[Later...] Just booked a Budget compact car through United for $196.86. Got miles with it. By the wa

The oldest case for VRM is one that has hardly improved in decades: car rental. Few business categories do a worse job of matching specific customer needs. Or a worse job of doing even the very limited range of services birmingham england hotels to which they limit themselves.
birmingham england hotels For example, Enterprise . I had a car booked for this evening in Santa Barbara that I would drive for the next week and return birmingham england hotels to the same airport. Price: $205 for an economyh car.  Nice deal. But, thanks to the common difficulty of getting from Airport A to Airport B, I m arriving at 11:45 this evening, after Enterprise is closed.  So I called the company from the airport in Denver, where I m sitting now.
The robot asked if I d like to answer a one-question survey if I stayed on line after the call. I pressed 1 for yes. The reservations agent explained that I couldn t change the reservation for pick-up tomorrow morning, but would need a new reservation. This one would be $245. Why? The short answer: because that s what The System birmingham england hotels says.
So the survey robot asked me to say whether I was satisfied with the agent s service (not the company s, meaning the agent gets penalized, I would guess). On a scale of 1 to 5 (where 5 is most satisfied), I punched in 2. The robot expressed electronic unhappiness with my dissatisfaction, and told me to leave a detailed message. birmingham england hotels When the promt for that came, I started to talk and the robot instantly interrupted with a Thank you, and hung up the line. Is there a better way to compound customer unhappiness than that?
So I want to take this opportunity to appeal birmingham england hotels to anybody birmingham england hotels in a responsible position anywhere in the car rental business to work together with us at ProjectVRM on a customer-based solution to this kind of automated lameness. It can t be done from the inside alone. That s been tried and proven birmingham england hotels inadequate for way too long. Leave a message below or write me at dsearls at cyber dot law dot harvard dot edu.
[Later...] Just booked birmingham england hotels a Budget compact car through United for $196.86. Got miles with it. By the way, I am a long-standing member of Budget s FastBreak club. There was nowhere on the reservation I just made to note that. Makes no difference. Just pointing out how lame loyalty programs are too. I have minimal loyalty to Budget (which, over the years, has generally been okay). birmingham england hotels As of now, I have antipathy toward Enterprise.
Okay, I have a choice. I can say No which means I have to have a 5 minute conversation about what I was looking for that I did not find, that concludes with an insincere birmingham england hotels comment from a clerk who could care less but is following the script I am sorry to hear that sir
I had two XM radios I just canceled one bc I dont use it and XM keeps jacking the price. It takes 10 seconds on the website to subscribe; to cancel you have to call. 23 minutes later the service person asks, were you satisfied with your service to day sir?? NO! It took 23 minutes to do something that should take a few seconds on your website. Oh, I am sorry to hear that sir said in a most automated, could care less, tone.
English speakers all over the world are scratching birmingham england hotels their collective heads at this bizarre Americanism (which is almost but not quite as bizarre as calling the second course of your meal the entree ).
If the legacy car rental companies don t want to play VRM, how about a hotel that offers both an airport shuttle and plenty of Zipcar parking spots? If you come in at night, ride the shuttle birmingham england hotels to the hotel instead of picking up a car just to park it. Then reserve a car for the driving you need to do during your stay.
Where Doc was going, Zipcar is only on the UCSB campus- a short distance from the airport. He would still have to get there, and the rate for his week would have been $86 a day for a Honda Civic Hybrid. He would have the same proximity issue when leaving, as the Zipcar is supposed to be left where one picks it up.
So until Zipcar becomes a part of the larger Santa Barbara community than the campus, or a campus shuttle visits the airport at midnight AND Zipcar birmingham england hotels has competitive pricing, its a promising not there yet.
Access is the key here. Doc just wants the car when and where he lands. Why technology doesn t enable a global rental car company to give Doc keyless access the way Zipcar does eliminating office hour and human contact constraints seems like the question to answer.
By the way, I m surprised that you went with United/Budget rather than a liquidator like Priceline. Priceline is known for being able to get fantastic deals out of the major rental car companies for last minute rentals.
Thanks, birmingham england hotels Brett. We were fairly stranded out at Concourse B, hoping to pick up any number of flights as they went out. DEN-SJC-SBA, DEN-SFO-SBA, DEN-LAX-SBA birmingham england hotels We ended up with one we had reserved part-way into the ordeal, direct DEN-SBA, last flight out at the end of the day, delayed. birmingham england hotels Arrived in SBA well after midnight. Anyway, we had to sit there and hope for getting on standby earlier.
As for Priceline and Hotwire, I ve often used them for hotels and sometimes for airline and car reservations. The problems show up with cancellations. It can be an ordeal. When I had to cancel trips to Munich and Copenhagen last year, it took months to sort out what would have gone much faster if we had booked directly, and we still lost money.
On a recent trip to Vancouver, Canada I had booked a car with Hertz, no problem did the booking here in Australia birmingham england hotels before birmingham england hotels flying over, got the confirmations and price via email( its even better with a CDP number). The pickup was easy, a pleasant experince a newish car no problem, after 10 days had to change the drop off point from the city to the airport, no problem did it over the phone easy. Flew to the east coast was due back in a week but had to shorten birmingham england hotels the trip. Came back 4 days early ( had a car booked with hertz )
it was a saturday, birmingham england hotels hertz had no cars for an early pickup , someone suggested Budget, great they had a car, organised a price and the man behind the counter, Alan started off pleasant enough until I produced my NSW drivers licence and Visa card, hmm, this card is not valid he tells me, what card? the Visa is a debit, they are not accepted here in Canada he tells me, I had been on planes and moving for 15 hours so I kept a straight face and composure, he then proceeded to tell me I could not have the car. I tell him that I had used my debit card, with Hertz, birmingham england hotels Air Canada and a host of organisations while I had been in Canada, impossible he tells me , they were not a valid card.
My complaint to Budget Australia about the arrogance and lack of customer empathy from Alan, was a sheer waste of time, why because apparently the Budget rental office at Vancouver Airport does no accept Visa debit cards. Now if they were a single franchise maybe I would understand that. But the Budget Rent a car internal investigator from Australia must not have read the policy on cards accepted and Visa debit is one of them ( but have to admit thats the aussie site)
Isnt it great, you travel to a foreign land and you get treated like you are a blight on the landscape, a leper and invader getting none of the welcome to my country how can I help you that tourist ads would make you believe actualy occurs.
I feel your pain about the automated voice responses at car rental companies. They piss me off so bad that I want to throw the phone against a brick wall sometimes. In theroy they sound like they could be helpful. If I need to go to the trouble to phone a company, it s because their website didn t help me. Automated systems never help with unusual queries, so unfortunately, they are as helpful as the little paperclip dude in microsoft word.