• November 17, 2009

After two consecutive years of considerable declines, overall customer satisfaction with renting cars at airports has stabilized in 2009, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2009 U.S. Rental Car Satisfaction Study released on Tuesday.

Now in its 14th year, the study measures overall customer satisfaction with renting cars at airports based on costs and fees; pick-up process; rental car; return process; reservation process; and shuttle bus/van.

Overall satisfaction averages 733 on a 1,000-point scale in 2009, a wee bit down from 734 in 2008. The Westlake Village, Calif. firm says better satisfaction scores result from the rental car industry containing operating costs by "right-sizing" their fleets to meet changing consumer demand and extending the service lives of their vehicles, allowing them to delay orders for replacements. "This has enabled many rental car companies to decrease their rental fees," says the firm.

Enterprise ranks highest in customer satisfaction among rental car companies for a sixth consecutive year and performs particularly well in all six factors. Enterprise is followed in the rankings by National and Hertz, respectively. In particular, National has improved considerably from 2008, by 15 index points and two rank positions in 2009. Hertz performs particularly well in shuttling customers to and from the airport.--Karl Greenberg