Are they crazy? What's the justification for these usurious fees? Do they think all drivers are going to drive the vehicle at the same time?
From the AVIS and HERTZ web sites, I extracted the following:
Hey There ,
I rented a car from Avis in US and as per them my spouse could drive without paying the fee( thats in the contract).
Thats not the same for friends , best is if you can phone 'em up and find out.
In a nutshell... increased profits. They know you need to register the additional driver for insurance purposes, that's the " gotcha ".
Worth trying consolidaters like holidayautos.com, who in the end rents out on behalf of Avis or Hertz and the like.
Sometimes they have a "package" price which includes additional driver. May or may not work out cheaper.
When we went to the US we worked out we could have an additional driver OR a nice V8 Cadillac
We opted for the V8
I think it is quite rational: multiple drivers means more possible mileage on a car; the extra price makes the pricing a bit fairer. Otherwise the single drivers used to cross-subsidize the multiple-driver cars.
As for the comment to "make more profit", well, of course they are in the business, either they make more profit (or less losses), but either way they want to make more money and customers want to save more money, no value judgment there
About 2-3 years ago it was one flat fee (about 30pounds in the UK) to add an additional driver, now you have to pay per day which is a huge amount more.
Sometime you can get their extra insurance cover which lowers the excess to 100 pounds (or zero) and that includes an additional driver, I know Avis in the UK do this?