An Open Letter to Budget Rental

It is on very rare occasion that I make a decision to express my
dissatisfaction towards another business partner. Unfortunately this is one
of those occasions, so I apologise up front if this email sounds slightly
abrupt. First and foremost, I would like to commend your Budget location in
Norfolk, VA. Airport, they were prompt, concise and very pleasant to work
with. The car was ready for me as soon as I walked off the plane, so to
speak.

I am a Hertz Number 1 club gold member, an Enterprise business partner, and
more recently a Budget member with your Fast Break program. Like all of my
previous business trips, I reserve a vehicle several weeks prior along with
my airline reservation and when reserving I provide at least a time and a
flight company with my reservation; which I am sure is what is desired by
all rental car companies in order to ensure enough vehicles are ready to
meet demand. So with this thought I have a serious complaint against your
Baton Rouge La. Location located at their airport. Upon arriving to the
counter I was informed that no cars were available at this time and that it
would be approximately 20 minutes and that 5 other people were in front of
me waiting as well. Apparently they were several cars but they were in the
process of being cleaned. When I inquired about the Fast Break they
explained that their office was not a participating member of the program.
This of course does not make sense because your marketing material is all
over describing it. Now in looking at your website I do see a note that
the fast break is not available at that specific location, but the small
print makes it easy to overlook.

Over the course of the next hour I witnessed 3 fully cable employees sit
back and talk about what they planned on doing the next weekend while a
single employee lackadaisically took one set of keys, walked outside cleaned
and then came back in and took another set of keys. This slow agonizing
process, after being in airport after airport was generally unbearable. I
will point out that several of the other rental car companies did have cars
available for rent, but since my card had already been charged, and the 3
employees kept assuring me that it would only be a few more minutes, I
decided it was not worth the hassle to bother canceling and then renting
from another company. In hindsight I do see the error on my part. Had I
rented from Thrifty or Hertz or Enterprise, I would not have to had waited
for over an hour, in fact it would have only taken 10 minutes.

My name was finally called and I was given a KIA Sorrento car #4298011. The
car was a brand new car, still had temporary plates, and sticker on the
glove box. But after a quick glance, I discovered the windshield was
cracked, the carpet was stained and the cleaning process that took over an
hour for my waiting did not happen; only some car freshener was sprayed.
For a car that had only been driven 3500 or so miles, already it showed wear
and tear for a vehicle after 25,0000 miles. To make matters worse upon
turning on the engine, I discovered the check engine light was on. When i
enquired I was told not to worry and it was fine. Sure I could have just
waited another 30 minutes for another car, but honestly after traveling for
hours and then waiting over an hour, who in their right mind would want to
wait any longer?

My companyXXXXXX (www.XXXXX.com) only employes several hundred employees,
which in business terms is not a large company, but our competition are XXX
companies of which the like are XX, XXXXXX, XXXXXX etc. A year ago our
company had under 100 employees but recently we’ve seen exponential growth
and will continue to grow. Currently, at any given time we have 10-15
employees traveling which would mean if we gave Budget all of our business
we’d be renting 10-15 vehicles at a time at an average cost of $200 a week.
That means on average $3000 per week, or $150,000 per year of potential
business. Now that may not be much to a large corporation such as Budget.
But on the whole, is loosing the relationship of a small company, and
$150,000+ a year revenue worth not trying to fix a locations problems?
Meaning customer relation issues, availability of vehicles, and employees
that seem quite lackadaisical. I would hope that Budget would take the time
out to resolve issues such as this so in the future problems, like the
above, will be avoided and my company will not look elsewhere for a business
partnership.

Thank you for your time,
Pylorns
Senior IT Consultant,XXXX XXXXXXXX
XXXXXX@xxxxxx.com
www.xxxxx.com
Rental Agreement No.XXXXXXXXX
Fast Break#XXXXXX

Tags: Budget
Posted in Uncategorized |

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