The thing many seem to overlook is that what Erac wants and what many of the rental employees want don't always allign themselves. Erac wants to turn a profit. Period. They would like to offer good service, but have to be blind to think that the way in which they handle many things internally are going to consistently accomplish that. To Erac it is simply a numbers game. Get the customers in the door, and sell sell sell. Sell the friendly handshake and smile. Sell the many locations areound the city. Sell the name. Erac corporate has got to know that by telling everyone to come in to get a certain size car, that it will be inevitable that reservations will now always be met and people will get pissed. Erac knows this, but they don't care. They do it anyways because by playing the numbers game, they will surely make $ and that the employees will diffuse most situations. The situation that happened to admin is an oddity in that it happened so many times to the same customer. The branch employees act as firefighters to put out many of the fires that are ultimately created by Erac's sole purpose to make a buck. You have more trucks that compacts because Erac can turn more of a profit on the resale on an F150 rather than a corolla. They know that many of the rental customers will have to settle for the wrong size car, but the company doesn't care. From what I heard, rental is not their biggest moneymaking department anyways. Remarketing is. It is naive to think the comapny doesn't plan things this way. I've said it before...the company often times places their employees in problematic customer service situations and tell them to handle it. For the most part, the employees really do care and try to offer the best service possible, but they can only do so much. They have to play with the hand that the company has dealt to them. Intern keeps saying 'we' when describing what erac does for its customers. He really should say 'I' because he feels this way and not necessarily the company. Intern busts his ass to make the customer satisfied. He tries to accommodate the customer. He cares about the customer. But Intern can only do so much with what he has. If the branch only has trucks instead of standard sizes, I'm sure he's not thrilled about that, but what the hell can he do about it. He didn't order an abundance of Silverados and Rams. When he says he tries to accommodate customers as best as possible, I beleive he is doing just that. I know cause I was in the same boat as he was. From admin's perspective, which is simply a customer perspective, when you have so many rentals go bad, it pisses and annoys him. Rightfully so. The employees represent the company. But Admin did work at Erac. He was on the other side of the counter. Working there and renting there are different things. I believe that the majority of branch employees want to make the rental as smootly as possible, but when internal procedures and immature company culture controls how they can do that, you can only throw up your hands and sigh. To all customers: For the most part, the employees are not to blame. It is the fault of the industry and the fault of the company. It seems to me that some of these back and forths admin has found himself in lose sight of that. Anytime I've used the term 'we' when describing my experiences at Erac, I am not referring to the company...I am referring to the employees I worked with.
The company will not change. The rental employees have to realize this and do one of two things. Do what you can with what you got and expect to run into some poor service situations that you have to handle OR put your notice in and get the fuck out of both the company and the industry.