I just came back from a trip to Colorado. I had to go to several cities throughout the state, therefore I rented a car. I used to be a Hertz Club Gold member when I owned my advertising agency, because most of our client meeting trips required several agency representatives, and we needed a vehicle to accommodate us. However, now that I travel alone for my speaking business, 99% of the time my client either picks me up at the airport, or they have a driver pick me up. That is why I allowed my gold membership to run out.
Back to the trip. Since I was familiar with Hertz, I decided to rent with them again. I flew into Denver and took the shuttle bus to the Hertz center. When I arrived, I was sixth in line. I remained in line for over an hour, watching the people in front of me go through great pains to rent a vehicle and listening to everyone in line complain loudly about the wait and the horrible service. There were four extremely slow, casual and uncaring “customer service” representatives behind the counter. I overheard two representatives complaining about how busy it was. One of them even joked about getting out of there. “I’m done. I’m outta’ here!” is what she said. When I finally made it to the counter, I told the rep that people have literally left the line to go to another rental company. She said - “Nobody else has cars. It’s not our fault. We don’t have enough people and we’re short on cars.” I was left speechless. “It’s not our fault?” Whose fault is it? Mine? When I gave her my reservation, she told me they didn’t have that car available. I waited another twenty minutes for them to find a car for me.
This person did apologize when I left, but she did so without looking at me and making it very clear that she didn’t feel she needed to.
I have a few trips coming up where I’ll need to rent a car. I was going to renew my Club Gold membership, but not anymore. I will most definitely make this experience part of my keynote presentations, seminars and training programs. You can bet on that!
Scott, that was a sad, but sadly typical story these days. I had a very similar situation with Avis not long ago and I swore off using them. Now I’ll do the same for “#1″. It’s rather astouding that major corporations are not totally focused on keeping customers happy — especially now!
We’re members of the Avis and Enterprise programs, but on a recent trip to Calgary our client arranged a car for us through Hertz. Our luggage didn’t arrive on our flight and while we were waiting at the counter trying to locate our bags, we called the Hertz counter to let them know we would be a bit late, but that we would pick up the car before they closed. The agent said it was not a problem.
Dealing with the airline agents turned out to be a horrific experience. We were the only people at the counter, nobody else in line. Two agents were trying to help us and exactly two hours later we were told our bags would arrive on a flight the next morning. There was nothing we could do but get a hotel nearby the airport and wait for the bags to arrive before driving 4 hours to our destination the next day.
During the continued delays, I called the Hertz agent another 3 times. Never once in all 4 calls did he say there were any problems with our reservation. When I arrived at the counter he asked for my driver’s license and credit card, and then he proceeded to inform me that they had been out of cars all evening but that he would get us a car from National. However, when we went to the National counter they informed us that they had no cars either! The agent from Hertz said he was sorry, but there was nothing else that he could do.
In the end, I convinced the Hertz agent to take me to the garage and have a look together to make sure there were no cars. Surprise… they had an SUV but apparently our client had not booked that class of car so he didn’t offer it to us.
We got the SUV but it came with a lot of frustration, especially considering what we went through earlier in the evening with the airline. We will try to avoid doing business with Hertz from now on.
Hey Scott,
Ditto on the Hertz service issues. As you mentioned in our ad days, I like you, was a gold club member. It meant that we could fly in, drop by, hit the road and make our presentations and calls with Carrier, Oki, Palm… I don’t travel as much as you, but recently had the chance to travel on a business program I am involved with and went to Hertz. Bad decision. And after the bad experience, they didn’t offer anything to improve the day.
Sounds like they had cars for you, not me. And the counter person could have cared less. Wasn’t fun and in the future I will avoid the pain and issues that Hertz seems to have throughout their culture.
I have had great experiences with others like with dollar and national…
Enjoy,
Dennis
Sadly, I recently had a similar experience at LAX with Hertz. Unfortunately, I was next in line (a very LONG line) just as it was apparently break time for the pathetic clerks who thought they were doing us all the fine favor of showing up for work. I, too, will NEVER rent from Hertz again. I wish I had the audience you have to vent to…
I stopped using Hertz last year after a nightmare experience. Same long lines, cars not available, what I was finally offered was a sad excuse for a vehicle. Even though I had reserved a mid size car, none were available. I was finally offered a “sub compact”. I don’t even think my kids could have fit comfortably. There was no GPS, which I had reserved. I understand that sometimes they are shorthanded, but the lack of compassion from the rude clerks was the reason I have not rented from Hertz since.
I attended your keynote in Tampa in March, and saw the audience reaction to your experience with a certain retail store. I can only imagine the heads nodding as you recount this experience with Hertz!
It seems finding good service these days is just impossible. I like Thrifty’s service. Try them Scott.
Last April, I had the opportunity to listen to you speak at our reseller conference in Madison. I remember you saying that less than 10% of dissatisfied customers tell the vendor that they are unhappy…just curious if you are part of that 10%, and how Hertz responded? I bet they have no idea how many people you reach on an annual basis!!
I sincerely apologize for the situations all of you have outlined. Our CEO, Mark Frissora, was recently interviewed and had an internal webcast addressing these very issues. He drove home the importance of customer service and the fact that we are buying cars as fast as we can to meet rising demand. So please know that our senior management has been listening and action is being taken at our rental locations to correct these problems. As many of you are aware to alleviate the need to stand in line at the counter , Hertz #1 Club Gold Service and our Hertz Online Check-In Guarantee are services we provide to help you quickly through the rental experience. Again, I apologize and hope that you will give us another opportunity to restore your confidence in Hertz.
Kanda Keepers
Administrator of Corporate Communications
The Hertz Corporation
My most recent experience was in Miami…after seeing 30+ people standing miserably in line, it was no surprise that all of the self service stations were also out of order. I didn’t even get in line…I went right to Alamo.
Hi Scott
my colleague here in Australia, Michael Harrison, just posted an insightful blog post about a Hertz Experience on his blog. http://tinyurl.com/nvoc3g
Timothy
Filthy smoke filled cars, lackadaisical service…it’s enough to cause one to stick one’s head in an oven.
What’s this? A blog post I actually like? Well, I’ll be darned. You just found yourself a new reader.
I am a new Hertz reservations agent and have been strongly impressed with the family atmosphere among employees. I genuinely like my management team. So this is difficult for me to write but I did notice however that customer service was shockingly low at Hertz. But then I am a service guy so I might me biased.
I attempted to rent a car from Hertz last week but when I got to the counter they were out of cars. I was disappointed but was on a tight schedule so after 5min of coming to terms with the Hertz failure and a couple of calls I rented from Enterprise. (actually it put me 1.5 hrs behind schedule)
I was initially just shocked not to have a car then asked the two gentlemen at the Hertz counter if they had any recommendations in the event they offered a solution I had not thought of or offered to check other locations until we found a solution. Those would be two good customer service responses. No, they both just said they had been out of cars for a couple of days and there was nothing they could do. Perhaps that was all they knew to say (customer service training opportunity). I had just called reservations the day before and was told it would be fine. (can you hear the booby prize music). Perhaps the reservations girl was new and didn’t check the fleet availability when she confirmed I had a car reserved.
I like to feel that I am somehow improving the service of companies by voting with my dollar. I spend with those who value my dollar by giving me what I want - service.
I have rented numerous cars from Enterprise. Sometimes I would call the day before and they would tell me if they had cars or not and my choices that hour if I was a last minute renter. I am no one special and for me once they had my reservation and no car so they went out and got a car from another branch an hour drive away from another state. So, I was profoundly unimpressed with the apparent indifference at the Hertz counter.
Are these indications of a deeper issue. It’s too soon for me to tell but the culture at Hertz maybe entrenched with a culture that will take a top down approach to fix. Or perhaps it was just a bad day for me.
I get a Hertz employee discount and its a really good one but is the difference in cost (>$40) worth the headache and hassle risking doing that again. I started a business last year and I depend on my service partners to be dependable. Should I give them another chance. Perhaps it was a bad day for Hertz.
PS - Enterprise called me a couple of days into the rental to follow up on the my satisfaction. Very professional. Very impressed.
Mr. Deming,
I have been a rental agent at Hertz for over two years. I really enjoy my job for the most part, and was a little upset to read your blog. One thing I wanted to let you know about is that we deal with busy, frustrated traveling people all day long. You have to have a level of understanding as to how frustrating it can be for us as agents to “run out of cars”. It does not happen often, but many times the reason it does happen is because our customers do not return cars when they are due in. It’s called “fleet control”.
Customers get wind that flights are cancelled and delayed and choose to keep the car they are in and return it to a different location instead of being stuck in airport for a day or two waiting for the airlines to figure things out, that becomes a domino effect, which you will see affects all car rental companies in that specific location. There have been few and far between nights that I have ran out of vehicles for customers where we would be about five short on our reservations, and about twenty short on returns. It can also be frustrating for us when we are expecting you in on an unknown flight at 9 AM and you don’t show up until 11:30 PM which is the case in many circumstances.
Either way, Customer Service is not an easy field to work in no matter where or what you do. That whole “Customer is always right” factor gets taken for granted a lot by the public and one thing people should understand is if you treat us like we are humans too, we will show much more respect for you back. We are here to serve our customers to the best of our ability, but when problems arise know that it is a Corporation and things happen in business. It’s good to make issues known, but one thing also to keep in mind is we are probably aware of the problem before the customers are and we are doing everything we can to rectify the situation and leave you with a positive experience that you can write about next time.
But please, when you do have a positive experience share it. Those who appreciate us boost our morale and cause us to appreciate our jobs more. It makes it a very rewarding career and motivates us to have that relationship with each and every customer we come into contact with.
CSR
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