Avis

This place is very convenient if staying off Geary street. They were prompt and had plenty of car availability. The downside is they charge full amount and do not pro rate if you only intend to use vehicle for half a day, which to me is ridiculous not to offer an incentive for returning a car early and especially returning it a few hours before closing.

I rent a car frequently and am considered a“preferred” customer. This location is consistently bad. The service is slow, with or without a crowd, at 6am or 3pm regardless of the day of the week.
Made a reservation for a car, received a confirmation, and the location is out of cars. Unbelievable.
If you can, avoid it.

This review is for the Avis international call center… the employees I spoke with were difficult to understand and were unfriendly. Avis seriously needs to train the employees at their international call centers to be pleasant to interact with and more customer service oriented.
Instead of telling customers, «No, I can’t do this or that for you», why not train employees to say, «Let me speak with my manager and see what we can do». In my case, it was a request to reserve a hatchback vehicle… I was told flat out, «no» by the first customer service employee with whom I spoke.
What kind of customer service is that? It is not an unreasonable request… so I asked to speak to a manager who eventually (in an unfriendly manner) put a note on our reservation to request a hatchback vehicle.
Not sure why my request was met with such obstinance.

(Writing as a Budget member, which this location services alongside Avis.)
My first rental here left an unpleasant taste in my mouth. The wait time was unreasonably long, and I’m a FastBreak member. Was on line for about 10 minutes before I was checked-​in for my car, then waited nearly 10 more minutes for my car to be ready to drive off the lot. Returning the car was much faster — mostly due to there being no people checking cars out — but the fact that I couldn’t check out from my car I wasn’t a fan of. I imagine if there were folks waiting to rent cars, I would’ve had to wait to return my car as well.
The employees were nice enough, though listening to how some of them were pushing additional services to those that weren’t Preferred Club (Avis) or FastBreak members wasn’t cool at all — very sales-​y.
I don’t know if I’ll be renting from here again, but we’ll see. At least their rates and hours are competitive.

This place is miserable. I’m Avis First and have about 700 Avis rental days (literally!!!).
I don’t know how many Avis locations I’ve visited for all those rentals, but without a doubt this location is the absolute worst I’ve ever experienced… by far.
Because it’s one of the more convenient in-​City locations for me, it’s where I go when I need a rental car. So, it’s not the location that’s bad… it’s not the cars … it’s the employees; they’re the absolute worst. I’ve never been helped by people more bent on doing the absolute bare minimum in my entire life.
Also, as a warning: They push all the optional «stuff» (rental car coverage, road side service, GPS) harder than anywhere else. I obviously never get anything, but I’ve overheard their pitches and they’re ruthless.
I’d honestly avoid this location at all costs. The Avis Preferred desk at SFO, on the other hand, is one of my absolute favorites.
Updated review: I walked in at 6:05am this morning and stood in the preferred line for about 7 seconds before a woman asked me my name, grabbed my RA and sent me on my way. Out with my car in less than 3 minutes.

As a Preferred Club member, I would prefer to not have to wait over an hour in line for a reservation that I had made well in advance. Not a single agent, nor the manager who was visible behind the counter, made any attempt at eye contact nor address anyone in the line to thank us for our patience or take notice of the growing visibility of the numerous other Preferred customers. There was a ten minute disappearing act of the woman serving the Preferred Club line and not one of the other 7 – 8 agents was asked to assume the role to keep things going which meant we literally stood there helpless. The standard rental queue was moving pretty quickly in comparison but only because there were not enough vehicles available to fill the secured reservations. This meant that there were several large parties waiting and interrupting the other agents every few minutes trying to find out the status of their own rental. The entire office was a loud jumble of upset patrons and people checking
and other various review sites to both read the warnings of past customers and post the details of their own negative encounters.
It’s not even an exaggeration to say that this was ALREADY the single worst experience that I’ve ever had with any Avis location here in the US or internationally. When we were finally called to the counter by the agent we were given a quiet insincere «Thank you for waiting.» Our information was not waiting on the [empty] Preferred Member board nor was there any kind of urgency with the lackluster help we received. I have worked in customer service for over a decade and the fact that we were not offered, at the very least, a complimentary upgrade for waiting as long as we did was unfathomable due to the level of inconvenience we experienced.
Not only we were already over an hour behind our intended departure time, we now had to wait for someone to bring up our car. Our «ticket» was checked by an attendant who was bringing up the cars and we were nonchalantly told 5 minutes. Naturally, it was over 10 minutes. Icing on the cake. I’ll spare the details but dropping the car back off was just as painful.
I would certainly recommend an overhaul of customer service training and perhaps even management if this location wishes to increase its customer satisfaction rating… I mean, it is in Downtown San Francisco, so it may simply be assumed that people will deal with a necessary evil due to the convenient location. Rest assured, the physical location was the only amenity of convenience.

Horrible queue 145 people in line for car pick up & only 4 people working got to be the worst location ever to rent a car

If there was a charity called «lawyers against car rental companies» I’d definitely donate to that. It’s always sad when negative stereotypes are confirmed — in this case that car rentals are greedy, bureaucratic, unflexible jerks.
Before continuing, I’d like to say that staff was professional, and not to blame here. Although there was kind of a long wait.
In this scenario we wanted to be three drivers, two of us between 21 – 25, but we didn’t read carefully enough and rented the car in the name of our older companion. Turns out that you can rent a car for an extra fee if you’re under 25, but you can’t be added as an additional driver, if rented in the name of an older person. We were also unable to change what name the car was rented in, and wouldn’t get refunded for canceling.
So, that’s the technicality that ruined our trip, as we had to choose between driving uninsured or having an exhausted driver (who’s also scared of heights and driving over bridges).
From now on I’m only renting cars in person/​over the phone, so I can walk through my needs verbally so I have a target when playing the fun game of finger-​pointing and citing paragraphs.

I only wish I had read these reviews before getting a car from this location before the long memorial day weekend.
All in all, it took 1 hour to get my car. Every one of the employees spends more time trying to sell insurance options and confuse customers than helping move the line. I was behind a couple from outside the country and the employee clearly was trying to confuse them about their options for insurance coverage and fuel in order to upsell them. Its truly disgusting — I tried to step in to help (and also move the line faster) and the employee acted like I was violating some law by trying to help.
If you want to rent a car here, make sure to do 2 things. 1) sign up for preferred avis number or fastbreak budget number. They will let these customers cut in front of the entire line to get service. At one point, ALL of the employees were helping preferred members as they had no system for how to manage the difference. 2) Don’t listen to a word the employees say. I have been renting cars for year for work, and even Enterprise is not as bad as this location. They will pull out all the stops to try ad get you to buy insurance. At one point, one woman said that if you got in a wreck you would owe Avis the amount of the car PLUS $ 450. Are you kidding me?
Good luck to all who continue to use this place. I tried to complain while i was there and basically was told that I should be lucky to have a car.

My SO reserved my car for me a couple days before. I am a preferred member. I have rented from Avis from multiple locations. Since this place is a bit small they do things differently here. As a preferred member, instead of going straight to your car you stand in a shorter line and they check you in. Afterwards, you wait outside and someone brings you your car. The attendant was very nice.
You return the car, someone checks it out, writes on your receipt paper you got when you got your car, and then you head inside where you get checked out with a receipt of your total cost. A bit different but it worked out.
This place closes at 6pm so beware when you are planning your trips.

As everyone has said, this can be a rough location. Long lines, overworked employees, cars parked in a parking structure.
Warning: Know the hours of this location! If you pick a return time outside their normal hours, you are allowed a free return to another location including SFO. However, if you state a time during their business hours and are late and they are closed, there is a fee to return to another location.
Convenient to Union Square and Chinatown area. However, budget some extra cushion time cuz there always seems to be a wait here.
My friends and I arrived to pick up our rental on a Friday afternoon. There was 1 employee working and at least 6 people waiting in line. There are no expedited check-​ins, vending machines were out of order, and the lobby was very generic. As a couple of preferred customers walked in, that 6^th person’s wait became 45 – 60 min.
1 customer was told that their car was ready but it’ll be 10 – 15 min before it could come down the ramp because it was boxed/​blocked in by other cars.

This AVIS office = Budget Office, my review is for the Budget side but it’s all the same.
Made the reservation online and pre-​paid. When we arrived at the office, there was a long line. As I prepaid, I thought it would not be that bad. How wrong I was! After 10 minutes, I found the line barely moved. So I sent the rest of my family back to the hotel. After 1 hour, the line moved about 1 meters. I started counting how many minutes fore them to process one customer — 15 minutes. I was talking with a newly-​wed couple from Britain whose friends gave a gift of spa treatment and lunch at Napa at noon — they too had reserved and paid for a car online. They ended up canceling the Spa and lunch. I started to wonder if we could go to Pebble Beach as it was almost 1 pm. After almost 3 hours, it was my turn to get a car. The guy probably felt bad, so he asked the garage guy to get a «cool» car. I made sure that the car had the XM Radio, which I had paid for.
We got Mini Cooper Countryman, which was surprisingly comfy for 4 adults. As my nephew has Mini, I did not have to get lost with Mini operations. BUT we could not find XM — no matter what. I had my son call Budget, who said that we should return to the rental office. We were already 30 miles south of SF, and it was already about 3pm thanks to the 3-​hour wait. And the car was not iPod ready. So all our option was the radio.
The car ran great, and it was fuel efficient. We kept it for two days, and returned it. At the counter, the same guy took care of the return. I told him that there was no XM. He insisted that there was, and told me to come with him. He sounded so sure and sounded condescending as if to say «you must be stupid.» So we went back to the Mini, and the guy spent 5 minutes to find XM radio. And he could not find it either.
Why did it have to take 3 hours to get a car when you had reserved and prepaid online? Every day, we saw a long long line in every rental car place in San Francisco. So the problem is not unique to this place.
If you are thinking about renting a car in San Francisco in the summer, get it at the airport and find a cheap parking lot/​garage as time can be more precious during the vacaton than money.

Awful and disrespectful customer service by the folks behind the desk at this Post Street location
I live n the city and rent the car to head out to the Bay Area. This was my first time coming in during a week, otherwise it is usually weekends.
I’m Avis preferred and they sold me on a lift service to the location, with the condition that I call for driver availability. If no avail, then I could take a cab which gets reimbursed.
Well, today was my first time trying this. Of course, they don’t pick up the phone so there is no finding out the driver availability. After 15 minutes of trying, I took a cab to the rental place to pick my car.
I was upset with the whole process so when I got to the front desk I started explaining what I went through. The person at the front desk «La Day» was exhibiting crazy behavior, cutting me off when I was explaining, as if she was on too much caffeine. She started getting confrontational, cutting me off and disrespectful.
I had to get to the end of the line to get the other person to help me. While the other person was helping me, this crazy «La Day» switches off the lights of the room.
Are these people screened or professionally trained to transact with customers?

I have gone to many Avis car rental venues around the USA — Boston, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Michigan, and more. My favorite is the SF venue on Post Street. I continually go here for the service and have had an exceptional experience renting on a weekly basis.
I have received superior service from many of the employees including Colleen, Patty, Betty, Bonaveau, and more. They have treated me with respect and I feel very valued as a client of Avis.
Yes — the line does get incredibly long sometimes during tourism season, but that’s just normal with most car rental venues. If you make your reservation early, and come before the wave, you’re good to go. If you come during the wave, that’s your own loss. I see a lot of complaints but will defend this Avis with my personal experience of having rented 20+ times here.

No exaggeration, I waited 2 hours to get my car. They told me that my vehicle was behind 25 other cars. I am Avis Preferred and only had to wait 10 minutes in line to pull up my reservation, so that wasn’t my problem. However, I will say that the normal line was up to 30 minutes at time.
The same buried car excuse and wait time was also given to at least two other people. The staff was friendly and apologetic about it, which gets two stars instead of one, but the wait time is unacceptable. I could have gone to SFO and back and still had an hour to spare.

This was the worst experience we’ve ever had picking up a car. We had a reservation at 11 for pick up and the preferred service had a line ten people deep and the attendant was seeing about one person every twenty minutes.
When we get to the front, we asked the lady if it was always like this and she nods slowly. mutters something about summer, and get us out of there quickly. Note: We had all of our stuff ready to go, unlike the 4 – 5 people in front of us, so word to the wise: If you HAVE to come here, come when they open (arrive early) and have all your confirmation numbers, drivers licenses, etc ready to go. This place is horribly inconvenient and I’m just glad we weren’t on a tight timeline to get somewhere.

One hour in the queue and there’s probably another hour to go. It might be helpful to have more staff here to handle the anticipated number of customers.
There’s only two people on the front desk.
When Avis/​Budget say they try harder, I wonder what would happen if they didn’t try at all.

Had a free certificate that was mailed to me due to a Budget class action suit of overcharging. I indicated a one way rental for the day with a delivery at the airport. It stated I could do so when I entered all the info in the reservation, which I did at home. When I got there, the lady behind the desk began to say it would be a $ 150 drop off charge and explained it was OK in the computer. She admitted she wash’t sure why the computer said that and I explained it would be ok to return it here in downtown to avoid astronomical drop off charges. After that snafu, everything else was ok!
Finally, a supervisor came over and explained it was a free rental even for one way. 20 minutes later, this woman (with a very heavy accent) stated she could not figure it out. The manager came back and clicked a couple of buttons (like Dorothy’s ruby slippers) and POOF — we got the car for one way, except they ran out of cars thanks to my new Fairy Godfather. They finally offered an SUV and asked if they could charge an upgrade fee. ANYTHING TO GET OUTTA here I said, feeling as though I was stuck in the Twilight Zone or the beginning of a Hitchcock film with a bad ending for me. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case!
They finally «waved» the fee and I took the SUV to wine country. It was dirty and not fully cleaned. When I dropped off the SUV at SFO, they tried to charge me a $ 78 drop off fee. Why do they hire people who do not know how to use a computer or speak English? Thankfully it was all rectified!

This is the worst run Avis I’ve ever been to!
I say this with respect and love for the front office agents, who are doing the absolute best they can as the paperwork, lack of cars, and increasing people waiting in line start mimicking a dark comedy depicting bureaucrats trapped in the 7^th level of hell.
As a regular Avis user who has their loyalty card, I am regularly ignored in my shorter line.
This week, while trying to get my car, at 9am, apparently the man in the lot who is responsible for sending cars down upon request was ignoring the front office clerk’s requests for certain cars, saying he was out of cars when he wasn’t, refusing to repeat license details or information the clerks needed to fill out forms, and then, after 30 minutes, I finally got to a desk clerk, did all the same to her, she finally got a car out of him, and then I walked outside — and the car was being washed and wasn’t ready for another 30 minutes. Keep in mind I got out the absolutely fastest of service compared to anyone else in the office.
I’ve had bad experiences at this Avis many times before, but this one really took the cake. My heart went out to the clerks saying «OH god, it can’t be happening this early in the day,» because you could tell that this was their every day. It’s no surprise I’ve never seen the same clerk here twice: I’d quit too.

Easy pickup and friendly staff.
For booking a car last minute on Memorial Day weekend (when lines are long and people waiting can be jerks) things went really well.