And I m more inclined to believe that the helpless husband is listening in silence because he s lung

First I d like to let the cat out of the bag. Yes, we car rental agents do work for commissions! If we can get you to pay more for an upgrade, insurance, gasoline, a GPS, even an additional driver, we get a cut of the extra charges.
At Alamo Rent A Car in [redacted], we are handsomely rewarded for good sales and punished if our sales are poor. The pressure this environment produces leads many of us to fine tune our skills to not only offer extras effectively and to have comebacks to all customer rejections, but to also be able to identify the customers in line as to whether they are buyers cheap discount airfare bargain airlines tickets or decliners, which we call deekers . When a customer declines everything you ve offered, you ve been deeked . Get deeked enough times by a certain type of customer and you begin to feel resentment towards that group. Sometimes cheap discount airfare bargain airlines tickets a customer cheap discount airfare bargain airlines tickets can t be identified as a buyer or deeker until you see the state or country of the driver license. Evidently some states and countries produce more deekers than others. Deekers may at times be legitimate but often they are just cheap people.
A typical example of a deeker is the young couple with two kids, a 3-year old and a 10-month old, on-line with strollers and packing their own child safety seats. He produces his license and credit card but she does all the talking. Offer them a more comfortable or fun vehicle than the sub-compact they have reserved and she will cut you off with a no . She will also cut you off when you offer her the peace of mind that the insurance will give her or the convenience of prepaying for the gasoline at a discounted cheap discount airfare bargain airlines tickets rate. Of course there s also a no to the GPS because she ll raise the stack of MapQuest printouts in her folder. Listening in silence is the helpless husband as he looks on while imagining driving a sporty SUV instead of the tiny economy car reserved. Enough of these deekers and you may find yourself working in the exit booth of the garage the following month. This punishment can cost you thousands of dollars!
First of all, you wonder how this family can fully enjoy its vacation. They are staying in a cheap motel far from the theme parks. The couple s freedom to roam the theme parks with the kids and the strollers is limited. The kids are too young to have future cheap discount airfare bargain airlines tickets memories of this trip anyway. cheap discount airfare bargain airlines tickets You even wonder how this cheap couple cheap discount airfare bargain airlines tickets is going to eat while on vacation. Are they going to smuggle peanut butter and jelly sandwiches into the theme parks to avoid paying the high priced foods there or are they just going to go hungry? Here s a suggestion to those of you that fit this customer profile, leave the kids at home! Leave them with grandma or Aunt Betty and enjoy your vacation! Let your husband drive the SUV he d like or treat yourselves to a convertible! Wander the theme parks freely and enjoy greater intimacy in a nicer hotel located closer to the parks. You ll enjoy your vacation more and you will help me feed my family!
I was a manager with Alamo and I quit to become a rental agent. Why? For the money. When I realized that the average rental agent was making far more than I was and agents didn t have to put up with the stress and responsibilities of management, I resigned. As a part-time agent, I am now making more than 3 times what I was making as a full-time manager! Aside from my modest $8 hourly rate, I m receiving about $4000 a month during the low season in sales commissions alone! I can t wait for the high season to begin to see how much I ll be raking in. I m not among the best sales agents but believe it or not, the better ones make six figures. Even some part-timers are earning six figures or close to it. So now you can understand how one too many deekers can have us assigned to the exit booth in the garage and cost us thousands.
If we make so much money, obviously many customers are paying more for our extras. Thank you very much! In particular, we love our UK customers which we affectionately call the Brits . When the Virgin and British Airways flights are in, the Alamo counter is full of agents. The Brits are fun folks and love upgrades. We Alamo rental agents have autonomy when it comes to the price of upgrades. There is a minimum which we must adhere to, usually $11 per day, but we can raise it to whatever we believe the customer is willing to pay. If the Brit wants an SUV instead of the midsize sedan reserved, we may charge him $11 more per day or maybe even $99 more per day. Even better, many Brits have long term rentals, cheap discount airfare bargain airlines tickets 2, 3, 4 weeks or longer. The longer the rental, the better for us if the customer cheap discount airfare bargain airlines tickets buys something. For instance, an upgrade of $49 per day for a 3-week rental equals a total of $1029. If the agent can average just one or two sales like this per day, he/she will get a 15% cut of the upgrade sales alone. For this one sale, that means $154.35 commission. Add 15% for all the upgrades for the month, plus say 12% of all the insurance sold, plus 4% for all the gasoline sold, plus 10% for all the GPS sold, and more for all the additional driver charges, and you ve got yourself a pretty commission payout check for the month. Monthly commission payouts cheap discount airfare bargain airlines tickets of over 10 and 15 thousand dollars are not uncommon to the top agents. Again, thank you very much to the buying customers, you are good sports.
@ theysaidwhat : I can t believe it took that long for someone to comment on the wife thing The man pays but the woman talks and says no! Yeah, what a bitch, emasculating her hard working husband while she drops crotchfruit for him and probably tends to the children cheap discount airfare bargain airlines tickets while he works so hard for not-commission. God forbid she speak up over anything.
Not only is he judging your family based on his obviously warped view, but now he s judging your marriage too? Just what I want in a salesperson! I bet she was so busy with her purse (with the plane tickets, maps, recipts, confirmations, hotel reservations, etc) and the kids and all their travel accoutrements that her husband bravely took the burden of carrying that big, heavy wallet jammed with all that hot and heavy plastic. WHEW! He earned an SUV upgrade just for that!!
As for enjoying what you rent, we got a POS car for LA because it was all I could afford/rent with a 21 year old driver and we enjoyed the HELL out of that car! It was awesome! The AC worked and the CD player worked and the brakes worked as we slid through an intersection.
And I m more inclined to believe that the helpless husband is listening in silence because he s lunged over the counter and torn heads off of the last four a-hole salesmen like you for forcing upgrades and being a general DB when they re refused.
Rule #1 Avoid Alamo. What do you expect to get from the dregs of the rental industry other than crap like this article. Let s face it, deekers keep Alamo in business. Sounds like this guy lost his management job and is pissed about it. Tough cookies. If my company picks up the rental, I go top notch, otherwise I deek all the way. One more thing, Alamo always cheap discount airfare bargain airlines tickets hits near the bottom of the list for my rental choices because of douchebag employees like this guy. Fellow Chicagoans: Ever rented from the Alamo at Midway??? That proves this point.
As a happy Deeker I must say that I have had good service from a variety of car rental companies once they realize you aren t going to get suckered in on all the BS upgrades, etc. I have gotten free upgrades with out asking for them probably becouse I am cheerful with them regardless of their pathetic attempts to screw me. Using cheapcars.com works great as the total is already on the contract you download. They(rental agency) have tried to add more on but I just refused and they just back off. Don t be afraid cheap discount airfare bargain airlines tickets to just say no .
Seems like Alamo pays different than Enterprise. cheap discount airfare bargain airlines tickets Last time I rented a car from Enterprise the ONLY thing extra they tried to sell me was the insurance which I was already covered through my regular carrier. They didn t have the full-size car I had reserved and upgraded me to an SUV for free.
#1: some companies rip you off w/ the fuel option- with our company (a major competetor of Alamo)our rate is currently $2.89, versus $3.15 close to the airport- yes, you pay for the full tank upfront- and no, I do not even try to sell it to people who don t think they could use most of it anyway (people who don t prepay and then find out the hard way that there aren t any convenient gas stations THEN pay $6.69 per gallon for what s missing- NOW THAT IS A RIPOFF!)
#2: many people who have attempted to file an insurance claim on a rental car through their personal ins. or credit card then return for their next rental asking US for the LDW/CDW before we have the chance to offer it because they LEARNED THEIR LESSON THE HARD WAY
#4: AS A CAR RENTAL AGENT I DO HAVE TO AGREE THIS GUY IS A MAJOR DOUCHENOZZLE -AND ALAMO IS SUCKTACKULAR! (and he probablly really does work for Avis or another competitor because some of what he said isn t even true!!)
#5: BEHIND THOSE MONEY HUNGRY RENTAL AGENTS, THERE IS A CORPORATE ASSHOLE WHO IS 15X MORE MONEY HUNGRY AND WHO IS FUELING THE RENTAL AGENT S HUNGER with b.s. incentives and empty promises!!! AND WE (w/ the exception of a few bad apples like the person cheap discount airfare bargain airlines tickets who posted this) HAVE MUCH MORE OF A CONSCIENCE THAN THE CORPORATE JERKS WITH DOLLAR SIGNS IN THEIR EYES WHO ~~~USE US AS A MEANS TO THEIR END!!~~~
@ GearheadGeek : This is absolutely correct. I ve gotten countless awesome upgrades because the low-end vehicle I reserved was not available. You just have to deek like a champion to avoid the unnecessary upsell.
wow, I used to like Alamo bc they never had the sub-compact I reserved: I always cheap discount airfare bargain airlines tickets got a nicer car for the same price. cheap discount airfare bargain airlines tickets This guy is a serious jackass cheap discount airfare bargain airlines tickets and I really don t give a damn where he s working next week. It s none of your business what a customer chooses to purchase
As a part-time agent, I am now making more than 3 times what I was making as a full-time manager! cheap discount airfare bargain airlines tickets Aside from my modest $8 hourly rate, I m receiving about $4000