quote:

I used to work at a major rental car company in the early 2000s, its a pain to get the registration to catch up to the car. They get rented, usually people on both sides of the counter don't notice. That rental car company (and I assume most others) calculate their location profit by occupancy, they want every car on the road, not sitting in the parking lot not earning $. As such, there are usually shortages of cars and whats the odds 1) anyone would notice, 2) anyone would get stopped for it, 3) anyone would get a ticket for it. No CEO or even manager or regional manager would care if you emailed about it, worst thing is you could give them a bad customer satisfaction review afterwards, which is usually another metric of location success, but $$$ is most important.

^^^^
Some smart public official should target these rental companies. It is bullshit they cannot keep up with this stuff. They are cheating the states out of tax revenue!! {sarcasm} Impound a few at the airport parking lot. I ought to pass this idea onto states like New Jersey, New York or the city of Chicago. They would be interested. In fact, that statment would be the highlight of my email to the CEO.

quote:

I don’t know a cop down here that would ever issue a citation for an expired inspection ON A RENTAL CAR. That’s entirely out of the control of the renter, and thus, not their fault, and ANY cop that issues such citation should retire immediately.

... and maybe the rental car company is counting on that?

quote:

I used to work at a major rental car company in the early 2000s, its a pain to get the registration to catch up to the car. They get rented, usually people on both sides of the counter don't notice.

That's probably true...
But why do I have to renew my car on time, or get a ticket, if the rental car company gets to skate because "its a pain"?
It's a pain for me to renew my registration too.

I am sure the registrations on rental cars most likely get renewed before they expire automatically. The problem is, getting the registration sticker from wherever it's mailed to, to wherever in the country the car happens to be at the time.

Here in Florida, they generally don't write tickets for expired registrations until it's 4 months or more.


They also don't write a citation to the driver if it's a rental car

(d) However, an operator shall not be charged with a violation of this subsection if the operator can show, pursuant to a valid lease agreement, that the vehicle had been leased for a period of 30 days or less at the time of the offense.

www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/i...ections/0320.07.html

I've got an entire shift of rookies working for me, and not a single one of them are rookie enough to write a ticket in this situation.

Don't worry, they do plenty of other stupid shit to make up for it. We wrecked three patrol cars this week

They renew them on time, someone at Corporate takes care of that, but it is the task of the sticker meeting the car. Sticker will go to corporate, who then forwards it to the branch, meanwhile, the car is on rent or gets one-wayed to Toledo, or traded with another branch for a minivan or something. It happens with new car stock too, the paper temp tags are on the car when new car stock is picked up at the dealership, then the plates come in the mail and have to find the car.

I've seen some genius employees do something like change a "1-20-02" to "7-20-01" with a Sharpee, when temp tags aren't issued for more than a month and it's February, 2002. The registration has been paid, the plates are issued, just not on the car when it is 4:50 p.m. and the Griswolds are standing in front of you asking why you are ruining their trip to Wally World by not giving them that brand new Grand Caravan sitting out front.

I'm not saying it happens often, but it happens. This year I rented a pickup from Hertz and it had way expired out of state plates. I chuckled and reminisced about the good ole days, I thought about bringing it up to the rental counter, but figured I'd end up in a crappier car.

Always check the rental car out before you drive off. I always do a walk around video before I leave. I have found damage they didn't write down and weed quite a few times.

My last rental, the driver's door frame was bent. I walked back and told the lady, she came out and said okay I will write it down. A week later when I returned it, they said it was new damage. I showed them the video. They said oh. They couldn't figure out what did it. I told them some cop or tow company did it. They use tools to unlock the car because your last renter locked the keys in it.

Well, I’ve learned how most traffic cops would handle the situation, but since many little towns depend on citation revenue it’s not worth the potential hassle.
I can see the rental company’s point of view. Here, inspection stickers are no longer issued by the ones doing the inspections. In some cases, it’d take a full time employee to trot down to the county clerk’s office to deliver an inspection report, show proof of insurance and pay for a new sticker.
Thanks for the education guys.

In TX at least, I can't recall having a rental car old enough to be outside of the 2 year new car inspection.
Probably the last dozen or so have been current or prior model year.

Did have a 2015 in CA in June, though.

Some municipalities: Sorry you're operating a vehicle with expired tags. Even though you're not the owner of the vehicle and couldn't renew the plates even if you wanted to, we're going to have to give you a ticket because after all, you are driving it.

Same municipality: Sorry you loaned your car to a guy who drove it through a red light camera. Even though you weren't driving it at the time and had absolutely nothing to do with running that red light, we're going to give you a ticket because the car is registered in your name.