adamgoldberg

April 30, 2004


National Car Rental
Customer Service Department
208 St. James Ave.
Charleston, SC 29445

Re: Executive Selection™ rental at SFO Airport Location 4/26/04

Dear Customer Service:
Recently I received new Emerald Club® credentials which described the new features of Emerald Club Executive, thank you very much. This week, I had an op-portunity to use the new features for the first time, and am writing to describe the experience.

On Monday 26 April, I arrived at the SFO airport location to find a very clearly marked Emerald Club Executive Selection area very close to the Emerald Aisle. The area was clearly marked and well delineated. There were quite a few cars available, including both Full-Sized, Premium and Minivan-class cars. I chose a Pontiac Bon-neville (Premium).

At the check-out booth, I noticed that the attendant had entered into the computer system’s “Class Driven” field the value “PCAR” and “Class Charged” field the value “FCAR”. I told the attendant that this did not match my understanding of the new Executive level and Executive Selection.

He told me that his understanding was that the Executive Selection was merely an area with Full Size and larger cars, and that I would pay one car class less then the car I chose. I explained that my understanding of Executive Selection was that I should reserve a Full-Size car, choose a car from the Executive Selection and be charged for a Mid-Size car (see Page 4 of the publication identified on the back cover lower-right as “L0072NEC-ECEBROCH-3/04”).

He insisted that this was not the way the system worked, and documented my “misunderstanding” in some comment records in the reservation.

I then called the Executive Reservation Line (as this was the only telephone number printed on the card) and spoke with an agent who explained to me how she thought the Executive Selection process worked. I told her that I agreed with her, but SFO did not. She put me on hold while she checked with a supervisor, who also agreed with me. She then said that if I was still at the airport, I could speak with a supervisor there who should be able to set things straight. As I was driving to my appointments, I asked her if she could get SFO on the phone to work this out. She connected me to the SFO location.

I began describing the situation to the SFO representative, who took down my Emerald Club number in order to find the reservation. She then asked me to hold while she found the reservation, and then hung up on me (it was unclear whether the disconnection was intentional or not).

I then called Executive Reservations back again, and described the situation so far. I asked if there was a supervisor I could speak with, and was transferred to someone else. Thought it was not announced, I believe I was then connected to Customer Service.

The person I spoke with first at Customer Service was completely unaware of Emerald Club Executive, completely unaware of Executive Selection, and completely unable to help me. I likely expressed some frustration at the process so far, and asked to speak with a supervisor. I was then put on hold for more than 10 minutes before being connected to a supervisor.

The supervisor I spoke with was aware of Emerald Club Executive, but seemed to agree with SFO’s interpretation of the program features. I explained that I understood what she was saying, but that it did not agree with literature I had re-ceived from National. She put me on hold to investigate, during which time I was disconnected again (in contrast to the previous disconnect, this seemed to be en-tirely accidental – I was listening to hold music, which suddenly disappeared and the call disconnected).
I became quite irritated that this point, and was tempted to ‘throw in the towel’. After a few minutes, I called Reservations again and asked to speak with a Customer Service Supervisor. While I was on hold, the person I was speaking to previously called me back, so I hung up on the final call to speak with the original supervisor.

The supervisor had done some research and came to the conclusion that I was exactly correct, and then had been able to call my home telephone number to get my cell phone number from my wife and called me back. She and I discussed the program features in great detail, and she agreed to call the SFO location and straighten out the billing on the rental in progress.

Unfortunately, because I was driving to my destination while these conversa-tions were occurring, I was unable to record the names or identifying information of anyone I spoke with.

Upon returning the car to SFO, I found that she had indeed fixed the billing and I was given a receipt indicating “Class Charged” of “ICAR”.

I took away several thoughts from this experience:

1. The SFO location had a poor understanding of the new program. Per-haps this is rectified already (due to the incident described), but per-haps not. In any case, there may be other locations with similar mis-understandings.

2. The Executive Reservations agents had a correct understanding, but were still a bit tentative as to its features. In any case, they gave me correct information.

3. The Customer Service agent I spoke with had no knowledge of the program whatsoever, and was nearly completely useless – if I had been unsure of the new services offered, I may have simply assented to SFO’s interpretation.

4. The Customer Service Supervisor I spoke with initially had a poor un-derstanding of the program, but was excellent nevertheless. She was able to get the correct information, track me down after an inadvertent disconnect, and correct the rental without forcing me to travel back to the airport. If you can find this employee from the information pro-vided, she deserves a commendation.

In conclusion, I hope this information is helpful to you in continuing to im-prove your processes and rollout of this new program.

Regards,



adamgoldberg
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