Issues with Corporate Rate vs. Express Rate
 

Last weekend I had a very nice experience renting at DTW. The driver on the way to the lot asked if there were any Express Members on the bus and when I indicated I was one he told me my car was waiting in spot 12. I ended up with a tolerable Subaru Impreza and was out of the lot in a minute. My only issue is for the second time this year my default Express rate has overridden my corporate rate. It necessitated a five minute visit to the office upon returning my car. I plan to keep renting from Dollar...should I expect this issue to keep occurring?

I'm not clear with what you mean by your "default Express rate." There isn't a default Express rate: you can either book with the standard retail rate (what Joe Schmo going to Dollar.com finds on the website) or the corporate rate (with your Corporate Discount number). When booking your reservation, make sure your reservation confirmation shows the correct corporate rate, and that should be exactly what gets loaded into the location's computers when they pull up your reservation. If you don't get your corporate rate when booking, make sure the CD# is correctly input into the reservation "time and place" screen (the one where you first input the dates, times, and location), and on the next page, make sure that your company's name is displayed above the vehicle size. (If you're booking this through your company's travel agent's GDS system, then there will be different steps to ensure you get the corporate rate.)

If the reservation is booked fine and you are still getting a different rate when actually picking up your car, I'm not sure what's going on--I've never seen this happen. Find an experienced agent or ask the manager on duty to look in the reservation to see if there were changes made at any time. If they can't help you, a call to the Dollar Express customer support desk or the Dollar corporate accounts help desk may help figure out what's going on. You can reach Dollar Express at 1-866-776-6667 or the corporate accounts department at 1-800-331-3550.

Both times I've had my confirmation with the correct rate and both times the corporate rate code has even printed on the reciept but somehow the rate goes higher. I'm renting from them again next week maybe then it'll be smoother.

Well, if you figure it out--I'm curious. Please post back anything you find out. :)

This happened to me again at DFW last weekend. The reservation was made for $17.74, the contract printed at $17.74 and when I returned the car they tried to charge me $28.56.

The return agent was extremely rude and told me there was nothing he could do and to go to the counter. Once there the agent told me he couldn't do anything until the manager showed up (over an hour away) and that they'd fix it and call me. Of course, I never received a phone call and had to call customer service. This is becoming quite frustrating as it has happened 3 out of 4 times this year.

What did customer service say the issue was? If you look at the breakdown of charges on your initial contract versus your final receipt, what's different that makes the cost change?

And interesting that the agent couldn't do anything without the manager. An agent in Hawaii (corporate location) told me they are empowered to do whatever it takes to make sure a customer leaves happy. (Actually, the OGG location seemed to me to be one of the better-run corporate stores, so that could just be a local policy even though it's a corporate store, not a franchise.)

The desk agent told me it was the computer deciding to charge me a weekday rate instead of a weekend rate. As I rented Saturday to Sunday and it was on the contract this seems very odd to me. I was also befuddled by the agent being unable to do anything, you'd think with an Express Member/Corporate Account Holder they'd just credit me the $11 on the spot. I wrote their customer service an email and have yet to hear back.

Most weekend rates that I've seen have a minimum rental of two days. If you return after only one day, the rate defaults to the standard day, which is usually about half again as much as a weekend day. (So one standard day should still be less than two weekend days.)

However, if your reservation was for one day and showed the weekend rate, and if your initial open contract was for one day and showed the weekend rate, then you've got a pretty good leg to stand on to argue that you should only be charged the one day at $17.74.

I don't know the Dollar Express email, but if you email your question to [email protected], it should go to the right place (it's the same people working both brands; I've had about a three-day turnaround time with that email address). I'd make sure to let it be known that you would appreciate it if front line salespeople were empowered to make adjustments like this and that you don't appreciate having to waste your time following up on it because of their mistake (assuming it is their mistake, of course).