This Thread Is Probably Going To Start Up A Stir But Here It Goes...

[Captain Fucking Bleedgreen]

Originally Posted by FailingEnterpriseAdmin

Uh, no thanks for the visuals there.

any time Admin, just keeping it real.

[FailingEnterpriseAdmin]

Originally Posted by Captain Fucking Bleedgreen

any time Admin, just keeping it real.

What does that mean, "keeping it real"?

[Captain Fucking Bleedgreen]

Originally Posted by FailingEnterpriseAdmin

What does that mean, "keeping it real"?

it was to make myself laugh. sarcasm for my own benefit.

[FailingEnterpriseAdmin]

Originally Posted by Captain Fucking Bleedgreen

sorry, got distracted by my mule...
anyway, regarding the three points above, yes I've said them all and we were washing a car, gaining a car or honoring a reservation. I understand some people stretch it because they're overbooked etc.

But it's big business, shit happens. what about:

~no points
~no closing costs
~no hassle pricing

it's sales, you do what you can and it's always colored sweetly for the customer and shit doesn't always work out perfectly.

I'm going to push back hard on this:

1. Just because it's "big business" is not justification for lowered ethics.

2. Just because some other business lies to its customers doesn't justify Enterprise lying to their customers.

3. Just because it's sales doesn't justify lying to your customers either.

4. Saying "shit doesn't always work out perfectly" is another way of saying "we gambled with your reservation, hoping a car would come back, and we lost the bet, like we do pretty much every day; better luck next time". If you confirm a reservation and then it "doesn't work out perfectly", that's a real problem, and it wasn't bad luck; it was intentionally cutting corners.

I'm disagreeing with your ethics here. It sounds like you're agreeing that Enterprise employees lie to customers and you're looking for excuses to justify it.

What are you, Captain Fucking Bleedgreen??? Oh, wait a minute.

[Captain Fucking Bleedgreen]

Originally Posted by FailingEnterpriseAdmin

I'm going to push back hard on this:

1. Just because it's "big business" is not justification for lowered ethics.

2. Just because some other business lies to its customers doesn't justify Enterprise lying to their customers.

3. Just because it's sales doesn't justify lying to your customers either.

4. Saying "shit doesn't always work out perfectly" is another way of saying "we gambled with your reservation, hoping a car would come back, and we lost the bet, like we do pretty much every day; better luck next time". If you confirm a reservation and then it "doesn't work out perfectly", that's a real problem, and it wasn't bad luck; it was intentionally cutting corners.

I'm disagreeing with your ethics here. It sounds like you're agreeing that Enterprise employees lie to customers and you're looking for excuses to justify it.

What are you, Captain Fucking Bleedgreen??? Oh, wait a minute.

It's not always intentional. I bleedgreen and you have the opposite bias.

Hotels overbook on holiday weekends with an apology and a discount for nextime and send your ass packing down to the next nearest hotel. We overbook because people don't show up occasionally. It makes fiscal sense that you'd have a portion of rides overbooked to compensate for the reality of no-shows.
~We are relatively leniant on our cash qualifications so we can't charge a booking fee upon the reservation because we'd lose so much cash business.
~We get insurance/dealership/bodyshop deals all day long that don't have reservations and need rentals and are the backbone of our business
~we get internet deals pushed through at unrealistically low rates that have to be honored with no up to the minute cross-check on availability.
~I never said I was lying to my customers, I said I've done this and was really gaining cars, washing them and dancing like hell hoping for patience.

It happens, It's the reality of business I'm not advocating being unethical.

[FailingEnterpriseAdmin]

Originally Posted by Captain Fucking Bleedgreen

It's not always intentional. I bleedgreen and you have the opposite bias.

My bias isn't against Enterprise or "bleeding green". My bias is against lying to customers. Bleed green all you want; just stay away from fraud.

Originally Posted by Captain Fucking Bleedgreen

Hotels overbook on holiday weekends with an apology and a discount for nextime and send your ass packing down to the next nearest hotel. We overbook because people don't show up occasionally. It makes fiscal sense that you'd have a portion of rides overbooked to compensate for the reality of no-shows.
~We are relatively leniant on our cash qualifications so we can't charge a booking fee upon the reservation because we'd lose so much cash business.

This sounds like "if we truly honored reservations it would reduce our profits, so we're not going to do it."

Originally Posted by Captain Fucking Bleedgreen

~We get insurance/dealership/bodyshop deals all day long that don't have reservations and need rentals and are the backbone of our business

This sounds like "if we truly honored reservations while also serving dealerships, we'd have to have more cars in the fleet and that would reduce our profits so we're not going to do it."

Originally Posted by Captain Fucking Bleedgreen

~we get internet deals pushed through at unrealistically low rates that have to be honored with no up to the minute cross-check on availability.

This sounds like "my employer is 30 years behind on technology and makes promises we can't honor. It's not our fault."

Originally Posted by Captain Fucking Bleedgreen

~I never said I was lying to my customers, I said I've done this and was really gaining cars, washing them and dancing like hell hoping for patience.

When you (or Enterprise) offers a confirmed reservation knowing full well that there is a very high probability that you're not going to be able to honor it, how is that not lying?

Originally Posted by Captain Fucking Bleedgreen

It happens, It's the reality of business I'm not advocating being unethical.

"It happens"??? That's like saying "Shit happens", and if we allow people to dishonor their promises merely by saying those magic words, then promises don't mean anything anymore.

You're going to get really steamed when I say this (good), but this sort of rationalization sounds very Southern Californian. The impression that we Northern Californians have about the southland sometimes is that it's a place where people say whatever they need in order to get an agreement from someone, and then immediately forget their promises, later explaining "shit happens" if they need to.

Sorry, but the business world doesn't work this way. If Enterprise wants to operate like this, then they're going to remain out of the mainstream of American business and I'm going to continue to warn people about them.

Fondly,

Admin

[Captain Fucking Bleedgreen]

Originally Posted by FailingEnterpriseAdmin

My bias isn't against Enterprise or "bleeding green". My bias is against lying to customers. Bleed green all you want; just stay away from fraud.

This sounds like "if we truly honored reservations it would reduce our profits, so we're not going to do it."

This sounds like "if we truly honored reservations while also serving dealerships, we'd have to have more cars in the fleet and that would reduce our profits so we're not going to do it."

This sounds like "my employer is 30 years behind on technology and makes promises we can't honor. It's not our fault."

The similies and metaphors you're using are taken out of context, I typed exactly what I meant. Misconstruing my statements is also an ethical breach. Would you prefer to hide behind contextual naivety? We both know you can't.
Am I blindly defending all ERAC practices? NO. we fuck up just like every business does. Do I think you're being unreasonably hard on ERAC because of your own experience and frustration? Yes. But I don't hold that against you. Do all branches in the world have nightly sales training and bait-and-switch training classes as your metaphors imply? NO.

I do think the technology is archaic. I do think it could be improved. I don't think we do any worse than any other rental company, and in fact, lead the industry with our offerings. I don't think we need to have a bulletproof, multi-billion dollar interface to rent cars either.

When you (or Enterprise) offers a confirmed reservation knowing full well that there is a very high probability that you're not going to be able to honor it, how is that not lying?

"It happens"??? That's like saying "Shit happens", and if we allow people to dishonor their promises merely by saying those magic words, then promises don't mean anything anymore.

You're going to get really steamed when I say this (good), but this sort of rationalization sounds very Southern Californian. The impression that we Northern Californians have about the southland sometimes is that it's a place where people say whatever they need in order to get an agreement from someone, and then immediately forget their promises, later explaining "shit happens" if they need to.

Sorry, but the business world doesn't work this way. If Enterprise wants to operate like this, then they're going to remain out of the mainstream of American business and I'm going to continue to warn people about them.

Fondly,

Admin

I'm not snowed by the "fondly" and am not steamed by the implication of my frame of reference. But I am steamed that you would draw attention to where I'm from with a stereotype. You pride yourself on ethical, logical discussions, but are quick to judge and throw out stereotypes to rationalize your responses.

I haven't lowered my standards by drawing conclusions on you based on your demographics, you should give your posters the same consideration big boy.

Sincerely,
Captain

[FailingEnterpriseAdmin]

Originally Posted by Captain Fucking Bleedgreen

The similies and metaphors you're using are taken out of context, I typed exactly what I meant. Misconstruing my statements is also an ethical breach. Would you prefer to hide behind contextual naivety? We both know you can't.
Am I blindly defending all ERAC practices? NO. we fuck up just like every business does.

No, you fuck up a whole lot more than other businesses do. Can you imagine what would happen to Fed Ex if a huge proportion of their overnight packages arrived a couple of days late and the response to complaining customers was something like "stuff happens", or "we didn't have enough planes; it's not our fault"?

Originally Posted by Captain Fucking Bleedgreen

Do I think you're being unreasonably hard on ERAC because of your own experience and frustration? Yes. But I don't hold that against you. Do all branches in the world have nightly sales training and bait-and-switch training classes as your metaphors imply? NO.

I don't imply this at all. The original topic here was whether an Enterprise employee had to lie to customers in order to be successful. From what I've read from thousands of messages here, the answer is yes.

Originally Posted by Captain Fucking Bleedgreen

I do think the technology is archaic. I do think it could be improved. I don't think we do any worse than any other rental company, and in fact, lead the industry with our offerings. I don't think we need to have a bulletproof, multi-billion dollar interface to rent cars either.

I've never asked for a "bulletproof, multi-billion dollar interface to rent cars". The Enterprise reservation system, from what everyone tells me, could easily be replaced a five-year-old PC running Windows 95 with a simple program on it that says "Yes!" to every reservation request. "Multi-billion dollar interface", my ass! I could build a replacement for $300 ($200 if I could use Linux)!

The proof of the pudding is in the tasting: even if an MT were to call up the national reservations line and explain that their branch is completely out of cars and they have 30 people on line, and beg to cut off reservations because absolutely none of them will be honored, their request will be refused and the reservations will continue to pour in. That's just insanity. Nobody who hasn't worked for Enterprise can believe this is actually true.

You just can't run a modern business in which the reservation system doesn't even make an attempt to talk to the inventory system, and management looks the other way because it's more profitable to just say yes to every reservation and them dump the problem on the branch.

Look at the way Wal-Mart and UPS and Dell can so effectively track every single part and parcel and keep everything running efficiently. Enterprise can't even keep track of $25,000 vehicles?

No, other rental car companies don't have these issues.

Originally Posted by Captain Fucking Bleedgreen

I'm not snowed by the "fondly"

Good. That's not how it was intended.

Originally Posted by Captain Fucking Bleedgreen

and am not steamed by the implication of my frame of reference. But I am steamed that you would draw attention to where I'm from with a stereotype. You pride yourself on ethical, logical discussions, but are quick to judge and throw out stereotypes to rationalize your responses.

I haven't lowered my standards by drawing conclusions on you based on your demographics, you should give your posters the same consideration big boy.

Sincerely,
Captain

Here's another stereotype that's starting to become apparent to me: green bleeders too often look for outside excuses to explain why they dishonor reservations, and it's never, ever, ever, ever their fault.

You can make an honest living, or you can lie to customers, but you can't do both.

[Captain Fucking Bleedgreen]

Originally Posted by FailingEnterpriseAdmin

No, you fuck up a whole lot more than other businesses do. Can you imagine what would happen to Fed Ex if a huge proportion of their overnight packages arrived a couple of days late and the response to complaining customers was something like "stuff happens", or "we didn't have enough planes; it's not our fault"?

since when the fuck am I Andy Taylor and call all of the shots? "you" post this as if I call the shots at ERAC. I have been posting that I think expecting perfectly executed service is just going to kill anyone and that shit DOES happen and I haven't defended our practices by saying that the system is perfect. I AGREE we need to improve and have a lot of room to grow there, but I don't agree that you should expect things to happen overnight or that our system is so much worse than other rental companies. I've rented from Hertz and Advantage (albeit not regularly) and they have the same fucking issues. Hertz gave me a dirty car and I had to wait while Advantage found me a car 3 years ago...IT FUCKING HAPPENS. It seems like you spend a lot of time trashing ERAC for things that go on elsewhere as well. No shock here given your site, but be realistic with your expectations.

I've never asked for a "bulletproof, multi-billion dollar interface to rent cars". The Enterprise reservation system, from what everyone tells me, could easily be replaced a five-year-old PC running Windows 95 with a simple program on it that says "Yes!" to every reservation request. "Multi-billion dollar interface", my ass! I could build a replacement for $300 ($200 if I could use Linux)!
The proof of the pudding is in the tasting: even if an MT were to call up the national reservations line and explain that their branch is completely out of cars and they have 30 people on line, and beg to cut off reservations because absolutely none of them will be honored, their request will be refused and the reservations will continue to pour in. That's just insanity. Nobody who hasn't worked for Enterprise can believe this is actually true.

This is not true. I tried to book a res out of group today through VIP and was told they were SOLD OUT! for that date. They do cut things off, there is just no perfect system. You're relying on humans to return things on time and people keep rentals longer than they're supposed to. I'm not advocating overbooking to an unreasonable extent, but you're there is no perfect check and balance.

You just can't run a modern business in which the reservation system doesn't even make an attempt to talk to the inventory system, and management looks the other way because it's more profitable to just say yes to every reservation and them dump the problem on the branch.

it does make an attempt, albeit a sad one.

Look at the way Wal-Mart and UPS and Dell can so effectively track every single part and parcel and keep everything running efficiently. Enterprise can't even keep track of $25,000 vehicles?

No, other rental car companies don't have these issues.

smoke and mirrors...you're right other rental companies are perfect, we're the only imperfect ones in the bunch, and B of A is the only imperfect Bank, Wells Fargo, Washington Mutual and all credit unions have 100% customer satisfaction rates. I hope you're fucking kidding.

Good. That's not how it was intended.

a little sarcasm from Admin. Haven't seen that in a while.

Here's another stereotype that's starting to become apparent to me: green bleeders too often look for outside excuses to explain why they dishonor reservations, and it's never, ever, ever, ever their fault.

Glad I could help fuel your biases. Here's one for you: people running hate sites have no inclination toward objectivity and every company outside their target is perfect.

You can make an honest living, or you can lie to customers, but you can't do both.

I haven't had to lie to my customers and I do make an honest living. But I'm the minority on your site. That doesn't mean you're not getting an imbalanced and unbiased sampling based on the premise of your site.

[FailingEnterpriseAdmin]

Originally Posted by Captain Fucking Bleedgreen

since when the fuck am I Andy Taylor and call all of the shots? "you" post this as if I call the shots at ERAC.

I was responding what you said:

"NO. we fuck up just like every business does."

So when I said "you", I meant "Enterprise", like you did when you said "we".

Originally Posted by Captain Fucking Bleedgreen

I have been posting that I think expecting perfectly executed service is just going to kill anyone and that shit DOES happen and I haven't defended our practices by saying that the system is perfect. I AGREE we need to improve and have a lot of room to grow there, but I don't agree that you should expect things to happen overnight or that our system is so much worse than other rental companies. I've rented from Hertz and Advantage (albeit not regularly) and they have the same fucking issues. Hertz gave me a dirty car and I had to wait while Advantage found me a car 3 years ago...IT FUCKING HAPPENS. It seems like you spend a lot of time trashing ERAC for things that go on elsewhere as well. No shock here given your site, but be realistic with your expectations.

I rent from other rental car companies all the time and there's no comparison. At Enterprise, they dishonored 10 out of 15 reservations. At the national chain that I rent from regularly now, they've dishonored 0 out of 60 reservations, they've never tried to upsell me and the average length of time it takes to pick a car is 10 seconds, compared with 20 minutes at Enterprise.

The things that I criticize Enterprise for don't "go on elsewhere as well". There's no comparison.

Saying "everyone else does it" is a excuse I've heard repeatedly at Enterprise and it's simply not true.

Originally Posted by Captain Fucking Bleedgreen

This is not true. I tried to book a res out of group today through VIP and was told they were SOLD OUT! for that date. They do cut things off, there is just no perfect system.

Wait a minute; evidence that Area Managers do sometimes call NatRes to cut off reservations in no way refutes my claim that nobody below an Area Manager (whom I hear mysteriously can't be found whenever the car shortage gets really severe at a branch) is authorized to do this.

Yes or No: Can a branch employee cut off reservations at NatRes or on the Internet? From everything I've heard, the answer is no. They have to find their Area Manager and I keep hearing the typical response is to deny the request.

Originally Posted by Captain Fucking Bleedgreen

You're relying on humans to return things on time and people keep rentals longer than they're supposed to.

Yes, and you know this is going to happen on a fairly regular basis, and you have a detailed historical record of how frequently this happens, and Enterprise refuses to keep enough cars around to accomodate this. The problem isn't customers who keep cars; the problem is running at 92% occupancy.

Enterprise cannot simultaneously claim that cars come back late all the time and that when they do it's a complete surprise that no one could have prepared for.

Originally Posted by Captain Fucking Bleedgreen

I'm not advocating overbooking to an unreasonable extent, but you're there is no perfect check and balance.

So, what are you saying? That you advocate overbooking only to a "reasonable" extent? Ten reservations out of 15 dishonored. How many out of 15 do you consider "reasonable"? (I honestly wouldn't mind if it were one or two).

Originally Posted by Captain Fucking Bleedgreen

it does make an attempt, albeit a sad one.

smoke and mirrors...you're right other rental companies are perfect, we're the only imperfect ones in the bunch, and B of A is the only imperfect Bank, Wells Fargo, Washington Mutual and all credit unions have 100% customer satisfaction rates. I hope you're fucking kidding.

I've never demanded that Enterprise be perfect, or anything even close to that. If you want to keep claiming that as an excuse to ignore what I'm saying, I can't stop you.

Originally Posted by Captain Fucking Bleedgreen

a little sarcasm from Admin. Haven't seen that in a while.
Glad I could help fuel your biases. Here's one for you: people running hate sites have no inclination toward objectivity and every company outside their target is perfect.

Nice try. Read the site. I'm sure there are plenty of people at Enterprise who can't possibly process the concepts on this site and quickly dismiss Failing Enterprise as the work of a guy who has "no inclination toward objectivity" and who thinks "every company outside their target is perfect".

I realize there is a very strong customer-proof and logic-proof force field up at Enterprise and that for a lot of employees it's really, really important to preserve the emotional investment they've made in Enterprise to find some way, any way, to dismiss Failing Enterprise. People outside Enterprise know this is a losing battle.

Originally Posted by Captain Fucking Bleedgreen

I haven't had to lie to my customers and I do make an honest living. But I'm the minority on your site. That doesn't mean you're not getting an imbalanced and unbiased sampling based on the premise of your site.

I agree that posters on Failing Enterprise do not represent an unbiased or random sampling of Enterprise customers or employees. Of course.

But I also assert that Enterprise employees who are completely bought in (I'm not implying you here) and who have been sold this whole story of making a fortune at Enterprise and who have been brainwashed by the corporate culture are in no way able to have a balanced or unbiased view of Enterprise either. I'm sure plenty of people at Enterprise dismiss FE by saying "That's just a bunch of people who couldn't hack it".

A nice test will be when and if Enterprise decides to go public or do a partial spin-off. Wall Street analysts have years of experience seeing through the bullshit spouted by bought-in employees. Failing Enterprise will be an invaluable source of "unofficial" information useful in pricing the offering.