When I was starting my adult work life, I thought traveling everywhere on a job would be pure heaven. Always in different places, meeting new people, yada-yada-yada. What I didn't think about is the hassles of delayed flights, hotel beds that try but don't feel like home, and crappy rental cars. Actually, it's the rental cars in particular that have me the most irritated in my recent business travels, so I'm going to take this opportunity to rant a little (or maybe a lot) about Hertz.
It all started two weeks ago with an innocent trip to Phoenix. I arrived in town late afternoon on a Monday and was promptly greeted by 116 degree heat smacking me in the face. I had a busy morning with a couple of conference calls before I even headed to the airport, and I was tired. So when I noticed I got a scratch-and-dent model even though I'm a Hertz Gold Glass member, I was irritated, but not enough to really care.
Just a little red paint left by some inconsiderate prior renter and not fixed by Hertz, because they probably didn't care either. When I returned the car 3 days later, I realized how wrong I was! They accused ME of causing the damage and hauled me off to the customer service kiosk to fight it out with a manager. When I told him they were being ridiculous and the car has scratches and dings all over it (which it did), he thrust me an incident report. This, of course, pissed me off to no end. I'm running to catch a flight, and I have to waste my time documenting something I didn't cause because Hertz doesn't want to pay to properly maintain their vehicles, even for the use of their best customers. So I wrote, in the biggest block letters I could, "I DID NOT CAUSE THIS DAMAGE," signed the form and stomped off...only to find my flight was delayed 30 minutes. On the night I had tickets to see Joan Jett!!
Fast forward a week, and I'm picking up another rental car in Tampa, FL. Given my previous experience with Hertz, you can imagine how overjoyed I was to find this....
Is there a lot agent to be found to report this damage? Hell no! So I have to walk all the way back into the rental counter after spending the entire day flying across the country because Hertz doesn't care about it's image. The girl behind the counter was nice enough, but I commented how disappointed I'd been with Hertz the last two weeks, with two damaged vehicles under my belt. Not one ounce of sympathy, or acknowledgment of the crappy state of their fleet on her part. Judging by the look on her face, I'm guessing she's getting a lot of this lately. At least no one accused me of damaging the car this time.
Message to Hertz loss control: I DARE YOU to call me about the Phoenix car. You'll wish you hadn't when I'm done with you.
Now that I've ranted, I can share a couple of happy moments I experienced traveling this week. The canceled connecting flight from Vegas to LAX on the way back from Tampa was not one of them, but I was amused to be sharing a plane with Matt Leinhart.
If you don't follow football (like me), he's the current quarterback for the AZ Cardinals. The only reason I know this is because he's a big deal in LA from his college championship years at USC. And he fathered a baby out of wedlock with his former college sweetheart, which made him tabloid fodder for a while. I was mildly entertained, but it's not like I was on a plane with Sid Crosby.
When I finally got back to LA, The Parking Spot shuttle gave me reason to smile for having this posted on the wall. Thank you LA Kings!
And this is my first trip from the airport home to the new place, and I gotta admit...the view is pretty nice, in spite of the traffic.
No more work trips until September, so Hertz has some time to regroup. We'll see what happens. I'll be here to keep you posted...
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