PHX Rental Car Center Early Bag Check Counter

Ok, so let’s dish about the PHX Car Rental Center’s Early Bag Check Counter. Sounds like a great idea, right? Check your bags when you return your car to the car rental facility so you can travel light to the terminal and proceed directly to the TSA security line. There are several items you should note before planning to utilize this service.
First, the participating airlines are limited. If you are flying on American, United or Southwest, then you’re in luck. Other airlines? Sorry — proceed to the terminal with your bags per usual. We were on Southwest so we checked this box.
Second, they have a strict, firm, draconian, no exceptions 90 minute cutoff before your flight’s SCHEDULED departure time. The entire transaction needs to be completed before this window closes. This is where we got tripped up. We returned our car with time to spare and hopped in the line, but due to the clueless attendant’s bumbling with the customer ahead of us and with our bags, we ended up missing the cutoff by 11 minutes when he was FINALLY ready to print our tags. I tried so hard not to be a jerk (and I’m trying now too, mostly) but this guy seemed so lost back there — he was literally counting the bags ahead of ours with his fingers, and it took him three tries to get to six. We thought we were still ok because the board RIGHT THERE showed our flight delayed by 30 minutes, so we were still 1 HR 40 MIN before our estimated departure. Didn’t matter. The system locked the attendant out. So not only were we denied, but we still had to cart all our bags to the terminal to wait in the next line having lost 30 minutes of our lives that we can never get back from that black hole of idiocy. Bad personnel + bad system = Useless.
And third, to add insult to injury, I didn’t appreciate the «Gratuities are welcome for excellent service» and «Gratuities accepted» signs. How about using that precious counter space and sign area to explain the 90 minute rule. So frustrating.
The rigid cutoff needs to be pushed back to 60 minutes or even 75, and they gotta take into account flight delays. Otherwise, nobody will use it so why bother having it in the first place.