Recently was at Baltimore Washington Airport and rented a Tesla Model Y from Hertz.

The ordeals began long before we arrived at BWI.

I forget the reason now, but I didn't trust Hertz with the reservation for the Y. Even though the site said yes we have them and your Y reservation is GUARANTEED! It was weird because the Y was cheaper than renting a 3. And something just didn't seem right. So I was determined to call. I didn't know their number so I went to their website.

Hertz's website was full of problems, like, no way to find out the phone number for customer service. If you clicked on the Contact Us page, it led to some customer-avoidance links like most companies nowadays have, where, here, talk to our useless bot, or here, peruse our Knowledge Base, or here, read our FAQ, but no phone number. And when you finally found a link to a phone number and clicked it, you wound up at a 404 Not Found page. (I finally got the number from Google.)

When I talked to a human at Hertz I asked to double-check on the Y reservation. They said oh yes, all is good, you're all set, yadda yadda.

Day we arrive, big long line at the Hertz counter. One employee behind the counter (this counter is like a football field's width wide, with workstations every few feet, so they could easily fit 25 employees each taking a customer. But no. One.) We eventually get to the employee. I give my name, tell them I'm here to pick up the Y.

Sorry sir, there's no reservation here for a Y. Let me check something. She then walks away. A minute goes by. Two minutes. Five. Ten. Suddenly some dude in a Hertz uniform comes out. Obviously the bearer of bad news.

Sorry sir, we have no Model Ys. Well we have 25 of them but none of them are available, they're all at the Tesla shop and we don't know when they will be available.

But, you guys said yesterday on the phone that yes my Y was guaranteed, reservation is all set, all is good, etc.

Sorry sir, no Ys. We have plenty of 3s though.

Crap, I didn't want a 3, but we decided to take the 3. That took the employee 15 more minutes to process at the computer. HUGE LINE now backed up behind us, while this guy takes his sweet old time finishing what should have been a 30-second task. Finally we're told where to go in the epically vast parking garage for the car. It's in spot number 325 or something. We look on the ground . . . we're at like spot number 1, 2, 3 . . . we keep walking, we cannot find the car.

I ask a Hertz employee, where would spot 325 be? He looks at me like I'm an idiot, and responds in a tone he reserves for people he thinks are idiots: it's next to 324, right over there, and I'm looking and I only see spots in the 200s. Employee mutters "what an idiot" or something and walks away.

We eventually find the 3, among many 3s, at the extreme far end of this garage that is easily the size of an airport hangar that could fit a dozen 747s.

We get in, and it's the first time I've driven a 3... even though I'd driven an S for ten years. Tiny car in comparison, everything on this little toy screen (compared to the mighty S's) and in a different place.

We thought, we've had a Tesla for ten years, and we're not quite sure where all the settings are. What about brand-new customers who've never driven a Tesla or even an EV before?

The entire customer experience at Hertz was F-A-I-L. Just terrible. It's like the workers hate the cars. And I can imagine Tesla's service is a total nightmare for Hertz as a fleet owner.

Tesla doesn't get customer experience either. Hertz has become so awful (at least the BWI Hertz) we can't imagine renting from them again.

I think there's blame all around.

Do better Enterprise, Budget, Avis, etc. Somebody, do better.