Hertz has a better idea?

This week was the travel week from hell. The weather in the Midwest has been horrible. More snow than I have seen in years. Trying to fly from the east coast to Ohio was impossible. My flight was cancelled twice on Friday due to the closing of my destination airport, CMH. Although Southwest re-booked me on a flight for Saturday, there was no guarantee that it would fly either.

I decided to rent a car and drive rather than risk being stuck away from home all weekend and leaving my wife at home to shovel snow by herself. I normally rent from Enterprise, but even though they have been promising the addition of one way rentals to their portfolio of services for quite some time, they still don't offer that option. I checked out National, and they had a car, but their price for a one way rent... $1000 for one day! I am guessing that would have outfitted me with a gold plated tank. I nearly fell on the floor. Talk about holding a traveler hostage! I find it hard to understand how Southwest can charge only $55 to fly me from BWI to CMH with some of the most friendly people I have ever been around, but National wanted 18 times that much and I was going to be all by myself.

My next stop was Hertz. After all, I did have a "Gold" card. The only thing gold was the rate. Their price was $228 for a one day, one way rental. Still very spicy, and again, I felt like I was being taken advantage of due to the weather situation, but I did not want to spend the weekend in Baltimore. I took the bait, rented the car, and embarked on the eight hour drive home. Fortunately, I beat the heaviest of the snow and rolled into my driveway at 2 o'clock in the morning.

When I woke up this morning, mother nature had obviously been busy the rest of the night and she had spread well over a foot of snow across the Ohio valley. She also had the wind whipping it into drifts across the area roads causing most of the counties in Ohio to issue either level two or level three snow emergencies. My rental car was pretty well entrenched in my driveway from all of the blowing snow. The airport where it needed to be returned was 25 miles away. Evaluating the situation, I felt it was best to contact Hertz to see what allowances they would make for returning the car late due to the severe weather conditions.

In calling the service number on the back of my "Gold" Hertz card, I was told that I would need to talk to their "extensions" department. They transferred me to that department, and they told me that I would need to talk to the folks in Columbus where I was returning the car. They provided me with the number, and I called the Hertz rental desk at the Columbus airport. The rental desk in Columbus informed me that since I rented the car BWI in Baltimore, that they could not access my information. They told me that the contract was with Baltimore and that I would need to contact them. I proceeded to call Baltimore and they didn't have much empathy for my plight since they didn't have any snow in Baltimore and really didn't have a clue about what was going on in Ohio. After much bantering with the fine folks at Hertz in Baltimore, they were able to offer me a gracious rate of $110 per day for each additional day that I held the car. That was a discount of 50% off of the wonderful $220 they charged me for the one day one way rental! I finally relented as I was wearing down after an hour on the phone being passed around. I sure am glad I have that "Gold" card. I am sure that it saved me loads of time. After getting off of the phone and calming down to a mild rage, I decided that come hell or high water, I was going to risk life and limb to get the car back to the Columbus airport.

I loaded up my snow shovel (my personal car was sitting in long term parking at the airport and was probably snowed in), and began the driving the 2o treacherous miles across town to the airport. Upon arriving at Port Columbus still in one piece, I was feeling pretty good that I wasn't going to have to pay for an extra day of rental at the "generously discounted rate" and I was pretty sure my ordeal was over. The guy checking me in even gave me a chance to vent about how I felt about Hertz which allowed me to bite my lip until it bled. Gosh I felt good! Then he gave me my receipt. Game over! The final damage... Approximately $330!

What! They had charged me for the original day AND the extra day that I didn't use. Of course the nice young man was unable to help me, but informed me that the manager was inside and I could talk to her. Lucky me. I will give credit where credit is due and say that this lady genuinely tried to help me. The problem was she had to call Baltimore to fix the problem. Remember? My contract was with them? After several minutes on the phone, she was told that they would have to generate the receipt in Baltimore and that they would fax it over to her when they finished getting the paperwork processed. The young lady in Columbus, realizing that I was very near "melt down" offered me a bottle of water to cool me off while I waited. I calmly declined and waited... and waited... and waited... Anybody ever read "Waiting for Godot"? Finally, I reached my limit and gave up. I told my new found friend behind the counter that I was done and would just wait for my credit card statement to show up. She assured me that I could go to Hertz.com in a "few days" to see my bill. She also informed me that my bill would be approximately $125... TOTAL!

The moral of the story: Give your customers a "Gold" card; treat them like crap and call it service; gouge them for every nickel you can when they are in a bind; make their request seem unreasonable; add insult to injury when the customer's experience is in the final mile; and finally, give them in the end what you should have given them at the start! Yes! Hertz has a better idea!