A Special Message For Steve Weidner, City Manager
in Tulsa, Oklahoma:
Tuesday, February 14th, 2006
Hello Steve Weidner,
Lots of people communicate with me privately about what's going
on inside Enterprise, particularly regarding the unethical and
probably illegal practices that motivated me to create this web site
in the first place.
My sources tell me that you led a six-hour BCAM (Branch Corporate
Accounts Manager) meeting last week in which you did the following:
1. Explained that if employees weren't getting at least one
customer complaint about their CDW sales practices every day then
they weren't pushing it hard enough. You elaborated by saying
that the additional profits from the customers who didn't complain
more than made up for the compensation you end up paying to
customers who do complain.
2. Encouraged employees to do the "phantom sell-up", in
which customers with dishonored reservations are tricked into paying
for upgrades into available vehicles they would have received for
free anyway. You then tried to explain that customers "actually
come out ahead” on these deals, although I can’t imagine even you
actually believe this.
3. Instructed employees to “do whatever it takes” to
persuade customers to upgrade to a more expensive car class and
explained that every time a customer doesn’t end up spending more
money than was agreed to on their reservation, this should be
considered a “slap in the face” to that employee.
4. Encouraged employees to “book every deal”, telling
customers there’d be a car for them even when you know it would be
impossible to meet this promise.
5. Emphasized that the number one goal was getting every
last dollar possible out of every customer and that if this meant
pissing off some customers, that was OK because the ones that won’t
complain will make up for the ones who do.
At Failing Enterprise, I'm always looking for ways to improve the
accuracy of what I say and get to the bottom of things. If you
think I’ve heard this information incorrectly in any way, I invite
you to reply, either here on the discussion board, or to me
personally at comments2 ((at)) failingenterprise ((dot)) com. It's free and easy to
comment here, and I'll vouch for your identity if you wish me to.
If I've heard wrong, I'll apologize publicly and set the record
straight.
Given what you encouraged your employees to do, can you please
tell me how you square this with your employer’s
"Founding Values" such as "Personal honesty and integrity are
the foundation of our success" and "Customer service is our
way of life"? This is a serious question. Do they
not apply anymore? Are they still valid in your region?
Do executives in St. Louis know that you’ve apparently abandoned
these values?
It's people like you and practices like this that fuel Failing
Enterprise. You should be ashamed of yourself. If you're
not, I'm going to help you. I just ordered another mailing of
Failing Enterprise invitational postcards to more U.S. branches.
I'm going to call this the "Steve Weidner in Group 51" mailing, and I'm
going to explain clearly to everyone who asks about them that it's
your outrageous behavior that motivated me to send them out. I
won't send them to Oklahoma, though; you're going to get a free
ride because you apparently feel entitled to one.
Branch Managers, Area Managers, City Managers and above from
1,900 U.S. branches are going to have to deal with our
beautiful four-color Failing Enterprise invitational postcards
and they're going to have "Steve Weidner in Group 51" to thank.
By the way, some of your employees hate you so much because of
your lack of ethics that they are actually offering to help pay for
this new mailing...
You encourage your employees to lie to customers like me, and now
I want you fired. What's it going to take?
Signed,
FailingEnterpriseAdmin
More on Enterprise car rental at the Failing Enterprise home page. |
