Here’s the
story.
In October last
year, I rented a car from Hertz in Toulouse for a couple of weeks. I have done
this several times over the past seven years, and it has always been smooth.
When the
vehicle was returned to the airport, completely unscathed, full of diesel and
with only a further 900 or so kms on its clock, all seemed well. The return was
registered at 5.02pm, and the automatic invoice generated at 5.04pm.
The invoice,
however, contained a charge for €221 for “24/24 Assistance”; this is odd, as my
profile (and I am a Gold Five-Star Member”) clearly indicates that I wish for
no insurance or supplementary protections at all; none, whatsoever, and to
date, these instructions have been followed.
Now, however,
the game was on.
First, I
assumed that a quick phone call to the Gold Line would suffice; silly me. After
being transferred four times, with each concomitant wait, I was advised that it
was a “French Matter”, and that my query would be forwarded to them. This was
followed by a blizzard of helpful emails, many of which sought my impression of
their service to be offered through the completion of an “on-line survey”.
To no avail.
I disputed the
amount through American Express, and they took the offending payment off my
bill. And we waited.
I was then
advised by Amex that Hertz had advised that the charge was for “cleaning”, and apparently
I had put the wrong sort of fuel in the car, and they were replacing the charge
and would I now cough up.
Well, the
problems with this scenario are three-fold:
- Had I put ordinary fuel into a diesel car, I would not have made it back to the airport
- They would have been hard pressed to make this determination within the two-minute window between returning the car and dispatching the bill, and
- I had a receipt proving that diesel had been poured (lavishly) into their vehicle.
Not even close.
I submitted
another hold on the Amex account and set off to round two. This has culminated
in a letter from the Hertz collections folks in the UK (“How did the UK get
into it”, I hear you ask) who are actually, it turns out, in the Republic of
Ireland.
This missive
tells me in no uncertain terms that:
- This is all my fault
- I should pay immediately or face the wrath of collection agencies
- I will be prevented from renting from Hertz in the future
- My immediate attention to this matter is “required”
Well, faced
with this wall, I again phoned. Not that the phone number they gave me was any
good; they advised me to call a number in the UK using the international prefix
“00”; this is, in fact, the prefix used by people in the UK (and presumably the
Irish Republic) to call out. North Americans calling to the UK use a prefix “011”;
a minor point, but if one writes snotty and heavy handed letters demanding “immediate
attention”, the least they would do is get their own phone number right.
And so to
chatting with the lovely Rachel. I don’t know about you, but those poor folks
who work for collection agencies, airline lost-luggage departments or those
whose job it is to rebook passengers stranded in the eye of a storm always seem
to be medicated.
We have a
conversation; I reiterate the issues and my most reasonable position; she sympathizes
and says that I must have put the wrong sort of fuel in the car; I explain the
different size nozzles that are attached to fuel pumps to prevent this sort of
accident; she sympathizes and once again suggests that the wrong type of fuel
has been used. I supply the image of the receipt for the correct type of fuel
and she thinks that they may have to refer this matter to France.
I hang up,
in a growly but jovial mood, and am immediately faced with cheery new emails from Hertz thanking me for
contacting their customer service people and asking how I “felt about the
experience”.
Hertz;
please, just sort this out. I have been a loyal customer for years, but
honestly, there is really little difference between your vehicles and those belonging
to AVIS or Sixt.
Companies like
Hertz have become too big. They are, as we all know, also Dollar and Thrifty,
and big enough to feature such powerful role models as O. J. Simpson as their barkers. They have, however, lost touch with indivuduals during this growth.
And they are not alone.
There are now
only 3.5 airlines in the US (American (1,494 aircraft), Delta (1,280), United
(1,264) and Southwest (683)), and as they have grown, so has their tolerance
for irritated passengers. If one assumes that 1/2% of each airlines’ passengers
are grumpy and “never want to travel with them again”, it is a large number,
but these gruntleless passengers have only two alternatives. And each carrier will receive as many passengers
who have lost their gruntle with a competitor as they lose.
So why
bother to calm the waters? Much more economical to let them squeal and run to
the competitors; a sound business decision, and an attitude that we see more
and more often in the surviving corporate behemoths that dominate the serevice sector.
The triumph
of capitalism in the service industry seems to be the attainment of the pinnacle from
which one can simply be Too Big to Care.
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