The concept of a rental car is pretty amazing when you think about it. A company lets you borrow a vehicle that costs anywhere from $15,000 to $40,000 or more by providing a credit card and driver’s license. All you need to do is promise that you’ll return it.
What other transaction gives you so much credit that you’ll take care of the thing you’ve borrowed? In addition, if you pay for the insurance, you’re not even responsible if you damage the car. That’s why people sometimes say, “Well, it’s a rental,” after a questionable maneuver.
That’s why it’s surprising that people automatically treat a car as if it’s theirs. Even if it does belong to the rental company, this leads me to one of my largest pet peeves with rental cars.
Since almost every car I rent doesn’t have satellite radio activated, I used to connect my phone via Bluetooth. Here’s an example of what I saw when going to the Bluetooth settings:
In fact, this was page 2, as there were already 4 other contacts I had already deleted.
With most rental cars now having Apple CarPlay, there’s little reason to pair your phone via Bluetooth anymore. But if you do, it only takes about 20 seconds to go in and delete your phone from the car before turning it in. What are the odds that you’ll ever rent the same vehicle again? True, there’s not as much risk as not signing out of your streaming video account, but the little things make a difference.
Want to comment on this post? Great! Read this first to help ensure it gets approved.
Want to sponsor a post, write something for Your Mileage May Vary, or put ads on our site? Click here for more info.
Like this post? Please share it! We have plenty more just like it and would love it if you decided to hang around and sign up to get emailed notifications of when we post.
Whether you’ve read our articles before or this is the first time you’re stopping by, we’re really glad you’re here and hope you come back to visit again!
This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
4 comments
This is super normal. Not everyone has Apple Car Play or even knows how to use or even has an iPhone but most people need to use handsfree phone calls. The names are tied to their phone name. Hardly anyone is going to go in and delete their phone when turning in the rental even if they remembered to do it. It also seems weird that you say hardly anyone needs to pair the car to bluetooth but that is what you are doing to notice this. I understand that sometimes things bother some people more than others but it’s about like trying to log into public Wi-Fi at the airport (which you should never do even with a VPN by the way) and seeing 8 different hotspots and being annoyed. Just ignore those other phones and move on once you set the default.
A lot of cars will only do carplay thru bluetooth/wireless and not thru USB. Like you said, it takes 20 seconds to go in a delete so why an entire blog post dedicated to complaining about it.
Seriously? Why are you deleting 4 accounts? Take the 20 seconds to delete 1 account. You have put in exactly as much effort.
I can see some of that going on . I rent the zipcar.