rental cars stayed on fleet over 30k miles though so I know that's changed.
 
I don’t think I’ll ever buy a rental, it was explained to me this way...YOU might drive a rental car responsibly, and so might another 8 people out of ten, but one person out if those ten is going to whale the living tar out of that thing. And the person that told me this was THAT one person. And he’s right.

But as far as maintenance goes, I’ve always heard from people that work at dealers that the rental car companies locally are pretty solid with their oil changes. They might be only running cheap oil in them but at least they change it. To hear there’s some exceptions is not a surprise either. It’s a business. Getting these cars rented in their number one priority, not taking care of them like you or I do. These cars are sold usually with 25,000-30,000 miles on them. They could probably get away doing two oil changes on these things anyway.
 
I rent cars a lot as I travel for my job. Since COVID/2020/new car chip shortage rental fleets have been slim pickens...I've never seen so many high mileage rental cars as there are now. I've had them with low air in tires, no washer fluid, crappu wipers, oil change/maintenance lights on, a cabin filter so dirty the AC didn't blow. I will often handle these minor bits as im typically renting for a week at a time and then just have them knock the cost off the rental.
 
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