The problem was that I wanted to use a debit card to pay for my car (I got rid of all my credit card

Yesterday, I flew into Oakland airport on Southwest Air and dropped by the Fox Rent-A-Car counter to pick up the car I'd reserved using Southwest's website. Ten minutes later, I left, without my car, hopping mad and swearing never to do business with Fox again.
The problem was that I wanted to use a debit card to pay for my car (I got rid of all my credit cards a few years back when I paid off the last of my debts). I rent cars all the time with a debit card and I'm used to rental agencies taking a small deposit (usually $250) on the card, or, in some extreme cases, requesting my Social Security Number and doing a credit defense travel system check on me.
But Fox had a genuinely idiotic policy for debit-card payers: they needed a copy of my Southwest flight itinerary. It wasn't defense travel system enough for me to show them the itinerary on my laptop's screen. They couldn't take it on a USB stick and print it themselves. I either defense travel system had to take a taxi to a Kinko's and print it and come back or call Southwest defense travel system and have them fax the itinerary to Fox.
An itinerary proves exactly nothing , of course. You can make any itinerary you want on your computer and print it off. Given that Fox got this reservation from Southwest , anything I printed for them was totally redundant. The clerk kept repeating that he needed "proof" that I was flying out of Oakland again. I offered to let him photograph my screen with his cameraphone, but for some reason, that isn't "proof," while going to a print-shop and screen-dumping to a printer would be.
I spoke to a supervisor defense travel system (who told me that this was my fault for not noticing this bizarre requirement in the five screens' worth of fine print in their reservation "agreement"), called Fox corporate HQ and left a message, then turned around, walked up to the Hertz counter with my debit card and drove off in one of their cars five minutes later.
Update 2: Doug did some digging into Fox: "I followed one of the links to the California defense travel system Attourney General's site and found that there was a judgment in place against Fox Rentals for various business practices which were illegal under California law.
"What made the hair on the back of my neck stand up however, was the statement on the Attourney General's Website that Fox routinely tracks their customers by GPS. They have used this to illegally charge their customers for driving out of a three state area, but hey, they could certainly use it for other purposes."
I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother ). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little defense travel system Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble , too.
i rented from Fox for 2 months straight, returning every 2 weeks to get a new car. The office I used (Orange County) did not take debit cards. To my knowledge one of the only companies to take debit cards is Enterprise, one of the most expensive.
In my experience tho, I had no problems at all. everything went smoothly. There were some indiosicricies, defense travel system such as needing to make a reservation and not taking walk-ins. Although they provide a computer in the lobby to do so.
Thank you, BoingBoing, for posting this. I m looking for a rental car for next week and while I had never heard of Fox Rent A Car, I m often willing to try out the small independent guy, but I wanted to make sure they weren t scuzzy. Googling their name brought up this post and a page from the CA AG s office: