Hey, Orbitz, I Used to Live in East L.A., Man!

I found myself needing a car from an in-town rental car location. I don’t remember the last time I rented a car that I didn’t pick up at an airport. The good news is I would be saving on airport taxes, at least.

I turned to Orbitz first for a quick search, to get an order of magnitude sense of what I would be looking at. They give a nice grid of different rental companies and vehicle types.

    rental car price grid

Wow, great price jumped out at me. My quest was pretty much over, just as it started!

So I went ahead and made the booking, from a National Car Rental in-town location I didn’t even know existed.

Glad I checked the confirmation. I wanted to figure out just where I’d be picking up the car. I searched near zip code “22314” and the zip code appeared to be “22320” — couldn’t be too far!

Except…

    car reservation in mexico!

I had rented a car in Mexico. Orbitz had deported me…

    Cheech Goes to Mexico!

…even though I used to live in L.A., man! (like 20 years ago).

That internet thing, I just don’t think it’s reliable. It’ll never catch on. At least not for something like travel.


About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Mr. Leff- Meet Globalization which frankly is the way of the future. This is obviously a hiccup but the old practice of OTA’s dealing primarily or only solely in domestic hops is moving on. Airlines now operate without borders. Multinationals operate without borders. Now Orbitz does. The future struggle may not be Us vs the Chinese it may be ” I like the way America plays football us vs the way the world plays football us”.

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