Enterprise fuel policy

[Heartland Girl75]

I think another issue I have experienced is the understaffed office. In my office we did not have a car prep, or even a manager for that matter. Just two MT's doing most of the running, cleaning, LOFRs, pick-ups, tickets, etc. Trust me if I could have provided that service for you I would have, but it was a physical impossibility. It was difficult getting the cars cleaned. If the tank was 1/4 or below I would fill it if I could find the time. Another issue are the rural regions. Our pick-ups weren't across town, they were sometimes 30-40+ miles one way. Therefore, we were spending a lot of fuel just on the pick-up. Forget about the cost of gaining or losing cars to other branches that were sometimes 100+ miles away. Fuel is a killer expense when you are talking about your bottom line. Depending on corporate customers contracts, usually they were given a full tank. Logistically it was almost impossible to perform this service for the regular daily rentals.

[FailingEnterpriseAdmin]

Originally Posted by Heartland Girl75

I think another issue I have experienced is the understaffed office. In my office we did not have a car prep, or even a manager for that matter. Just two MT's doing most of the running, cleaning, LOFRs, pick-ups, tickets, etc. Trust me if I could have provided that service for you I would have, but it was a physical impossibility. It was difficult getting the cars cleaned. If the tank was 1/4 or below I would fill it if I could find the time. Another issue are the rural regions. Our pick-ups weren't across town, they were sometimes 30-40+ miles one way. Therefore, we were spending a lot of fuel just on the pick-up. Forget about the cost of gaining or losing cars to other branches that were sometimes 100+ miles away. Fuel is a killer expense when you are talking about your bottom line. Depending on corporate customers contracts, usually they were given a full tank. Logistically it was almost impossible to perform this service for the regular daily rentals.

What sort of business model involves driving 60-80 miles round trip to pick up a car rental customer? You're losing a fortune on that rental. Why do this, other than to pay a lot of money to buy a little market share? The free market price for a ride like that would be a taxi, and it would easily be $50, but you give this away for free?

(I'm sweet on Heartland Girl)

[Heartland Girl75]

Originally Posted by FailingEnterpriseAdmin

What sort of business model involves driving 60-80 miles round trip to pick up a car rental customer? You're losing a fortune on that rental. Why do this, other than to pay a lot of money to buy a little market share? The free market price for a ride like that would be a taxi, and it would easily be $50, but you give this away for free?

(I'm sweet on Heartland Girl)

Exactly. Now can you imagine how frustrating it is for the lower end employee to be yelled at by an upper level manager about costs when they expect you to provide these kinds of services, yet won't give you the tools you need to perform them? For me, the customers were never the hard part, it was the BS you had to put up with on a daily basis from several layers of management. Today it is black, tomorrow white, the next day black again. I will say this, my area manager was an ok guy, but he was being yanked around the same way and then had to pass it down to his branches. We were always being pulled in different directions when all you really wanted to do was run a branch as efficiently as possible. I found out that a well oiled machine at Enterprise was an oxymoron.

Originally Posted by FailingEnterpriseAdmin

What sort of business model involves driving 60-80 miles round trip to pick up a car rental customer? You're losing a fortune on that rental. Why do this, other than to pay a lot of money to buy a little market share? The free market price for a ride like that would be a taxi, and it would easily be $50, but you give this away for free?

(I'm sweet on Heartland Girl)

This is the norm for the midwest away from the in city market. HG is right on. The rural branches get kind of "shit on" from this perspective. You are supposed to "suck it up" and be a team player from a cost perspective. There are no cost of doing business allowances etc. Generally these rural branches are staffed worse becuase of their fleet size as well. They make for some tough operations.

It is a little known fact, but ERAC *CAN* give gas refunds, oils change refunds and anything else vehicle related. Their computers do have a space to list these, even though the reps (I used to be one) will tell the customers they can't give gas refunds. I agree that cars should come with a full tank, it just never works that way.

How pathetic is admin hitting on one of the posters, what a loser!! It's now obvious that he has no life and that is the reason he started this website. Why else would he dedicate so much time to complaining about enterprise? If you had shitty service, put a period....and move the hell on, you loser. Take your measly rental needs and go to Hertz or whatever other "local chain" you now go to. ERAC doesn't need or want you anyway! You're obviously a pain in the ass if you have VP's coming out to meet you. Maybe if they didn't spend all their time fielding annoying phone calls from you they could be working on the problem areas.

Unless your spending $5k/month on rentals your nothing more than a drop in the bucket, so stop your whining and get your full tank of gas from some other place.

Originally Posted by FailingEnterpriseAdmin

If you sent every car out with a full tank, then for every car that came back needing gas would generate a "Refueling Service" charge, which would be more than the actual cost of the missing gasoline, and this would pay for the labor charge of driving over and gassing up the car, right?

I don't understand how Enterprise can charge for the labor of refueling and then claim they don't have the time to do the refueling. Are you just pocketing this money and passing on the half tank to the next customer?

All fleet vehicles come with no gas when you buy them. (New Car Stock or NCS) Except for Chrysler... and depending on your area Nissan/Mazda. For Enterprise world-wide (closing in on a million cars) with my groups 'flipping' their fleets twice a year... to fill all these vehicles is expensive... When we sell these vehicles, we obviously don't say.. Ok.. 15,000 for the Impala and 60 for the full tank of gas. Short of getting a syphen, this is what everybody is talking about 'losing their shirts' on... This is one of the reasons ERAC has the lowest rates in any city. And not all groups have caught on to the 'refueling' policy. The majority of groups still operate on 1/4 tank policies. This complaint always kills me... "Now I have to fill up the tank! This is terrible.. blah blah blah".. BUT YOU DON'T HAVE TO FILL IT WHEN YOU COME BACK RETARD! It's the same difference... Whether you fill it now.. or when you return it takes the same amount of time.. and costs the same (within cents, depending on fluctuating gas prices).. Some customers act like it's life and death and honestly.. what is the difference. PEACE

[Surly Pete]

Originally Posted by FailingEnterpriseAdmin

What sort of business model involves driving 60-80 miles round trip to pick up a car rental customer? You're losing a fortune on that rental. Why do this, other than to pay a lot of money to buy a little market share? The free market price for a ride like that would be a taxi, and it would easily be $50, but you give this away for free?

(I'm sweet on Heartland Girl)

It's the same business model that allowed me to lock up my rural office, get customers up to a half hour away, only to have them "change their mind" when they got to the office -- basically just getting a free ride into town. And what could I do about it? Nothing.

Or, it's the same business model that lets a customer award the branch a "completely disatisfied" mark on an ESQI phonecall when our one person branch refused to drive them two hours away. My branch got a call from the ARM wanting an explanation. He was fine with it once it was given, but it still counted against us when ESQI was calculated.

[gp65:(]

Originally Posted by Surly Pete

It's the same business model that allowed me to lock up my rural office, get customers up to a half hour away, only to have them "change their mind" when they got to the office -- basically just getting a free ride into town. And what could I do about it? Nothing.

Or, it's the same business model that lets a customer award the branch a "completely disatisfied" mark on an ESQI phonecall when our one person branch refused to drive them two hours away. My branch got a call from the ARM wanting an explanation. He was fine with it once it was given, but it still counted against us when ESQI was calculated.

Also, the same company that ESQi called a customer who's vehicle we had to repossess. Hmmmmmmmmmm

[Surly Pete]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

All fleet vehicles come with no gas when you buy them. (New Car Stock or NCS) Except for Chrysler... and depending on your area Nissan/Mazda. For Enterprise world-wide (closing in on a million cars) with my groups 'flipping' their fleets twice a year... to fill all these vehicles is expensive... When we sell these vehicles, we obviously don't say.. Ok.. 15,000 for the Impala and 60 for the full tank of gas. Short of getting a syphen, this is what everybody is talking about 'losing their shirts' on... This is one of the reasons ERAC has the lowest rates in any city. And not all groups have caught on to the 'refueling' policy. The majority of groups still operate on 1/4 tank policies. This complaint always kills me... "Now I have to fill up the tank! This is terrible.. blah blah blah".. BUT YOU DON'T HAVE TO FILL IT WHEN YOU COME BACK RETARD! It's the same difference... Whether you fill it now.. or when you return it takes the same amount of time.. and costs the same (within cents, depending on fluctuating gas prices).. Some customers act like it's life and death and honestly.. what is the difference. PEACE

True, the time it takes to fill up the tank is the same on either end of the rental and I tried to use that argument back when I first worked there. Then I got a brain. That argument is an ERAC-centric view. (No pun intended). The customer-centric view is quite different:

There is a greater sense of urgency at the beginning of the rental than at the end of the rental... ESPECIALLY in the schedule-driven road warrior market. They're not scheduling to pick up the car, fill it up, then go. It may take only an extra moment and will save them time at the end of the rental but they have less time at the beginning of the rental than at the end... and it's an additional hassle for them to think about it at the beginning. (And some are afraid that if they fill up the tank and don't use the gas, they'll get hosed at the end of the rental on any gas credit).

Most airport locations have caught onto this and are prefilling tanks, but local market branches who think they can straddle the fence between replacement and "road warrior" renters have to figure something else out..