| rev:text
| - I'm an urban kind of person, and don't always need a car. Rather than own a car I like to use a car-share, and rent cars from time to time - I get a kick out of trying out different cars rather than owning just one. After trying just about every rental agency on the North Side of Chicago, I rented regularly for years & years from Enterprise. Over ten years in the Albany Park neighborhood, about a car a month means somewhere above a hundred car rentals, so I'd say I'm comfortable renting cars. Now I use Community Car for my car-share in Madison, and they have some kind of arrangement with Budget, so I get a slight discount to rent from there, so I've been getting my cars for longer trips from this location. Pretty decent service at this location so far, and adequate selection of vehicles.
The main issue is just watch-out for the HARD and SNEAKY up-sell. I'm willing to bet dollars to doughnuts they work on commission. Such a shame.
First you'll go through the rental agreement, and the staff is obviously trained to try to up-sell everything - give you every expensive option and the highest level of insurance coverage, speaking quickly in misleading sales-jargon and giving the price PER DAY, not total, all those little extras add up. Then they'll go over the thing a second time even faster and kind of skim through, it's VERY easy to miss that they have added an option you SPECIFICALLY asked NOT to have added on the first run-through.
I've repeatedly been irritated to have to wait in line behind someone who was getting the hard up-sell, when they get to the signing portion, the person sees the totals and goes "Wait a minute! Why is this so high?" and they have to start the whole process over, re-viewing each item, the agent smooth-talking up the options, the customer trying to be polite while insisting "No, I don't want that, I said I don't want that." over and over on each item. It's tiresome.
This weekend I slipped up and they got me, didn't think it could happen to me, but they got me. On the first run through I clearly said "NO insurance, I have good & expensive coverage" like I ALWAYS do, and was tired of saying, as I get the same package every time. Not this time though. Apparently the agent ignored that, put down redundant additional insurance anyway. I even realize now where I got tricked - he said "You get the good Community Car rate" and I thought he meant for the rental referring to the discount, but instead it was for additional insurance that I CLEARLY DECLINED on the first run-through. So now I'm stuck with a bill for about 80$ above what I intended or should have paid - both the additional item and tax on the additional item, watch out for it, you pay HIGH tax on rental cars and the total can balloon quite horrendously.
I called to ask about the bill, and got pretend sympathy but bottom-line = tough titty.
Making the reservation online can sometimes help: you lock in the agreement you want, so you're familiar with the sales jargon, but still, WATCH OUT, they definitely WILL attempt both the hard & the sneaky up-sell when you get to the desk, and they play on the fact that standing at the counter going over all that stuff is boring, they'll make friendly small talk to distract you then race through the fees sneaking the up-sell in there.
Also watch-out for the pick-up time if you rent online! I reserved a car for 5:00, not knowing they closed at 5 (unexpectedly crazy-early based my previous decades of rental experience) and the page form auto-corrected the rental time to 4:59 - which I didn't notice until I got to the lot at 5:02 to find it locked up for the night. Irritating. Did I mention I'm an experienced, regular, repeat customer? Maybe I should re-think that.
Basically it works well when it works, the cars have been mostly OK, but the business model they use is just NOT customer-satisfaction oriented, and I really dislike doing that combative / adversarial kind of business where I have to really focus hard on not being ripped off with a trick, I'd rather do business with people who focus on keeping me happy so I keep coming back regularly for decades - which is what I tend to do. I guess I'll try the Budget at the Airport next time - they helped me out when the other office closed at 5:00 leaving me without my reserved car. If I get the hard up-sell there, I guess I'm done with Budget.
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