I had a similar situation for real with a national car rental company. I went to the counter and was told there would be a 20% surcharge for "counter support". I asked WTF they were talking about and the guy said they had moved to 100% online reservations and payments for car rentals. I literally took out my phone and made a reservation in front of the guy. 30 secs later he gets a beep and asks my name. I told him and he handed me the keys. What a load of cr*p.
I would have said "See ya", and stepped to the next counter over.