Thread: This Site
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Old 2005-06-18
BranchManager
Anonymous Coward
 
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Default This Site

So if i understand correctly, this site was created because the creater:

1) had a reservation, came to enterprise, and the car was not ready, and was given a different car instead (reason 1 and 5)
2) had rented a vehicle that was almost out of gas
3) found that the corporate rate was higher than the retail rate
4) the CDW rate changed when you upgraded

...

Well, if you had a reservation, you should have a car, I agree. Just as an airline will sometimes upgrade you to first class if it overbooked, you were offered a free upgrade it seems. I know that a pickup truck or SUV or minivan is not for everyone. What kind of reservations did you normally set? Fullsize? Compact?

A vehicle out of gas is not a vehicle you should be given. On behalf of enterprise I apologize. I also apologize about the CDW rate changing. In the state where I work, CDW is the same cost for every car, though on some luxury vehicles the amount of damage covered changes. California may be different. I still apologize on behalf of enterprise for the rep not telling you about this.

As far as the corporate rate, there are a few reasons why you might have found it to be more expensive. First of all, it's generally cheaper than the retail rate, except at airports. The corporate account program was designed for local travel, so it is discounted for local branch rates. The airports drop prices to match demand, so they may sometimes be under corporate. In this case you would get the best of both worlds, because on days like memorial day when cars are $80/day, you would get the corporate rate since it's set at a certain price, much lower. I don't understand why it would be upsetting to have the extra option, but it was, so I apologize for that as well.

It appears the management you've dealt with has also not done a great job of seeing to your needs. I won't lie to you, there have been mistakes made at my branch as well, but I assure you that the regular customers and customers that have confirmed their reservations with credit cards have the cars waiting and the paperwork started before they arrive... unless they come early for their reservation.

I also know that every other rental car company has similar problems. I know with Hertz gold you can just go directly to your car, but I also assume that if you set a gold club reservation and never show up, there would be a charge of some kind? Or would they revoke the membership? In any case, if i knew with 100% certainty that a reservation would be coming in, I would have the vehcile ready for them as well. The point is, I've had a similar situation arise with U-haul where my truck wasn't available, and I imagine budget and hertz and everyone else makes the occasional mistake as well.

The question i have is, what do you intend to get out of this site? I see that it is a place for current and past erac employees to vent frustrations, but if you wanted enterprise to fail, it seems that leaving the frustrations bottled up would better achieve the goal. The site also provides a checklist to rent a car, with some clever ways to "stick it" to the enterprise guy. But if you really wanted to "stick it" to us, why not just suggest another car company, rather than having a customer call us 3 times with 3 different names and do all this trickery (dishonesty, isn't that what we're accused of?).

Or perhaps this site is designed to be found by Erac people so that they can learn from your examples and find ways to fix the problems and thus grow and adapt and become more successful. If so I salute you for your chivalry, and i feel that this site does just that. Ex enterprise employees that complain because they failed to perform doesn't hurt anyone, everyone has disgruntled EX employees, just like no one has 100% customer satisfaction. Enterprise corporate average is around 79% completely satisfied customers with 13% somewhat satisfied customers, which isn't bad at all.

So in conclusion, thank you for building this site to allow some comedy (such as the post about enterprise defintions) some venting, some back and forth between current and ex employees, and all the personal touches, but especially for telling your story (as well as some of the other stories posted here) so that we as a company can learn from the mistakes and grow. Thanks, Admin!
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