The new Israeli driver’s license design is crap. People have been saying it for years. The old one was much better; in fact, I used it as my primary form of identification while living in New York from 2000 to 2002. I also, incidentally, used it to rent a car from an Alamo agency in Trenton, NJ for a road trip before I moved back home.
Other than backpackers, who have no other choice, nobody I know carries their passport around when abroad. Passports are valuable documents. You leave them in the hotel safe, not in your pocket.
I’m stereotyping here, but I’m allowed to - nothing annoys Israelis more than petty clerks who drag out the rule book and point at some random sub-paragraph that says they can’t do what they’ve always done before. Drives us crazy.
I meant to ask - what’s the deal with that website/paper? It certainly seems slanted to support the renter here:
“Stunned and stranded on a Saturday night in New York”
“The Observer asked Mr. Bergwerk if he felt that, in the heart of Manhattan’s progressive activist community, he was being singled out for being an Israeli”
“Almost nine hours after being asked for comment, Avis got back to the Observer with a statement, surprisingly doubling down on the behavior of its employees”
None of that strikes as good, or even mediocre, journalism.
Perhaps Alessan can confirm, but this gentleman could still have a 2006 “permit”, since (at least based on what appear to be the issue/expiration dates on the sample you linked to) Israeli licenses seem to be valid for 10 years.
I don’t know the rules at Avis, but in theory, they can have any corporate policy they want. When I travel I bring an international driver’s license. I’m sure they would accept that.
Although the article went to great lengths to gloss over it, it’s pretty clear at this point that the aggreived party simply did not present the required second form of ID-- a passport or international driver’s liscence. There is no mystery here, except for maybe why the newspaper wrote such a biased story.
First of all, AVIS might not actually franchise that branch. Mrs Cad had a run around with a rental car agency at 11pm in SLC (I posted a thread on it) and I found out from the mother company that a lot of rental spots - especially in airports - license the name but are not under the direct control of the company. The customer service rep agreed that it was bad policy because when they screw up it reflects badly on the company and they were powerless to do anything about it.
I carry mine frequently when abroad (largely because half the time people won’t accept an overseas drivers license as proof of age to buy booze). I’m headed to Japan in a week, where tourists are required by law to carry their passports.
Regardless, it’s not like he was walking down the street and randomly decided to pop in a rent a car. He’d made a reservation, and when traveling abroad, your passport is the gold standard for acceptable ID.
For what it’s worth, there’s an epidemic around here of overly-cautious businesses, from grocery stores to liquor stores to bars, who refuse to sell liquor to someone with an out of state ID. It caused us a lot of grief when we moved back home from Kansas and still had our Kansas IDs for a few months. If a US-issued ID isn’t guaranteed to be accepted by businesses in the US, I’m not so sure what you can expect with a foreign ID.
Not that I support AVIS here in any way. I don’t even agree with the concept of ID cards in general. But statists gonna state, so what did you expect, rationality?
No, but I’d expect Avis to honor a confirmed pre-authorization on a valid credit card in combination with either a US driver’s license or a foreign driver’s license plus a passport. Which is probably better ID than you’d get from a local. As I said, no one seems to have all the facts about this case, but my own experience with Avis hasn’t been great. OTOH I still wonder why this guy went to such great efforts to complain to the media about how Avis ruined his evening but apparently made no effort at all to rent a car from Hertz or any of the others who were in the area, and just simply go about his business.