A Review of Our Journey Into Hell, in the Manner of Dante’s Inferno
Atlanta Airport Thrifty Car Rental
2300 Rental Car Parkway
Atlanta, GA 30320
The Prelude
In which the duo lands in Atlanta, hopeful and happy.
ATL: The World’s Busiest Airport
On the cusp of Memorial Day weekend, “B” and I landed at the sprawling Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL).
Surprisingly, our Frontier flight screeched to a stop right on time. Even if we dawdled on the long haul through the world’s busiest airport to the Thrifty rental car center, we’d still have enough daylight to explore Atlanta’s smokin’ barbecue scene later.
But first we needed a ride. We had booked and prepaid for a standard car through Priceline’s “Express Deals.” This meant we had saved $50 by entering into a non-refundable Russian Roulette for a sedan from either Thrifty, Budget, or Dollar Rental, and had ended up with Thrifty.
The Big Three Car Rental Companies
Three companies dominate the U.S. rental car landscape. Beyond their namesake companies, Avis operates Budget and Payless; Enterprise operates National and Alamo; and Hertz runs Dollar and Thrifty. Thus, consumers merely have the illusion of choice when renting. Hertz’s Thrifty brand, “caters to cost-conscious business and leisure travelers.” In other words, tightwads and broke folks.
Canto I
In which the duo reaches the vestibule of Hell.
The Rental Car Loop at Atlanta Airport
We exited our terminal with our bags, crossed the street, took the escalators up to the ATL SkyTrain, and hopped on for the mile-long ride to the rental car loop. There, we disembarked and followed the signs for the Atlanta Airport Thrifty Car Rental pickup, where a pleasant parking garage Charon stopped us. She gently rereouted us back towards the rental counter to check-in first.
My stomach dropped. En route to the garage, I had seen a crowd out of the corner of my eye, and willfully, wildly, brushed it off. We backtracked into the building, passing a smattering of folks at the shiny Enterprise and Hertz counters – not too bad – until we reached Hell.
The grim line for the Dollar/Thrifty shared counter wormed and wrapped, turned corners, followed walls, twisted and torqued, and finally petered out at least 200 customers later by the elevators. The tortured gazes of our fellow cheap souls sadly blinked us toward the back of the line.
Canto II
In which the duo enters Limbo.
In the Atlanta Airport Thrifty Car Rental Line
Soon after, a group of men queued behind us, equally horrified at what we predicted was to come: at least an hour of waiting.
Oh, what optimism! Oh, how the human spirit hopes even when reality stands before it, clad in rumpled travel clothes and polka dot neck pillows!
It would instead take us 4.5 hours to reach the counter where only two agents politely processed each patron oozing grease and despair from their odyssey in line. The sojourn was even worse than walking down the Las Vegas Strip in search of bad fish and chips.
As the company names Thrifty and Dollar might belie, every single customer was on a budget. None of us could afford to lose $350 on our old reservation and spend another $350 on a new one at one of the other counters. As we stood still, moving one foot every 15 minutes, customers at the other rental agencies blithely checked in after waiting a mere 5 minutes, then jangled off to the rental car herd.
Canto III
In which the duo understands corporate Avarice.
Still in the Atlanta Airport Thrifty Car Rental Line
Meanwhile, the Thrifty/Dollar crowd began to collaborate. Scouts were deployed to the desk to check on the wait, which the agents estimated at an insulting 15 minutes. Occasionally, one of the Thrifty workers disappeared for a break or other tasks, leaving one employee as the sole processor of the mob.
To make matters worse, everyone had their baggage and had to drag it along, inch by inch.
Parties in line sent members off for Snickers and fresh air. Everyone started calling their local families and friends to change the dinner plans – clearing their throats forlornly as if to share the news that someone dear had passed.
Something dear was passing. Our time. Our valuable time. Something had failed in the corporate machine that ran Thrifty – something that was curiously solved at the parent company’s counter right next to us – and all of us folks who had needed to save that extra $50 were the victims.
In the time it took us to reach the Atlanta Airport Thrifty Rental Car counter, we could have flown back to California.
Somehow, three people managed to cancel their car reservations and fled the line. Before we could ask how they worked that magic, they scurried off, leaving the rest of us waiting, waiting, waiting, murine and sad.
Canto IV
In which the duo descends into Wrath.
A Tragedy of Errors
Trapped between fluorescence and linoleum, there was nothing to do but read reviews for the Atlanta Airport Thrifty Car Rental and complain. Many others had experienced this very same hell before and posted warnings to avoid renting from there. Instead of finding a solution, Thrifty did nothing.
Thus, our first error that led to this travel fiasco was not reading the reviews. Reviews – real words about lived experiences – are the best tool consumers have against bad businesses.
Our second error was booking the cheapest rate through a third party site. For a mere $50 more through Enterprise, we could have saved 4.5 hours and even cancelled for free. Instead, our Express Deal weighed us down like a pair of concrete shoes. We wrongfully believed we’d still get decent service.
Our final error was not signing up for Thrifty’s free Blue Chip Rewards program, which allows renters to skip the counter and go straight to the garage. If we had entered a little string of membership numbers when reserving (not possible on Priceline), we could have avoided the entire queue.
We desperately – we thought cunningly – tried to add a Blue Chip number post-facto over the phone as we stood in line, but Priceline said we had to contact Thrifty and Thrifty routed us right back to Priceline. Based on the number of people in line, the Blue Chip program is clearly not facilitating service at the Atlanta Airport counter.
Canto V
In which the duo reaches the final Circle.
Customer Service at the Thrifty Rental Counter
Four hours later, we entered the last two small turns of the line.
A countable number of people stood in front of us. The crowd hooted and hollered for each compatriot called up to the counter, both in celebration of one less place to wait and genuine camaraderie at the shared travel nightmare.
Two huge Dutch folks reached the counter, then a mom with a very patient kid, and then finally us, where we were confronted with the barbed wire of rental add-ons. The agent seemed entirely unconcerned that we had waited for four-and-a-half hours to see his mouth moving. Yes, how grateful we were to witness his neat teeth, up close, and his starched collar, and to hear the perky little click of his computer mouse. How we understood that he was working while we were merely standing, waiting for something well beyond his control.
In return for accepting some of the add-ons (we had no fight left in us), he handed us the ticket to a standard size vehicle.
Canto V
In which the duo “into that hidden road/now entered, to return to the bright world…thence we came forth to rebehold the stars.”*
Escape from the ATL Airport Thrifty Car Rental
Freed from the line, infused with life, we ran to the garage where the Charon still stood guard.
She said we could choose any one of the cars on the aisle and waved at a ragtag cluster of three vehicles. The keys were already in the cars – we just had to pick one and exit out of the parking garage for the last inspection.
The first was a humble Chevvy Malibu with no keys in it. The second was a tooth-white Hyundai Elantra riddled with scratches. The third had somebody sitting in it, staring straight ahead, but going nowhere, as if they were working through the trauma of the line they had just experienced. Thus, we were stuck with the Hyundai, replete with Florida license plates and a vulnerability that would allow any thief to plug in a USB and steal the car.
We took a video of the extant damage, then squealed down to the parking garage exit. The car smelled like adventure, strangers, and fabric, and already had 46,000 miles under its well-used belt.
The final step to exit from Thrifty hell was a 30-minute wait for the gates where an agent would note the existing damage – though this seemed short after our earlier tenure.
At the gate, we were blessed with a sparkling employee at her very first day at work. Oh, the enthusiasm! Oh, the customer service! When we showed her the nicks and dents, she didn’t asterisk exact points on the diagram, but rather circled the entire side, on each side of the car, such that by the end, the entire diagram was circled, like some now-invincible Michelin Man car.
At last the arm lifted up and we were on our way to Conyers, GA, knowing that we would never rent a car from Thrifty again. While the individual employees were all pleasant, the Atlanta Airport Thrifty Car Rental branch isn’t designed to handle heavy traffic – a serious flaw at a rental car counter in the world’s busiest airport.
*Canto 34 – Divine Comedy – Inferno by Dante Alighieri, trans. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Last Word
In 2025, during a week-long stay in Atlanta, we rented two cars from Enterprise via Costco Travel. From the pick-ups to the returns, both experiences went seamlessly. The moral of the story, get a Costco Membership, rent a car through their portal for a great rate that you can cancel anytime and don’t have to prepay, and avoid a trip to Hell. Or, if you want to live like Dante, book a Thrifty car,