Screening car rental customers: 5 questions before keys leave the drawer

A guy walks in, smiling, says he needs the car for an hour. He's flying out tonight. He pays cash. He's in a rush.

That's the deal you most want to slow down.

The five questions

1. Does the license match the face? If it doesn't, nothing else matters.
2. Is the license still valid? Expired licenses are the number-one cause of insurance refusing a claim.
3. Has this customer rented from any of our branches before? A cross-branch blacklist catches the bad actors who got refused last month at the airport branch and walked into the medina branch.
4. What's the planned route? "Casablanca and back" is fine. "I might go down south, I'm not sure" is a flag — and a price multiplier.
5. How is the deposit being held? Cash, card pre-auth, or "I'll bring it tomorrow"? The last one is not a deposit.

Two minutes at the counter. Most weeks it changes nothing. The week it changes something, it saves you a car.

The one that doesn't fit a checklist

Trust your counter staff. If something feels wrong — if the guy is too charming, too cash-heavy, too vague about return time — they're picking up on something real. Walk away from the deal. There's another customer tomorrow.

The cheap rentals you avoid are the ones that show up on the insurance file in six weeks.