Monday, March 10, 2008

Forget the Alamo…rental car, that is

They knew we were coming but still had only one person to handle a surge of customers.

After a long stretch with nothing much to say about my travels, here come two posts, both arising from my current trip to Jackson, Mississippi. I’m here to visit my son, who is stationed at nearby Ft. Shelby and has a short pass before redeploying to Iraq.

My wife and I landed on time (thanks, Southwest) and got our baggage. Then I headed over to the Alamo Rental Car desk; I’d booked an online reservation with Alamo. The line was 10 people long and not moving. There was not one other person at any of the other rental counters. Only one employee was working the Alamo desk and, as it turned out, was also handling the National desk. Everyone in line, as far as I could tell, had made a reservation that included information on when their flights were landing. Alamo knew there would be a surge of customers at that time, yet made no plans for additional personnel to handle the load. I stood in line for 30 minutes—during which two customers completed their transactions—before deciding to pay an extra $100 for our four-day trip and got a car from Budget.

Question for Alamo: Have you ever heard of this concept called “customer service?”

Posted by Shel in • Rental cars
(2) Comments • Permalink

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Previous entry: I'll never do THAT again

  1. What’s odd is that I’ve had this experience every time I’ve rented from Alamo, back to the first time ever in the 1980s. The last time I rented from them, a few years ago in Orlando, there were people in line calling their 800 number from their cell phones to complain - which waiting in line. And I often pass their desk in an airport and notice that it’s incredibly crowded, while others are nearly empty.

    I’m not sure how any company could be so consistently understaffed, unless they had made understaffing a corporate priority.

    Obviously I simply won’t rent cars from them anymore… but it still makes me wonder how they manage to be quite that bad with such amazing consistency.

    John Whiteside  on  03/10  at  05:49 AM

  2. I’ve had similar problems with Alamo, Budget and Dollar rent-a-car. The budget car rental companies always seem to be slow and inefficient even when it’s not that busy. I belong to both Avis and Hertz preferred programs and book all my rentals via either of these companies. Most of the time I pay more than I would via a budget car rental operation, but I always get the benefit of speedy service when picking up a vehicle.

    Rob Safuto  on  03/10  at  07:06 AM

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