Originally Posted by
bkco88
Some context - I have rented over 20 times this year, nearly every time with National or Hertz. I always decline all coverage, gas, etc. Sorry for the long read in advance.
Rented with Budget for the first time this past weekend. Had a friendly conversation with the agent, rented intermediate but received a Dodge Journey- fine, sounds good. Then it got a little weird.
Agent: Okay, and we'll make sure to add the prepaid gas here.
BKCO: No thank you, I'm all set and will fill it up before returning
Agent: Sir, unfortunately the company has mandated this service now
BKCO: What? I have never heard of that in any other rental company
Agent: I know it's annoying but you can bring your receipt and get it reimbursed. It's a new policy here at Budget that corporate has told me I must apply.
BKCO: Really? So I have no other option but to prepay the fuel to rent?
Agent: No, sorry
At that point I needed to leave and honestly did not know if it was a crazy new policy that Budget had put in place, having never rented with them before. Perhaps a little naivety on my part.
I return the car and speak to a manager - he says "No, this was not mandatory at all. Maybe some retraining required". I was refunded but peeved at the fact that an agent could be so brazen in their deceit.
Does anyone know the details around quotas, commission, etc when up-selling these services? Would love to get some insight from behind the counter.
What location?
Franchises manage their own employees and commission targets. At corporate locations, policies are centralized, but enforcement of policies is largely dependent on local management.
I can't speak to specifics in either case (not knowing each individual franchise's policies or being specifically familiar with Budget's corporate policy), but in the industry in general, incremental sales revenue for each agent is totaled up and then divided by the number of rental days to arrive at an "average incremental revenue per day" figure (commonly called in the industry a sales "yield"). Often, companies/locations will have a tiered commission system, so the higher the yield, the higher the commission payout. A figure at a company I'm familiar with paid their top agents a 15% commission if their sales yield exceeded $20, and there were several agents in that tier, a couple of whom managed to take home about $120K/year or so.
There isn't usually a minimum quota per se, just that yield figure, and so if the agent's yield drops below a tier threshold, they stand to lose quite a bit of money. Also, agents with poor yields can be reassigned to other non-sales positions or even let go.
Note that Enterprise does not pay their employees a commission, but they do brainwash them into loving the company so much and wrapping their entire identity up in the company and then believing that the key to their future success and promotion is to sell well that they can almost be
more pushy and underhanded than the other companies that pay commission...