So here's a littel rant. After being told that I received a complimentary upgrade and giving up my choice bulkhead aisle seat, I was called back to the gate agent podium and told that someone with a higher status on the airline bumped my upgrade, and that I had lost my bulkhead aisle seat, and would have to sit in the rear of the plane (luckily, another aisle seat.) And so it begins ...
The guy who sat next to me on the plane was one of those guys how had to use the bathroom every 20 minutes. I swear, just as I got comfortable, he had to get up! Ugh.
After almost 3 hours, I made it to DFW. However, I was unaware that grabbing your luggage from the overhead bin and exiting the plane was such a long and arduous task! I can't belive that people don't quite understand the idea that you just grab the luggage, and go. I guess it might have something to do with the fact that these people try sooooo hard to squeeze their 22" "carry on" luggage into the overhead bins, they can't get it back out! Anyways, after about 35 minutes, I was off the plane.
The next part of my adventure takes me to the Rental Car Express Bus, which is in no way "Express". It took FOREVER for the bus to arrive. Moreover, the bus made 5 stops before getting me to the rental car area. There, thanks to Avis Preferred Service, I found my car, which had Avis Assist in it. Avis Assist was advertised on the Avis Web site to be an easy to use and guaranteed. However, it was not easy to use, and didn't work at all!
First, getting setup with the cell-phone-turned-Jave-enabled-GPS-device was rather klugy. I had to talk with a person in order to get the address entered into the phone. Then as I headed out of the rental car area, the unit directed me to a one-way road and told me to go right, which was in the wrong direction! After re-calculating my route four times, I gave up and got directions from the hotel.
All-in-all, don't bother getting Avis Assist. It does more harm than good.