Granted, I have traveled quite a bit in my life and have probably declared more hotel rooms than 95% of the population. In fact, I have traveled to more cities than 99% of the population, and have also been banned by more car rental agencies than I care to remember. Why do you ask? Because in my business I put way too many miles on rental cars no it’s not because I’m afraid of flying I’m actually a pilot it’s because I’m a retired franchisor and building my business I would drive from city to city and I didn’t take a lot of plane because I had too many stops along the way.

I can remember one time I rented a car in Georgia, and I put in 48,000 miles in five weeks. In fact, I rented the car for $260 a week. You can imagine when I returned the car how shocked and angry they were, and how they wanted to pay my credit card for $10,000 more. However, I made them stick to the $260 a week, and I told them that was the deal, that’s what I signed up for, and it wasn’t my fault I had their car run for 26,000 miles, which is usually the point where they trade in the car because they have a deal with the car auction.

You can understand that obviously putting almost 50,000 miles on a car in five weeks and using up half of its useful life and just paying over $1200 costs the car rental company a ton of money. They lost and I won, but that was the deal. In fact, they felt I took advantage of them, and they banned me for life from renting a car from that company again. Similar scenarios had occurred over the years, though not as many miles. I am currently banned by four different car rental companies, for life.

You may laugh, but this is not very funny because car rental agencies and brands often merge, and there are not as many as there used to be, so now I can only rent a few. Suffice to say, I recommend that you try not to take advantage of Rent-A-Car companies, but still get the best deal for yourself.

Otherwise, you may also be barred from Rent-A-Car companies, which could affect your ability to travel in the future. In fact, I’ve been to a few airports where three-quarters of the Rent-A-Car companies ran out of cars, and the only company that had a car, well, was one that I had already been banned from renting from. Maybe consider all this and think about it.