david81
Jun 16, 09, 2:14 pm
After renting from Hertz a few times previously, I recently joined up with the #1 Gold service (free thanks to flyertalk and other forums). When browsing for a rental for our upcoming trip to England, I found a price on hertz.com for $407 for our rental period. I didn't book it at the time, didn't think much of it, plenty of time before the trip. Talked it over with the wife, went back to book it early the next day and suddenly it's around $500 for the same rental.
Ok, it changes day to day, I understand that. Just for kicks, I emailed the Gold customer service folks to see if there was anything they could do. Received a prompt response that they can't handle any rate/reservations issues, but that they had forwarded my message to the appropriate folks. Great.
A few days go by and I have no response yet. I email the Gold folks again to ask about it, they say, sorry, can't do anything, but here is the number to call if you want.
I call and, of course, they say they can't do anything about the rate. I understand this. I ask what the best rate they can offer is, nearly $600 now. On the website it is still around $500 at the time. Phone rep doesn't have access to that rate. I hate it when companies sell against themselves! What sense does that make?
So I basically gave up on it for a while. Just kept checking back and searching other companies for their rates. Just yesterday I got an email from the rates and reservations department. "Sorry for the delay in responding" they said. The "delay" was over a month!
I got the answer I expected, but was shocked that it took over a month to respond.
Well, I replied with a comment to that effect. I also said that this really all could have been avoided if they had made an effort to serve the customer originally. I didn't expect to get the rate from the previous day, but I thought there would be at least something they could do. Instead they just quoted me a higher rate and said, yeah, sometimes it's just better online. Seems like they really didn't care.
They actually responded to that pretty quickly (just one day) and thanked me for giving them the "opportunity to serve you" and have a nice day.
Do they just not care? Are they of the mind that, well, someone else will come along and pay us anything we ask?
Sorry for the long rant, but it still shocks me in these times that companies are so anti-customer.
Rant over.
Ok, it changes day to day, I understand that. Just for kicks, I emailed the Gold customer service folks to see if there was anything they could do. Received a prompt response that they can't handle any rate/reservations issues, but that they had forwarded my message to the appropriate folks. Great.
A few days go by and I have no response yet. I email the Gold folks again to ask about it, they say, sorry, can't do anything, but here is the number to call if you want.
I call and, of course, they say they can't do anything about the rate. I understand this. I ask what the best rate they can offer is, nearly $600 now. On the website it is still around $500 at the time. Phone rep doesn't have access to that rate. I hate it when companies sell against themselves! What sense does that make?
So I basically gave up on it for a while. Just kept checking back and searching other companies for their rates. Just yesterday I got an email from the rates and reservations department. "Sorry for the delay in responding" they said. The "delay" was over a month!
I got the answer I expected, but was shocked that it took over a month to respond.
Well, I replied with a comment to that effect. I also said that this really all could have been avoided if they had made an effort to serve the customer originally. I didn't expect to get the rate from the previous day, but I thought there would be at least something they could do. Instead they just quoted me a higher rate and said, yeah, sometimes it's just better online. Seems like they really didn't care.
They actually responded to that pretty quickly (just one day) and thanked me for giving them the "opportunity to serve you" and have a nice day.
Do they just not care? Are they of the mind that, well, someone else will come along and pay us anything we ask?
Sorry for the long rant, but it still shocks me in these times that companies are so anti-customer.
Rant over.