Who is "Len Almalech" at Enterprise?

On page 11 of the January 21st edition of the San Francisco Business Journal there's a full-page ad from the United Way featuring Enterprise and a couple of people who might be employees.

There's a quote (lame, bland, self-serving corporate P.R.-speak about how Enterprise and its employees both benefit from giving to the United Way) attributed to "Len Almalech, Vice President/General Manager of the San Francisco Operation, Enterprise Rent-A-Car".

A few questions:

1. Is this the position Derek C. Watts used to have? Whatever happened to him?

2. If Enterprise has 6,000 locations, and the guy who manages the five locations in S.F. gets to be called a "Vice President", does that mean Enterprise has something like 1,000 "Vice Presidents"? Does anyone else find that humorous?

3. Is "Len Almalech" one of the stiffs in the photograph? Hints: First guy is white, early 50's, mostly bald, wearing glasses, could lose a few pounds, white shirt with a dark tie, giving a dorky "thumbs up" sign. The second guy is African-American, early 30's, bald, wearing a white shirt with a dark tie, looks like he can't believe he has to put up with posing with this other guy and having to also give a dorky "thumbs up" sign.

4. While we're at it, can somebody tell me the hierarchy, including names and titles, from the branch manager here in S.F., going up the food chain?

You can send an anonymous e-mail to comments2 <(at)> FailingEnterprise <(dot)> com, or post here anonymously, or send me a message here on the discussion board if you're a registered member.

Thanks for your help in advance.

Admin

His position is like CEO of the San Franciso Market. Probably oversees +/- 100 branches, plus car sales and leasing operations.

I think Derek Watts is/was a Regional Vice President. This position would be a direct report to Len's.

Although I am not familiar with names, here is the likely food chain for your local operation.

Branch Manager reports to..
Area Rental Manager reports to..
Regional Rental Manager reports to..
Regional Vice President reports to..
Group Vice President / General Manager

Hope this helps..

Someone should send one of them a virus.

How funny would that be if someone sent Andy an email titled "Ways to Increase OP" and when he opens it, there's a animated version of Andy with a big blown up head who keeps saying, "My company sucks dic'k" over and over.

Admin

Are you asking for the San Francisco group's management hierarchy in the hopes that you will get the Group president on the phone to complain about your poor service? If you have a problem call your local regional office (getting a regional office number should be easy). When you call the regional office tell the person that answers the phone that you have a complaint. They will put you through to the RVP's executive assistant who will forward your phone number to the local regional manager, area manager, and branch manager. The branch manager or area manager will call you first. If they cannot provide a satisfactory resolution to your problem, the regional manager will call you and pretty much say yes to anything you ask just so the Regional VP will not hear about it. Calling our coroprate headquarters in St. Louis is useless since your call will be forwarded back to the local regional or group office.

You imply in several of your postings that Enterprise doesn't care about customer service simply because our customers can't call up our corporate headquarters and chat with our CEO about how their local branch ripped them off. You imply that the fact that Joe Customer cannot get in direct contact with our CEO is some kind of anomaly in Corporate America. Can you name one similarly sized company in the United States where you can get their CEO on the phone? Can you get CEO's from Hertz, Avis, and Budget on the phone?

As your questions:

1) I'm sure one of your croanies will answer this one for you.

2) I hope you don't honestly think that Enterprise only has five locations in the San Francisco area. I believe they have at least 50.

3) You make fun of the dorky ERACers in the magazine. I'm sure that upper level managers for our competitors are wavy haired, tanned, toned, stylishly dressed studs in their mid-twenties. Look at any annual report for any company in the world and you will see those same kind of "stiffs" posing in the same stupid way.

4) See my earlier comments for my answer to this.

GP32admin

Are you asking for the San Francisco group's management hierarchy in the hopes that you will get the Group president on the phone to complain about your poor service?

Uh, no. I just keep hearing all sorts of different titles in the Enterprise hierarchy, and I wish I understood them better. Everybody seems to have a confusing title, like Regional/Area/Group/Vice-President/Rental/Manager. I can't keep them straight. Several people in this chain have called to talk with me, including one higher than group manager. I'm definitely not looking for a contact to call and complain. As you confirm, complaining doesn't (and didn't) work. To get their attention, you need to do something more drastic, like creating a web site.

You imply in several of your postings that Enterprise doesn't care about customer service simply because our customers can't call up our corporate headquarters and chat with our CEO about how their local branch ripped them off. You imply that the fact that Joe Customer cannot get in direct contact with our CEO is some kind of anomaly in Corporate America.

I don't imply this anywhere. I've never asked to get in touch with someone higher up. Twelve times the local managers blew me off. I don't know where you're reading this from. You should go back and read the site more carefully.

Maybe you're talking about my posting the corporate address and telephone number? OK, yes, I expect accountability at the top. Lots and lots of people e-mail me and ask for that information after a frustrating and fruitless search on their web site. What kind of national retail company hides from their customers? Things must be really bad there.

2) I hope you don't honestly think that Enterprise only has five locations in the San Francisco area. I believe they have at least 50.

Two local managers came out to meet with me. One of them explained (unless I heard them wrong) that he was both a Vice President, and responsible only for the five branches actually in the city of San Francisco (Note: The city of San Franciso, with something like 600,000 residents, is actually a fairly small part of the greater Bay Area, with something like 6,000,000 residents). I think there really are only five branches in the city. There definitely, definitely aren't anywhere near 50 branches in the city.

3) You make fun of the dorky ERACers in the magazine.

No, I don't. I was very careful not to make fun of anyone. The only thing I describe as "dorky" is the forced "thumbs-up" sign they both make. As for calling them "stiffs", well, when they pose like that, they look rather stiff. I would too, if I struck that pose. They look like fine fellows. But I don't even know if they're Enterprise employees or not. Please go back and read the posting again.


I appreciate you making the effort to participate in this discussion board, but you've made some fairly serious errors in simply reading the text already here. You've set up a couple of straw men just to knock them down.

If you want to criticize the concept of FailingEnteprise.com, please feel free, just please use some logic that holds up under cursory scrutiny.

Admin

I confirm that complaining doesn't work? Answer me this, what exactly to you expect the our top level executives to do about the fact that one of our 5,000 branches didn't have a vehicle for you? Do you expect them to call the branch manager and yell at them? Do you expect them to fire the area manager? Would you like them to institute sweeping changes in the way our company is run just so that a tiny 6% of auto rental customers (that covers the entire industry. I'm sure that Enterprise's percentage is much lower.) that have significant problems during the rental process are satisfied? If you are curious about my numbers please pick up a copy of the current issue of Auto Rental News in which J.D. Power ranks Enterprise's customer service as the best in the industry for airport rentals.

As far my assertion that you imply that that Enterprise doesn't care about customer service, I believe that I am correct. You say:

"With their long proud tradition of appalling customer service, it's understandable why they'd want to hide from their customers."

If our tradition of customer service is appalling then it would stand to reason that you believe that we don't care about customer service.

Please don't feel that I am criticizing your site. I know how much work it takes to put a site like this up and maintain it. I had great fun posting on Enterlies.com and I understand your frustration with Enterprise, but I feel that your suggestion that our unsatisfied customers look for "accountability at the top" is a complete waste of time. As you may or may not know, our founder was in the Navy which has resulted in our company having a very straight and well-defined chain of command. It does no good to complain to the general about a sergeant. The general will simply kick it back down the chain of command to the offender's commanding officer.

Since I am sure you will have an issue with my assertion that our chain of command is very straight and well defined, I will take time to explain it to you.

Let's start out at the branch on Folsom street (I think that's the right one) that you love so much. That branch has a branch manager that reports to an area manager that manages about five branches. That area manager is supervised by a regional rental manager that supervises 3-5 areas which is otherwise known as a subregion. A Regional VP supervises 2-3 subregions that make up a relatively independent self contained business unit known simply as a Region. A Group VP of Rental supervises 3-5 regions. My group has three Rental VPs since we have 13 regions. These Group rental VP's report to a Group President (also known as a Group Vice President in smaller groups) who in turn reports to a Corporate Senior VP that supervises 3-5 groups. The Corporate Senior VP would report to an Executive VP who would manage 2-3 Senior VPs. Executive VPs report to Pam Nicholson our COO who reports to our President Don Ross who reports to Andy Taylor himself.

So now you have a clearly defined path all the way to the top. Please keep in mind that my group (in Southern California) is the largest in the company and therefore has an extra three levels of managers. In many smaller groups area managers report directly to group vice presidents.

Please let me know if you need any other clarification.

Hello GP32admin,

Thanks for the knowledgable and well-written reply.

A few comments:

Answer me this, what exactly to you expect the our top level executives to do about the fact that one of our 5,000 branches didn't have a vehicle for you?

It wasn't this simple. It was 10 rentals out of 15 where they tore up my my confirmed reservation. It's not just one bad rental experience; it's a consistent, predictable, repeatable practice of putting the customer last and then lying about it. And then I keep hearing from many, many other customers who had the same problems at Enterprise branches all over.

I feel that your suggestion that our unsatisfied customers look for "accountability at the top" is a complete waste of time. As you may or may not know, our founder was in the Navy which has resulted in our company having a very straight and well-defined chain of command. It does no good to complain to the general about a sergeant. The general will simply kick it back down the chain of command to the offender's commanding officer.

OK, so what I'm left with, as a customer, is that the General kicks me back down to the Segeant, who then says, effectively, "I'm sorry; I can understand how you'd be angry; if I were in your shoes I'd be angry; that shouldn't have happened; but if you're asking us to change the way we do business, the answer is no". What I hear as a customer is "Yes, we lied to you, and we're almost certainly going to do it again, and there's nothing you can do to get us to change."

Now that's how you earn a web site like FailingEnterprise.com. You do these things because they're profitable, and this web site is designed to take the profit out of them.

I'll send you a private message about the chain of command.

Thanks,

Admin

GP32 admin, we don't know what position you hold at admin, for all we know you can be the hr person who is intent on keeping the image of enterprise as the protector of customer service in the industry intact. The reality of the situation is that this site has many ex-erac employees from all levels contributing to it. We were on the frontlines, in the trenches if you will. We are the most qualified to attest to the truth about enterprise policy and tactics. The administrator of this site brought the issue he faced in san francisco to light, the posts by the rest of the employees, as well as customers who have contributed, bring to light the reality that this occurs in all of enterprises kingdom.
To believe, and to stubbornly maintain that upper management should not be concerned about 1 customers issue in 1 of 5000 branches is arrogant and careless. the truth is that this, and much worse, occurs in a large majority of locations. For you, or any member of enterprises management hierarchy to ignore this site would be the ultimate mistake, these are your customers and employees testifying to the myriad of issues that enterprise has ignored for so long. I think it is important to not let yourself, or your company, get so big that they no longer are concerned about how they are perceived at the grassrootl level.

That sacred chain of command may work well for the US Armed Forces due to the fact that people's lives are on the line, but Erac is hardly the Navy. That shi't doesn't fly when it comes to employee satisfaction in present day. That 'old timer can't hack it' crap continues to filter down the food chain in that wonderful hierarchy that you are so proud of. Rather than promoting those mindlessly loyal sergeants to positions of power within the company, maybe you should focus on finding good leadership. Pulling from history, look at what happened to General Custer. What did his arrogance and stubborn view on doing things a certain way (his way) lead to to? Well, he didn't quite make it and neither did his men. That dinosaur way of doing things may have worked 20 years ago, but present day isn't exactly Jurassic Park. And we all know what happened to the dinosaurs..

why dont you all put your time into something constructive instead of wasting it on this silly site...

Get a real job