A few years ago I picked up the custom road version of the velo safe. This was back when I was traveling a lot for work (~3 trips/month, sometimes more). Prior to getting the velo safe, I had been traveling with a Ritchey BreakAway - once swapping over to the velo safe, the enitre bike travel experience was night & day better. Packing & unpacking turned into a few minute process (remove bike, put wheels on, & slide in the seatpost), vs. the hideous puzzle process for getting the Ritchey repacked. I still have the Ritchey, but haven’t traveled with it since.
I was concerned about the whole rental car thing, but this turned out to be a non-issue. Overseas the rental cars are nearly unanimously hatchbacks, domestically I had two plans of action; for a few spots I traveled to often I figured out who rented the Dodge Caliber as their compact car & everywhere else I’d place two reservations, one for a compact car & one for either a minivan or SUV (depending on cost) & then when I arrived, I’d take the cheaper one that would still fit the case. I never ran into a problem with a rental car.
I’m not going to say your bike will never get damaged while in that case, but only because I had one instance where the TSA apparently removed my bike from the case for inspection & then didn’t bother to redo the velcro that holds it down (thus, my bike was only held in by the fork mount). Amazingly, my bike came out of that without a scratch (I did cover all the frame tubes & fork legs with pipe insulation, as well as use velcro straps to hold the wheels securely to the sides of the bike, so it actually was pretty safe even if completely unsecured inside the case), but I’m never in awe as to what the TSA and/or baggage handlers can do to a package. I cringe at the thought of traveling with softcases, or how badly the TSA may screw up repacking your bike in a clamshell case. I know plenty of people have had no issues at all, but where I was doing this usually every week, even a 99% success rate would mean I’d be dealing with a damaged bike at least every year. The damage rate for my BreakAway bike was probably closer to 30% (granted, there was never any severe damage, but plenty of scratches & untrue wheels).
I can’t say that I got away without having to pay for the case all that often, if ever - even with Gold/Platinum/1K/Etc status & I have only traveled sporadically in the last two years or so (really since the airlines got really silly with fees), but knowing the airlines policies & more importantly, how to point them out to the desk agent, made sure I was never overcharged (or more accurately made sure my employer was never overcharged).
The case itself will get beatup. 2 or 3 times, my case was turned into a trike by the time it reached my destination, but fortunately the casters used are available at nearly any Home Depot or Lowes. I ultimately just took to having a spare taped to the inside of the box & never worried about it from that point on. For whatever reason, it also will be late arriving to your destination more often than a normal piece of luggage (when this happened, I was nearly always successful in getting the bike fee reimbursed).
-Zach