This is in response to an e-mail I just received from Hertz customer service who will be refunding my pre-payment but charging a $50 fee for not following through with the rental. Just venting to my football fan friends.
Good evening:
Both my wife and I find it absolutely ridiculous that your company insists on charging a $50 fee for "not renting", when we were there in the office at approximately 10 AM on August 22 ready to rent a car and finish the transaction. This has been the worst customer service experience that I have ever received in my life. Let me explain further as perhaps you were not given all of the details.
We originally made the reservation through your company through the AAA website. We pre-paid $257 on August 2. On the online reservation, I am listed as the credit card payer, and my wife is listed as the driver. I have cerebral palsy and I do not drive. My wife of 4 months has not been placed on my credit card yet. On the actual online reservation, we were not alerted to the fact that the "credit card must match the licensed driver." I was told on my initial complaint phone call, that it is in the fine print. Great, please allow me to get my microscope out next time. Anyways, this was not a problem at all when we rented a vehicle on our honeymoon in April with a competitor of yours. It was not a problem online when we initially made the reservation. It was not a problem when we called to confirm the reservation. It was only a problem when we were in Philadelphia at the counter when your employee said she could not process the transaction because the credit card did not match the licensed driver. I even offered to pay cash for the remaining part of the bill, and your employee said she could not do that.
I probably would not even be so angry if your employee had treated me or my wife with the slightest bit of human decency. I apologize that I cannot give you this employee's name, as her name tag was not visible, but I'm sure you or your superiors can look up who was working at the Philadelphia airport Hertz at approximately 10 AM on August 22, 2015. There was another employee, a man assisting another customer, and I clearly have no problem with him, as he never spoke to either me or my wife. The rep that assisted us was in her 40s/50s, short dark hair, and as previously mentioned, no visible name tag. When we approached the counter from the beginning, she acted as if she did not want to be there, did not greet us with a smile, or a "Welcome to Hertz!" or anything of the sort. She only asked to see the driver's license and credit card of the driver, and when I gave her my credit card and my wife gave her her driver's license, she immediately said that she needed the credit card to match the driver's license. We explained our situation that I do not drive, and my wife does not have a credit card in her name. She seemingly did not understand and repeated several times in an exasperated tone as if she could not believe that my wife does not have a credit card. We told her that my wife does have a debit card, she allegedly tried to run that, and that did not work. We explained again that we were stranded there if we could not rent a car. I then offered to pay cash for the remainder of the rental, and I would have signed something releasing Hertz from liability if they just would have rented a car to us, with me as the payer and my newlywed wife as the driver. She said she could not do that either, as I indicated before. She did not phone a supervisor to explain the situation to them. She did not do anything other than the bare minimum and then basically said to us, there's nothing I can do. No one should treat another human being that way, especially if you are a customer-facing employee. If your policy of "credit card must match the driver" is that inflexible, it should not be allowed to be put in online as a reservation in the first place. Otherwise, you will get other people in exactly the same situation as mine.
After all, if we were told that policy was so inflexible, I would have made arrangements between August 2 and August 22 to get my wife added to my credit card.
We then left the office, and spent the next hour carrying heavy bags to several different places while calling every rental car agency we knew of. All of them repeated the same policy that you folks did. After all, on the little 1-800 number, we're just a voice on the phone. None of those voices nor your employee back in the office seemed to care that my wife and I had to travel across dangerous intersections with lots of car traffic carrying bags. Is that good customer service to you?
Finally, we stopped in Avis and although I paid much more than I wanted to, the employee listened to our story, was kind and decent, and decided to make an exception for us.
You mentioned at the bottom of your e-mail that my business is appreciated and your company looks forward to being able to serve me again. Well, I certainly don't feel very appreciated, and you can bet your last dollar that I will never ever rent a car from Hertz again. I am telling every family member and friend I have about this experience and feel quite confident they won't need your company's brand of service either. I will be posting this as a review on Facebook, TripAdvisor, Yelp, and various forms of social media. So you can do whatever you want with that $50 fee. Refund it, don't refund it, at this point, I don't care. All I know is that there is a certain way people should be treated in business. Your company has grossly failed in this attempt.
Thank you for reading.
Sorry for your bad experience.
J, it's certainly a conversation I will have, but it's just me venting because I've never had a transaction pre-paid for mostly and then the company charges you because their policy is silly.
I could see if my wife's driver license and my credit card were different last names, but they're not, lol.
It's not even the 50 bucks at this point, it's the principle behind it.
almost never do they have the car I reserved which sometimes works to my benefit, they normally give me a better car. Plus I'm Hertz gold (which isn't an earned status, just sign up) and they rarely have it right for me when I arrive.
what you could have done, though there is zero reason you should have had to do it, is get the reservation in your name with your CC and drivers license and an additional driver (your wife) to the reservation. that way at least the Hertz rep would be following what she believed to be their process and satisfying the fine print, but like I said you should not have had to do that (as far as I believe).
I still proceeded to the Hertz counter to see what they could do for me...nothing. Weren't even willing to cover the extra costs I had to pay to rent with one of the other companies at the last minute.
- obtain both the local and regional manager's name/email
- find a contact, if you can, in customer service
- cut the words way, way down b/c people don't have time to read all that
- send the email out
People will be motivated to take action if they are on the brink of being exposed which could threaten a raise, a promotion and/or job security.
They tried to get cute with a cancellation fee, since my reservation didn't guarantee a larger car. I didn't even bother getting my blood pressure up, I called Amex and went next door to Budget. Didn't pay the fee, never going to Hertz again.
Seinfeld - The Car Reservation - ( New Window )
Deej, I know. But at this point, it's about the principle of the thing. However I did do what NoPeanutz said. Posted a brief summary of this last night on their company Facebook. Got a reply this morning asking for my confirmation number so we'll see.
Giants2012, yeah, I know it's way too long. But it's my venting letter. If they refund the 50, cool. If not, oh well. At least, I shine a bit of light on how poor their customer service was.
I'm sorry some of you had poor experiences as well.
I've had numerous issues with Hertz and haven't used them in 10 years. I have had the least number of issues with enterprise so I tend to use them, but I always expect the worst and hope for the best - and I use AMEX 100% of the time.
That being said, that sucks.
That being said, that sucks.
I'm not insane enough to think my complaint is going to hurt their bottom line in any way. However, perhaps, maybe someone can train their service reps to use common sense in the future. It's not just Hertz. It's for every place of business that would rather follow some inane corporate policy rather than actually help people.
Good news is they just sent me another email letting me know that the 50 dollar fee will be returned also. But, still as customers, it's our right to stand up and say that it's bad enough you have to be on hold for 20 minutes every time you make a call to any big corporation. They don't have to treat you poorly too.
Consumers vote with their $$$, even if not everyone realizes this. But companies who provide extended length of poor service or poor products will suffer.
Sears and K-Mart are a couple of good examples. The american car industry is another. Some companies clamp down and turn it around by focusing on quality and service and some fold.
Read the original post.