Me: “Hi, this is Jean Cooper speaking. I just want to point out a small administrative error: I hired a car from you at R88 per day, but you charged me R235 a day.”
Car rental company: “No, sir, it is not an admin error. You were supposed to hire the car for 6 days, but you brought it back on the 5th day.”
Me: “My flight schedule changed. Yes, I brought it back earlier but how can that constitute a 294% price increase? What harm did I cause you by bringing the car back earlier? In fact, by having the car back a day earlier you could rent it out again one day earlier…”
Car rental company: “I’m sorry sir, the contract was for 6 days, not for 5.”
Me: “Yes, but can you understand my point? I will pay for the full 6 days – you can even leave the car in your carpark for today, if you want to. I benefited you by bringing the car back early. How can you penalize me for that?”
Car rental company:“Sorry sir, our system works that way.”
Me: “Why?”
Car rental company:“Because the contract was for 6 days, not for 5.”
Me: “I know about the contract, I’m asking for some reason. Can’t you change the system?”
Car rental company:”Sir, our system works this way. We had a contract….”
Round and round we went. Their system vs. my unique situation. And it’s true – we had a contract for their 6-day winter special which I violated by bringing the car back EARLY. But I’ll never use them again. Nor will my entire family. Nor will my network.
(I’m not putting their name here as I don’t want to use the power of this blogger for my personal fights)
Go on, Jean – give us their name…
Tempest/SIXT
You should have taken it back a day late Jean…!
I have issues with any company that is attached in any way to an airport. Here are just two examples to add to Jean’s one……
AIRLINES are about process. Leaving on time and landing on time (huh!) Safety checks and counting bodies. That there are people involved in their administration has escaped them. I fly enough to vouch for this.
CAR RENTAL COMPANIES are as bad. They have one very simple task. Get one car to one person at a pre-arranged time. (huh!) And then of course if you expect their radios to be tuned, clocks set, yada yada (huh!)
Yes I know there are one or two nuggets in the rubble, but sadly they aren’t good enough to make up for an industry that got lost along the way, a long time ago.
So Jean, I promise as well to never book a car from Tempest again.
But where will I go……….. aaaaaggggghhhhhhhhh!!!!
Jean I just went to their site to pass them the link to your Blog and the site was down. Another system failure……
I went and left some feedback at their site – seems to be back up. Asked if they really charged a customer 294% more because he returned a car a day early…wonder if they’ll get back to me? 😉
At last…. time to chalk one up to Tempest (maybe one of those nuggets I refered to). Just got a call from Andre at Tempest in Cape Town. He wanted to know if I’d really never book at Tempest again? Interesting question. Would I? Of course I would. Like I said above, “where else would I go…….?”
Anyway Andre read the blog and has a task, for today anyway, to sort it out.
So thumbs up to Andre. And it’s refreshing to know at least one Tempest human being knows how to read a blog.
And another thumbs up to Tempest – just received an email back (on the same afternoon I logged the query on their website) from Janita Edwards who has confirmed that the problem has been attended to, their system has been changed and Jean has been credited with the difference. Her email reads:
From: “Janita Edwards”
Date: May 23, 2005 17:27:45 GMT+02:00
Subject: Re: Tempest Web Feedback : Rental Enquiry
Dear Roger,
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Many thanks for your email and thanks to all those who have contributed to the blog. We appreciate feedback like this as it enables us to analyse our processes and solve any pitfalls that there may be within our systems.
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Firstly, we’d like to apologise to Mr Cooper for any inconvenience he has experienced and we will certainly arrange a credit so that the R88 quoted is the rate that will be charged for the 6-day rental period as advertised. Our Regional Manager, Andre, will be in touch to arrange the credit. Andre has, in fact, already left messages for Mr Cooper today in an attempt to resolve this situation.
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Without wanting to get into a long explanation of car rental practices and why the rate reverted to a more expensive rate when Mr Cooper returned the car EARLY, we have taken note of this instance and will certain set our system parameters to deal with this kind of eventuality more effectively.
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We look forward to your take-up of any further specials we may run (the rates when we get them right are very economical afterall!) and hopefully we can prove ourselves next time to get it 100% right.
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You are most welcome to add our response to your blog and hopefully our quick action in solving Mr Coopers complaint will remedy matters somewhat.
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Regards
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Janita Edwards
Marketing Manager
+2711 396 1080
One more for Tempest! They came back to me about the situation. This is very much appreciated and, as stated in Andre’s email, the service at the counters and the car itself were indeed very satisfactory:
Dear Mr Cooper
Thank you for taking the time to bring issues such as these to our attention.
The special which we have been running, has caused us quite a few problems to the point that we have retracted it off the internet. Virtually every rental on this special rate, which was designed as a bonus for our renters, has caused confusion and in some cases unhappy customers.
As mentioned in previous e-mails, we have decided to honour the rate concerned to you whereby charging you for the full period of 6 days so that the rate can apply. Our system defaults automatically to the brochure rates when the rental dates change and in your case this certainly was the situation.
We apologise if it has caused you frustration but trust that our excellent service at both our counters and administrative staff was as professional as you would expect. Please contact me personally before embarking on your next trip to Cape Town so that I could further assist you with your car hire requirements.
Many thanks
Andre Blignaut
Regional Operation Manager
0214245000
[email protected]
I used Tempest today (in Cape Town), and received fantastic service. Great job all round!!
Just one more quick thought. In the midst of the conversations above, Barrie received an email from Andre Blignaut requesting that we remove the logo of Tempest/Sixt that we had placed on our site (we’re big believers in the use of visual media and icons to make points). His reason was that we “had not been authorised to use the logo”.
Now, since we were just reporting an incident, and the logo was linked back to their site, I didn’t think it was necessary to have its “use” in any way “authorised”. But hoping that Jean’s issue would be resolved amicably (it was!!), I decided not to make an issue of it, and removed the logo.
My guess is that Andre has not asked all the other people who are using their logo “without authorisation” to remove it from their websites: (see an easy list at: Google image search). I wonder, now that Tempest have received such GOOD mileage out of this blog, if they would let us put their logo up now?
If there is a copyright lwayer out there, I’d love to know what the legal status is of this type of stuff.
Guys, you are welcome to use our logo, on the proviso that it’s inserted next to the GOOD blog comments. Perhaps you could link it back to our site using http://www.tempestcarhire.co.za?type=n&promo=internet&bannerid=blog so we can track any potential bookings referred from this blog. Considering the interest generated in the Tempest blog, we are in no doubt that the referrals will be considerable, if so, we could even look at referral commissions. Graeme, many thanks for your praise of our recent service in Cape Town, this is much appreciated (I trust you brought the car back within the time-frames specified in the contract!)
Hi Janita
Thanks for the feedback – I see you’re ok with us using your logo if we put it next to the GOOD (!) blog comments. But remember that people only see the comments once they click on the article link on the front page – and that would be the logical place to put the logo. Bloggers often update their posts by writing something like (at the top of the post):
[UPDATE: This was resolved quite well by Tempest…read on…]
Would that be ok with you? Plus, can we link through to the following url (which would then be our “commission” url if ever referals got that big 🙂
http://www.tempestcarhire.co.za/?type=n&promo=tomorrowtoday&bannerid=blog
What a great result. Blogging at it’s best. What do you guys think of http://www.hellopeter.com? Is Peter Cheales doing a good job? Does he deserve a smily or a frowny – would be interested in hearing your take on the site?
Janita, you need to take the good with the bad (it adds cred), well done on the awesome damage recovery though…!
Acknowledging the cool cred rule, we accept your suggestions as to logo placement and so if the forefront of the blog is where its at, then that’s where we are proud to be. Hello Peter ….. We’ve had our moments of fame on this site too. Nothing recently (fingers crossed) but I guess that’s because its all on tmtd!
The HelloPeter site is a good way to “prod” unresponsive companies, but NEVER use it as a substitute to a blog entry such as this. Firstly, the text is difficult to read and secondly they remove any reference you may make to your blog entry.
You can read about my experiences with HelloPeter on my blog, or just do a Google search for Donn Edwards blog
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