As a former AM in group 16 I can say that most of these issues about vehicle maint. are true but I'm calling bullshit on all this crap about kickbacks and ripping off the dealerships who do oil changes, etc. At my branch we did all of our LOFRs at the NTB directly across the street that had a corp. regionwide agreement for $12 LOFRs, that's dirt cheap, there's no way we're screwing them, it's a deal THEY agreed to. Kickbacks, psssh, please, you really think these drunk ass, pot smoking, coke snorting dumbass frat boys have any idea how to plan a kickback scheme? My branch manager could barely balance a cash drawer let alone plan an elaborate scheme to put money into his pocket without tipping off the higher-ups, I'm not saying it CAN'T be done, I'm just skeptical about this wisespread practice. Now, as far as oil changes go, it was def. the norm in my group to roll any car if we had a customer regardless of what was wrong with it. I had 11 cars at my branch in a 3 month span go 8000 miles plus without a LOFR, it was summer and we were running 92% or better every single day. No way ERAC is going to turn down the green for an oil change. We love to bash ERAC and their LOFR issues because it's just one more thing we can point to proving how shitty of a company they are. In the grand scheme of things, it's not an overwhelming safety issue to have a car go a few thousands miles overdue on an oil change. The chance of a customer being seriously injured due to a blown engine on a car that's overdue is highly remote. It's not intentional negligence on the part of ERAC, it's pure greed and most of the times it comes from the ARMs and RRMs who want every car on the road to fatten their wallets because they don't have to look that customer in the eye while renting them out a car overdue for a LOF or with bad brakes, etc. Sadly, I don't think this problem is unique to ERAC, I'm sure other rental car companies, mass transit, even airlines are skimping on the maint. to inflate profits. With all that being said, the one thing that really pissed me off and got me fired up was when a customer would come to switch out of a car and tell us the brakes were bad, tires bald, transmission problem, etc. and the BM would make this big heroic scene and play the "good guy" and be like "go park that car over along the fence so we can have it looked at" and then 10 mins later when te customer left our lot get that same car and park it on the line for the next customer. ERAC doesn't want to deal with shit like that, esp. a brake job, those are very costly and time consuming. It's like getting double fucked for them because they pay to get the new brake pads and rotors resurfaced if damaged, and lose AT LEAST one full day's revenue from the unit. My last point refers to the maint. cost and how it's allocated. As someone already mentioned, the costs get spread across the entire group mainly to avoid having branches "pass along" cars requiring attention and slapping another branch with bigtime maint. bills. It's not so much about the money when giving up LOFRs and such, it's more about the headache and aggrevation. Let me explain, in our region we had this real "go getter" as our VR guy, he truly blead green, pissed green, cummed green, the whole nine yards. EVERY fucking day he would send out a list of cars requiring attention and hound the ARM's if they didn't get this work done ASAP and in turn, the ARM's came down hard on the BMs and AMs to get it done. Of course, the VR guy was looking out for himself since he gets graded and paid on the percentage of cars up to date on repairs, etc. the ARM was looking out for himself, paid on revenue and fleet growth, cars on rent and never wanted to get work done and low and behold the BMs and AMs were the ones who ended up getting a big ole deuce dropped right on their face. Therefore, it was just easier for us to give up cars to other branches so when the VR douche came looking for the guys who didn't get their maint. done we could say "were not the owning branch, go fuck yourself." ERAC is just one big fucked up outfit cause everyone from the top down has their own agenda. With all the comission pay and percentage payouts everyone with any responsibility wants their numbers to be the highest. The RRM wants all vehicles to be up to date on maint. every car on rent, 100% dub sales. etc. The ARM wants every car on the road, bigtime sellups, 100% DW sales, 100% ESQI, etc. The VR guy wants 100% of vehicles up to date, clean titles on everything, less then 2% "in shop" etc. The list goes on and on, somewhere along the line someone gets the short end of the stick and in true Enterprise spirit, it's generally the new MT's or MA's who take the brunt of the hit because they just don't know any better.