I agree. To the customer, Avis is Avis. Just as it took forever for the airlines to understand that to the customer their minor league partners carry the same brand and therefore are the same airline, the rental car companies need to learn the same.

you must work for Avis to feel happy to say that.

Very common at Avis. I've had issues in the US at franchise locations (refusing ANY upgrade as a chairman, fuel issues, etc). And the reply has always been (abbreviated) "Sorry, they are a franchise location. We can't control what they do. Please take it up with the location."

I've always replied that they can and need to control their franchises if they're disregarding terms of Avis corporate or benefits published. Those emails get zero reply.

...Thanks. Did that following this recommendation, and now 7 days later or so it does seem to have had some effect. i got a reply from someone in Mr De Shon's office who will keep me 'abridged of events until a resolution is reached'

(I suspect that 'abridged' is autocorrect speaking

"Never ascribe to stupidity that which is adequately explained by autocorrect" - the iPhone's corollary to Hanlon's razor

Avis finally came back to be and gave me 2x EUR 20 voucher. Ok. I take that. still not happy that it happened in the first place, so I hope they do take remedial action with their Bali subsidiary

How's your Bahasa Indonesian?

Bah, I just wanted to make that joke :D

This said, apparently Avis did internally try to figure out a solution after some customers over-extended their lease time, but weren't successfull.

Now, obviously what they should have done would have to pick you up, bring you to your hotel, or at the very least contact you, or anything along these lines. Probably local office "didn't wanted to lose face" when they couldn't provide a car (Yes I know this is silly, but that's how most of Asia is run ;) )

Well if it makes you feel better, you were beaten to it by someone who speaks it :D

Yes, it does ;)

To be honest, I prefer getting answers in such basic English which are at least telling me the truth (and actually perfectly understandable), rather than some corporate blah blah in perfect grammer without any use to me.

Obviously OP shouldn't be happy with the answer, but I think it's better to get something like this rather than silly excuses why it wasn't the companies fault.

I do agree that the compensation is way too little, though.

I've seen plenty of genuine "sold out" airport car rentals during the busy season in the area (Borneo as well) - so if some customer really kept cars too long, not so much the agency can do, especially if they're running a relatively small operation. That doesn't excuse letting the customer be "left" at the airport, but then I've learned a similar lesson in Abu Dhabi, where I rented from a company not having an airport office. I'd ALWAYS make sure the company has an airport office where I rent from.

Simple reason: Chance anything goes wrong (I don't find the guy..) is much smaller when there is an office I can simply go to after baggage claim.

AND on top of that, people renting from airport places usually do have a return flight booked they want to catch, so the off-chance that cars aren't returned on time is much slimmer there.

While I understand why Avis cancelled this res, what reason could they give for not telling him ahead of time, or apologizing immediately, or apologizing and offering him something for his inconvenience? How incompetent can a large corporation be?