I called Enterprise first thing the next morning, as soon as they opened. It was a local office and

Like most travelers, Bette Waterstreet doesn t expect world poker tour chips much when she rents a car. A clean, running vehicle that s in the same car class she ordered will do just fine. But that s not what she got when she rented from Thrifty in Ontario, Calif., recently.
That s exactly what she should have done. Thrifty would have probably been happy to swap out the old, dirty rental for a newer one if it had been given a chance. More car rental companies are aging their fleets in order to save money, which means that an increasing number of customers are being given higher-mileage cars.
Please accept my sincere apology that we didn t have the vehicle you expected based on your reservation and for the poor condition of the vehicle you received. We are unable to guarantee a make or model of vehicle when reserved only a car class. Our available fleet is affected by late returns and vehicles that must be serviced and are briefly not available on a given day.
Your requests are important and we try to maintain a fleet that meets your preferences and needs. When a reserved vehicle is not available, it becomes our priority to ensure you receive a vehicle; however, I am sorry this did not meet your expectations.
As a gesture of goodwill, I have mailed you two rental discount certificates, which are redeemable world poker tour chips at any Thrifty Car Rental location in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Caribbean, and Australia.
I m seriously annoyed at their business world poker tour chips practices, but should I drop it at this point? Obviously, world poker tour chips my friend and I would NEVER rent from them again, and they don t seem to care about that with this silly, inconsequential, offensive offer.
No one disputes that speaking up at the time is the best option/ However, its not always possible. Sometimes where you have to be is more important than dealing with the travel situation at that point.
I understand not needing to be late and that you wouldn t hearing the washing machine noise until driving, world poker tour chips but if you don t speak up right away, it s sort of like eating most of a dish and then returning it to the kitchen because something wasn t right.
I show up at the time I reserved world poker tour chips the car. Guy in front of me gets an upgrade to luxury car. I get no car (I reserved a luxury sedan) told I have to wait 6 hrs or take a manual mini (for 3 adults with 3 large suitcases). No offer to walk me. No offer to give me the £25 required by their local policy. They suddenly find a stripped minivan to give me (downgrade from a lux sedan) an hour after I showed up at the desk. Hassle at turn in because the delay now puts me in a higher rate category.
I m with Carver on this one. She already said that she couldn world poker tour chips t return the car immediately because she had a meeting. As infuriating as the car was, it would have been a lot worse if she had missed a work related meeting, putting her job (or performance review) in jeopardy. Hertz was flat out wrong, not the customer.
What does she want for compensation?! $20 sounds fine to me, especially since she didn t actually experience any inconvenience (the car didn t break down, she didn t have to wait for it to be cleaned, etc.). And in my experience, people tend to grossly overstate a problem when they want something. I d bet if you or I looked at that car, we would have thought it was perfectly fine.
Sorry . but she sounds like a complainer. Thrifty is better off. She was out nothing . as someone stated before . the car didnt break down. its ONLY 2 years old. I would venture to guess that most people have cars much older.
Oh My! What has happened to customer service and businesses? Receiving a junk car is just as bad as having to go through an automated answering service when you call your credit card company or any company for that matter!
I agree that it s best to arrive at the rental world poker tour chips car establishment early. You never know what could happen. Also, you may be a conscientious person by returning the car on time, but some people world poker tour chips will not.
I m of two minds on this one. I had a sort of similar experience in July. I picked up a car from Enterprise, to take on my trip the next morning. Even though their cars are supposed to be non-smoking, this one reeked. I said something about it and they said, Well, we can t stop people from smoking during the rental period, and unfortunately, world poker tour chips detailing just doesn t get the odor out completely. Hmm.
Anyway, I got home with the car, and in just running world poker tour chips a couple of errands in it that evening, noticed it was making an odd clanking noise. It *probably* wasn t anything major, but my trip was 300 miles solo, to the next state, and as a woman alone, I wasn t about to take a chance the clanking would get worse. The car had 33K miles, so it was getting near the end of its rental life.
I called Enterprise first thing the next morning, world poker tour chips as soon as they opened. It was a local office and closed at 6 p.m. the night before, or I d have said something then. Anyway, I called and they said they would be happy to switch the car. It was a downgrade, but they adjusted the rate, the car was clean, smelled OK and ran fine. Happy ending.
Thrifty could have done more, but Bette should have at least said something when she returned the car, if the office was open. They might have offered world poker tour chips her some kind of compensation at that time, too.
This sort of take what we give you or tough luck is becoming pervasive throughout all transactions. There was a sign at the doctor s office yesterday, if you are more than 15 minutes late for your appt, we will have to reschedule. OK but the doctor was 25 minutes late to see me. Same thing all around, the one with the goods makes the rules and it depends how much we want it and how much time we have to waste. Need to get to a meeting, the whole purpose of the trip, then accept a dirty car. Have the time and energy to make a fuss, but have to wait a couple of hours for what should have been given.
All service providers know they can get away with whatever, whenever so even a boycott of a specific world poker tour chips one does little because the next one will have their bad day too. Society world poker tour chips as a whoel needs a make-over.
This story has one important thing in common with the myriad rental-car disaster stories that Chris has run recently, and with my many dealings with the travel industry over the last 10 years on the road. Thrifty, and Hertz, and Budget, and for that matter USAir, and United, world poker tour chips and now that I think of it, Comcast, and AIG and Verizon and US Bank and are perfectly indifferent to whether you ever do business with them again. Thrifty responded to Bette s disgust as though it were a marketing opportunity. No wonder she s angry, but that s typical. Thrifty wasn t giving anything back, even though it failed to deliver the product it promised, and for which it charged. Indeed, if Bette reads the fine print on her discount certificates, I ll bet she discovers they actually are worthless because they have so many conditions and requirements attached world poker tour chips to their use. United has treated me in exactly the same way, even though I was a frequent flier with 70,000 air miles the day they stranded me in Washington D.C. after a weather-related flight cancellation. United was obviously , blatantly, utterly indifferent as to whether I, or any other passenger, frequent or not, ever did business with them again.
world poker tour chips CEOs earn too much money and they skip from company to company, rather than coming up the ranks. They don t know anything world poker tour chips about their actual business, and consequently they run it into the ground. (Robert Nardelli, anyone?) world poker tour chips Every one of the corporate suits who has paraded his myriad failings across the pages of my newspaper lately has been staggeringly entitled and arrogant. That is the attitude that underlies Bette s experience.
The government should be involved, but not the way they are now. AIG s customer service isn t any better than United s, or Thrifty s or Budget s. They too, smirk and tell me to vote with my feet and my wallet, when I protest. Unfortunately, my feet and my wallet say one thing when I m in control, and another world poker tour chips when my elected representatives are in control. Would I ever do business with AIG again? Not only would I do business with them, apparently I d give their executives million-dollar bonuses! world poker tour chips None of these worthless CEOs is at all worried, and why should they be? Lehman Brothers was a fluke, right? world poker tour chips If Thrifty s CEO runs the business into the ground, one thing is for sure: he won t suffer.
And finally there s the consolidation of business despite the growth of population. I now do almost all my business using web conferencing for one reason: the travel experience world poker tour chips is so excruciating. world poker tour chips And yet, on the rare occasions that I now get on an airplane it is always completely full. Why should United care that they lost a frequent-flier who did tens of thousands of dollars of business with them a year, and who works for a company that does tens of millions of dollars world poker tour chips of business with them a year? The population of the U.S. is growing world poker tour chips fast. No matter if a company alienates a customer. There s someone young, naive and eager to take her place.
I ve gotten less than optimal rental cars too. If I didn t have time to go back and complain, I just used them and dealt with it. If I did, I asked politely for a different car and I ve usually been upgraded when that happened.
Yes, the car was only 2 years old. A two-year-old rental is nearing the end of its rental life. My personal car is eight years old and has over 100K miles on it, but I d take it cross-country tomorrow. Why? Because world poker tour chips I know who s been driving it, I know its maintenance record and I know what it s been through. You don t know any of that when you get a rental, and it s a fact that some people drive the h*** out of rentals, but baby their personal vehicle.
Thrifty shouldn t have allowed that car out of the garage. It should have been on their sale lot to start with. If it had broken down, they d have been responsible for picking it up, providing Bette with another car and getting the ca