An employee of the location at which I was to rent a vehicle from Hertz contacted me 39 minutes before the start of the rental to let me know that not only did they not have a vehicle available to rent at that moment; but that a vehicle would not be available until several business days later and no vehicle was available from any other location as well — despite the fact that I paid $319.17 in full well in advance — so what is the reason why I am giving Hertz another chance for my business?
The Reason Why I Am Giving Hertz Another Chance
The article that detailed my most recent experience with Hertz was published on Thursday, June 27, 2024 at 8:03 in the evening Eastern Daylight Time. On Friday, June 28, 2024 at 2:39 in the afternoon Eastern Daylight Time, I unexpectedly received a telephone call from a member of the executive customer care department of Hertz with whom I conversed for twelve minutes. She addressed the poor customer service that I experienced and listened to what was on my mind. She acknowledged several items:
- Hertz should have been able to follow an existing procedure and furnish a vehicle from a different location — even from the airport
- Because I paid $319.17 in full well in advance for the rental, a vehicle should have been available to me
- Confirmation that I would have been charged for the rental had the situation been reversed, as I already paid for the rental and could not cancel it without a penalty
- If I was willing to try Hertz again, I would be given enough Hertz Gold Plus Rewards points to rent a car for a week
- That as a customer with President’s Circle elite status, I should have been treated better
I politely took issue with the last statement, as no customer deserved to be treated the way I was treated during my experience — regardless of elite status. If a customer pays for a product or service in advance, the responsibility is on the provider to fulfill the contract by providing the customer with that product or service in a satisfactory manner.
Final Boarding Call
Getting enough Hertz Gold Plus Rewards points to rent a vehicle for a week is not the reason why I am giving Hertz another chance — although it certainly does not hurt. Rather, the reason is because an employee of the company proactively reached out to me to address the issue and correct it.
Things go wrong. Nothing is 100 percent perfect. Satisfactory treatment of customers when things go as planned is easy for most companies. Service recovery is important to a business because that is what gives a company a true opportunity to differentiate itself from its competition. Companies fail at service recovery more often than they should, in my opinion — and proper service recovery is neither expensive nor all that difficult to do.
In my opinion, Hertz did the right thing. Most everyone deserves another chance when an effort is undertaken to correct what was wrong…
…and yes, the thought did cross my mind that I was contacted by Hertz eight hours and 36 minutes after the aforementioned article was published. Did someone at Hertz read the article — or was it merely a coincidence?
I initially did feel uncomfortable about the possibility that because I write for an established weblog that I may have received special treatment of some sort — but then I read of at least one other account of someone who was also proactively contacted by someone at Hertz recently. I cannot find it at the moment; but when I do, I will amend this article to include that information.
Rather, I want to believe that the new management which is currently running Hertz is doing what they can to turn the company around and improving the rental car experience for all of its customers…
All photographs ©2022 by Brian Cohen.
