The good and bad of customer service (Southwest and Dollar Rent a Car)

I've been on the phone a bit this morning so I thought I'd vent into the ether of the internet. I'm making a trip to headquarters next week and was originally leaving Sunday afternoon. Well, plans changed and I needed to fly out on Monday morning instead.

So I re-arranged my flight. It was easy, I called Southwest, waited on hold for less than a minute, was greeted by a pleasant person, who charged me $26 to change my flight. Quick and relatively painless. If only all phone calls were the same...

Now the ugly. So I went to Dollars website to change the reservation, below is a screenshot (note that my "modified reservation" is for half a day less than my current reservation).

The gist is they want to charge me twice as much, for picking it up half a day later. So I called their phone reservation system. Sat on hold for a bit before running into a human who insisted that I would have to pay twice as much, there was nothing she could do, but transfer me to customer service. I sat on hold for longer and came accross the same response. Finally I was transferred to the manager of customer service, to whom I told, I was amazed they'd charge me double for driving half a day less. She (obviously couldn't care less about my patronage) and said there was no way I could keep my same reservation and just pick up the car late. So I hinted that I would take my business elsewhere.

She replied "Is there anything else I can do for you?".

"No, you haven't done anything for me."

"Thank you and have a good day."

Click.

tags: dollar rent a car  dollar  swa  southwestairlines  customer service  

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