Last time I rented a car from Hertz, it was totally touchless with no human interaction. Walk in, find your name on the screen which shows the parking spot your car is in, and go. Perhaps things have changed.
I travel a lot for work and after some setup I have found hertz to be the most efficient. When they’re not efficient, I want to blow a gasket at the line and lack of any urgency from the staff, and another time they canceled my reservation day of without telling me (because they were overbooked) leaving me stranded in an unfamiliar city.
But when it works it does work well. I have the board down to a science: shuttle to hertz, look for my name on board, walk to car directly as indicated by board, drive away with the only human interaction being the person scanning the car as I exit.
> When they’re not efficient, I want to blow a gasket at the line and lack of any urgency from the staff
As a customer, I completely get that feeling.
As someone who has worked in auto rental (although for Budget Truck), the reality is usually along the lines of rental clerks making slightly above minimum wage, the entire city getting drastically overbooked by corporate, and customers who were due to return (and counted on for availability) not doing so. They have no urgency because it happens on a regular basis and they're the ones getting screamed at all day because of it even though they have no control over it.
This is why I always try not to get angry. The employees interfacing with the customers are usually the ones who get paid the least and have no authority to make decisions.
Pretty much. Last time I rented from Hertz, with a corporate card, they wanted to run an "identity verification" on me, which I assume was basically some kind of credit pull. They then told me that because the details from that didn't match the card (billing address, ZIP, etc., I guess), they could not rent to me.
"When can I see a refund on my card?" I asked, as I pulled up Uber to go somewhere else (because I was not about to use my personal card, on principle with their behavior).
"Sorry, prepaid reservations are nonrefundable".
Uhh, no. You're not going to accept a reservation from me using a credit card, and then decide that my photo ID matching that credit card is insufficient, deny me a rental, and deny me a refund.
That got sorted out, but took more than one call to Corporate.
During the early pandemic Singapore Airlines canceled my flight and gave me a flight credit. I went in circles with them and Orbitz saying I wanted my money back, to no avail. So I filed a chargeback with Capital One. The airline responded to the dispute saying the ticket I bought was non-refundable. I replied pointing out that means it's not refundable if I cancel, not that the airline can refuse service I paid for and not refund me. I also attached a recent notice from the DoT saying that airlines must refund customers in my situation, and that the specific practice in question was illegal.
Capital One sided with the airline and closed my case. Guess you can't depend on chargebacks like I thought you could.
> Capital One sided with the airline and closed my case. Guess you can't depend on chargebacks like I thought you could.
Yes people tend to have a slightly delusional view of how effective chargebacks can be based on limited experiences. If you're fighting with a small merchant like a local store or a non famous online merchant you're going to win basically every time.
If you're fighting with a rental car company, an airline, a hotel chain, a household name company, or similar, it's an entirely different story. The interaction has much more to do with who's more valuable to the card issuer than who's right.
It's a pull from your bank account. You give the merchant your account details and sign* an authorization and they "pull" the money from your account. Afterward you can cancel the charge without giving a reason for a few weeks, or if the charge was unauthorized for up to 2 years. The only downside compared to chargebacks is that you are not protected in case of insolvency of the merchant.**
> What are the expensive consequences you are talking about?
The system offers no security for the merchant - in fact cancelled charges cost a fee, even if the charge was completely valid.
* yes - physical signature on paper, except when paying online
** this is a topic for a full comment on it's own, but here's the gist: Under German law you can't "take back" your money from an company that has filed for bankruptcy - in fact even payments made to you before the filing might be clawed back by the administrator - which means that you will receive (and customers from insolvent airlines have received) an angry letter demanding the money back. With chargebacks this is less likely to happen as the chargeback will be paid for by the merchant's bank, not the merchant directly, but the legal situation is unclear.
Technically it was not the airline refusing service, there was a force majeure, and many insurances have explicit exceptions for stuff like pandemics, wars, etc.
If I was tdeck, I would contact US Dept of Transportation.
There was specifically a special directive by US Dept of Transportation directing airlines to refund customers for any flights that were modified or canceled after pandemic restrictions started in Mar 2020.
> Non-refundable tickets - Passengers who purchase non-refundable tickets are not entitled to a refund unless the airline makes a promise to provide a refund or the airline cancels a flight or makes a significant schedule change.
I am also confused how Orbitz would be involved in tdeck’s situation. Either they paid Orbitz, or they paid Singapore Airlines, but either way only one of them would be able to refund them.
In fact this is how it got resolved, I filed a complaint with some agency (I can't recall which) and SQ coincidentally changed their policy and refunded me. The very notice you linked is the one I sent with my chargeback.
As for Orbitz, I used them to book the ticket, and SQ's customer service told me they couldn't refund me because they had a policy that only the agent could modify the reservation. When I tried to contact Orbitz they just told me I would need to talk to the airline.
The flight (to Japan) wasn't actually banned, it just became unprofitable to run that day. But flights are a time-sensitive thing! Imagine if you ordered a pizza and the restaurant called you back and said it wasn't convenient that night because of car trouble, but they'd keep your money and in a few months when it made more sense they'd deliver your pizza. That's ridiculous and you'd have a right to demand your money back.
First time I was late paying AMEX they raised my interest rate north of 25%. They could legally do so, but they were the only card I had that did it so quickly; just one day late.
Discover was my favorite. They had a forgiveness policy and wouldn't raise your rate just because another card did. And their website was very friendly to use.
Their app is blasted easy to use for payments & viewing account information as well. I despise the Chase app where my auto loan sits, as it never loads correctly on my iPhone, or takes drastically longer. Whereas the Discover app and pages load without problem.
I guess that's how they make money and can afford great customer service, which is also something I'm fine with: I couldn't care less what their interest rate is since I'll never ever pay interest. If that's on the agenda, then I'd look somewhere else as you say.
It’s probably the flip side to allowing late no-fee cancellations.
If it’s easy to book then not turn up, people will. Then if you know a significant percentage on average doesn’t turn up, it would be lost profit to not overbook.
Fully paid non-refundable services should, I agree, very conservative in overbooking.
The flip side is you can choose to extend your rental without giving them any advance notice. And you can cancel your reservation without penalty (at least before these new pay-in-advance deals). Hence they are never quite certiain they will have cars. I have had to wait around for someone to return a car before I could get my rental a few times before.
Also I believe one of them (Hertz or maybe Enterprise) told me if I did the pay-in-advance deal they would guarantee a car was there because they'd bring one in from the airport if needed. Some locations have very few cars and can be hit-or-miss.
Cars break down, people don't return their cars in time, some of the staff processing cars call out sick, there's a wide variety of reasons your inventory day of might be less than predicted. Either you need to have a lot of extra vehicles sitting idle to make up the deficit or you need to screw over your customers, and car rentals are too low margin for the former to be a viable option.
>When they’re not efficient, I want to blow a gasket
Can confirm that getting off the shuttle, looking up at the Hertz Gold board expecting to see either a parking space number or a section listed by your name, and instead seeing "See Agent" is absolutely rage inducing.
I mean if it works smoothly with no human interaction required (including both upselling and forced cheerfulness, maybe even an Expectation for tipping? I don't even know), where do I sign? As long as I get a written proof of renting and returning.
