Car rental good story.

[Franky]

This may better belong in the Travel Tips section, but I believe it is deserving of a much wider distribution.

In June this year, I took half a dozen mates on a tour of the Somme, and booked a van way back in August 17 thru an aggregator called Vehicle Rent. During the booking process I had a number of email transactions with the VR people to finalise the deal, who were on the ball no matter which operator I emailed at various times. I had booked a VW Kombi (or similar) and when we picked up the vehicle in BRU from Alamo, they offered us a brand new Merc 9 seater van, auto for free, which turned out to be a great vehicle for our needs. No issues after the vehicle was returned.

On Sunday I went thru VR again to book a small car from Dijon Gare Alamo agency for 10 days. I had some concerns before completing the deal as their booking site stated they would only accept Visa and MC, and Amex is my only CC. I emailed VR and enquired, as my Amex card ha been accepted in June. They immediately replied to that they would check for me, did so, and responded within an hour to say that the Alamo dealer would accept my card.

On arrival, we were met by the agency manager, who was positive without being pushy in his cross-selling, and when we told him we were headed for Beaune, he told us of some places worth seeing in the surrounding area. As he was explaining the full to full fuel requirement, he stated that a fill-up in Beaune would be acceptable to get us back to Dijon, being only 40km away. When we went to check over the vehicle, he had a small piece of cardboard about 6” long and 2” wide, which had a round plastic circle in the middle of it. We came to the passengers door which had two standout chips in the middle of it. He popped his card over the chips, which fitted inside the circle, and said that these would not be considered as ‘damage’ given their size, and that this would apply to our rental if we had a similar scratch. He gave us a proper handover internally, pointing out handbrake (sometimes hard to find), the fuel cap release, clicked the reset button to zero, and handed over the keys. He also gave us his personal business card and said he would be happy to help out with any issues we might have during the rental.

As we drove out from the station into the sunlight the windscreen was a bit streaky, and I applied the windscreeen washers to find that they were empty. About an hour later, once we had reached our pub, we received an email from him stating that his mechanic had advised that he had forgotten to fill the washer fluid bottle, and that I could take the car to the Beaune Alamo office for that to be corrected.

Given that most of the stories in the Travel Tips forum, which range from awful to more awful, I think their story needs to be told. Of course, the proof will be in the pudding on returning the vehicle, but my dealings thru Vehicle Rent and their agencies has been excellent on two occasions.

 

[jb01]

Wow that’s incredible customer service from a car rental company.

I find it hard enough to get Thrifty just to have the car ready for me as a Blue Chip booking.

 

[Forg]

I booked 3 cars for our trip to the UK in June; a "Golf or similar" for the first week around the south-east (Europcar), a "Golf or similar" for the 10-day drive from the Scottish highlands to Heathrow (also Europcar), and an "Astra or similar" for a brief side-trip to my work's head office in Ghent (Alamo - my wife was at a 3-day work meeting near Heathrow).

Look … I can't fault any of the experiences. I found that diesel cars were a LOT more expensive than petrol (more than I remembered) and the new petrol Golfs are pretty thrifty - plus it's a small place, a full tank of fuel was less than the rental difference between petrol & diesel. So petrol it was.

The pickup at Gatwick was easy to find, there was one other person in front of me who was being attended to, and a Europcar person appeared out of nowhere to serve me. The Golf was the top-of-the-range short of the sporty models, it was clean & full of fuel (and probably washer fluid ), and parked closest the exit from the rental office. If I wanted to complain about something, the car was configured to be in German, but I don't think it's expected of a rental company to change the language to the default of the country from where the renter is coming - so I don't think it's a valid complaint (and it was easy to change).

Return to Gatwick was an easy hand-keys-over, we flew up to Inverness, and the pick-up at Inverness was (a) zero wait at all and (b) a diesel Jaguar rather than the petrol Golf I'd ordered! Nice car for a road-trip. My guess is that an executive rental had left the car at Inverness & they wanted it in London; works for me. Also clean, full tank, slightly less intuitive interface than the Golf (crazy Euros seem to have a habit of switching the passenger airbag off - what's that, they want their passengers maimed or something?). Nice drive.
Drop-off at LHR was super slick ... in fact, I got stuck in traffic after spending longer at Brooklands Museum than I expected (entirely my fault) & I drove past no servo's in the last ~5km before dropping the car off, so being a bit worried about missing the flight I just accepted I'd pay double normal fuel prices to get them to fill it up; but the person receiving the car updated my rental agreement to say I'd agreed to buy a full tank (which was at market price) so it ended up costing me no more than if I'd found a servo.
As I said, super slick, I was through security at T2 (after a shuttle bus ride) within something like 15 minutes of driving into the rental returns car-park!

And finally the Alamo pickup at BRU. Wasn't sure about using Alamo, as it was half the price of the alternatives & had daily distance limits (which I usually avoid); but since I was just driving to Ghent & parking the car for 3 days, and it was cheaper/faster than public transport given that I had an 8pm arrival, the daily km's were irrelevant. Car was a wagon, which could have been useful if it wasn't just me. Pick-up was both quick & jovial (can't remember what the rental guy said but I suspect he was working part-time to support his career as a comedian ), and the best bit is that Alamo's section of the car-park is the first one you strike on return so it's also a really quick drop-off.
It was all a far cry from my trip to France with mates, when we tried to pick up the rental in Nice and they'd actually run out of cars (all they had left was an 8-seater van & parking spots are tight for a SmartCar!) so we had to wait 'til the next day …

 

[OZDUCK]

I booked 3 cars for our trip to the UK in June; a "Golf or similar" for the first week around the south-east (Europcar), a "Golf or similar" for the 10-day drive from the Scottish highlands to Heathrow (also Europcar), and an "Astra or similar" for a brief side-trip to my work's head office in Ghent (Alamo - my wife was at a 3-day work meeting near Heathrow).

Look … I can't fault any of the experiences. I found that diesel cars were a LOT more expensive than petrol (more than I remembered) and the new petrol Golfs are pretty thrifty - plus it's a small place, a full tank of fuel was less than the rental difference between petrol & diesel. So petrol it was.

The pickup at Gatwick was easy to find, there was one other person in front of me who was being attended to, and a Europcar person appeared out of nowhere to serve me. The Golf was the top-of-the-range short of the sporty models, it was clean & full of fuel (and probably washer fluid ), and parked closest the exit from the rental office. If I wanted to complain about something, the car was configured to be in German, but I don't think it's expected of a rental company to change the language to the default of the country from where the renter is coming - so I don't think it's a valid complaint (and it was easy to change).

Return to Gatwick was an easy hand-keys-over, we flew up to Inverness, and the pick-up at Inverness was (a) zero wait at all and (b) a diesel Jaguar rather than the petrol Golf I'd ordered! Nice car for a road-trip. My guess is that an executive rental had left the car at Inverness & they wanted it in London; works for me. Also clean, full tank, slightly less intuitive interface than the Golf (crazy Euros seem to have a habit of switching the passenger airbag off - what's that, they want their passengers maimed or something?). Nice drive.
Drop-off at LHR was super slick ... in fact, I got stuck in traffic after spending longer at Brooklands Museum than I expected (entirely my fault) & I drove past no servo's in the last ~5km before dropping the car off, so being a bit worried about missing the flight I just accepted I'd pay double normal fuel prices to get them to fill it up; but the person receiving the car updated my rental agreement to say I'd agreed to buy a full tank (which was at market price) so it ended up costing me no more than if I'd found a servo.
As I said, super slick, I was through security at T2 (after a shuttle bus ride) within something like 15 minutes of driving into the rental returns car-park!

And finally the Alamo pickup at BRU. Wasn't sure about using Alamo, as it was half the price of the alternatives & had daily distance limits (which I usually avoid); but since I was just driving to Ghent & parking the car for 3 days, and it was cheaper/faster than public transport given that I had an 8pm arrival, the daily km's were irrelevant. Car was a wagon, which could have been useful if it wasn't just me. Pick-up was both quick & jovial (can't remember what the rental guy said but I suspect he was working part-time to support his career as a comedian ), and the best bit is that Alamo's section of the car-park is the first one you strike on return so it's also a really quick drop-off.
It was all a far cry from my trip to France with mates, when we tried to pick up the rental in Nice and they'd actually run out of cars (all they had left was an 8-seater van & parking spots are tight for a SmartCar!) so we had to wait 'til the next day …

My understanding about the ability to switch off the passenger airbag is that some/all? European countries allow a child seat (complete with child) to be used in the front seat if the airbag is switched off. Completely illegal here of course.

 

[theblank]

Given that most of the stories in the Travel Tips forum, which range from awful to more awful, I think their story needs to be told. Of course, the proof will be in the pudding on returning the vehicle, but my dealings thru Vehicle Rent and their agencies has been excellent on two occasions.

The excellent service you experienced was provided by Alamo, and would have been the same no matter the aggregator you used.

 

[Forg]

My understanding about the ability to switch off the passenger airbag is that some/all? European countries allow a child seat (complete with child) to be used in the front seat if the airbag is switched off.

Aye; but why switch it off?
I doubt very much that someone drove their baby (using the front & not back seat) up to Inverness in a rental Jaaaag.

 

[Franky]

The excellent service you experienced was provided by Alamo, and would have been the same no matter the aggregator you used.

True, but the liaising between me and and Alamo was done by the aggregator, and done as well as the service provided by Alamo. It is easy to say that being in the same time zone as VR for a change, instead of 8 hours behind when at home, made the process easier for both sides. One obvious point in all this, is that we hope and expect to get similar results from every service provider we use, but as we all know, that too often doesn’t happen.