Dollar Rent-A-Car
1
Dear Sir or Ma’am,
I was in receipt of a confirmed Dollar Rental Car, picking it up in Las Vegas, Nevada on 26 June, 2009. We picked it up at the airport in South Vegas and drove to North Vegas some miles away. It did not take too long to realize that at 112 degrees, the air conditioning was wholly inadequate, barely spiting out any cool air at all. Given a very narrow timeline for our vacation, we expended about a half a day, returning the rental car at the airport for another vehicle, with my girlfriend nearly passing out, and vomiting due to the heat in the vehicle, as we traveled to the airport.
We acquired another vehicle and we were sure to check the air which seemed fine. This was on the 27th of June. We left for a trip to Scottsdale, Arizona on the 30th of June. At about the Wickenburg, Arizona area, I noticed that the tire pressure light had come on and I pulled over to check the tire pressure. The left rear tire was about 15 pounds low. As I checked the tire for nails, I noticed a large hole, about the size of a small pencil eraser. I found that strange.
The next day in Scottsdale, the 1st of July, the tire pressure light again came on and I realized that we had picked up a foreign object. I contact Dollar, and they gave me two options, (1) return the car to the airport (again?? And as it was about an hour away from us, we chose the option #2), (2) Contact any Goodyear Tire Company as they had a national contract with Goodyear. We contacted the nearest Good Year and brought it in so they could patch the tire. Goodyear was nice enough to have someone drive to us to the mall to wait while the tire was repaired. It was about two and a half hours later, that I received a call from “Donna” at Dollar Rent a Car, and indicated that Good Year had contacted them and stated that the tire was not repairable as the hole was much too big to repair properly. She went on to say that Dollar was not going to authorize a replacement tire as they were too expensive and they could get them cheaper elsewhere. The light went on for me as I now knew I had wasted most of the day to get absolutely no where. I was instructed to return the car to the airport and swap it out. As I mentioned this to Donna quite heatedly, she did respond with, “Look at the bright side, we could be charging you for the tire too”. Now, THAT’S Customer Service!! I was even advised by Goodyear, Perla Jara, that Dollar even refused to pay the $20.00 in fees incurred by Goodyear to inspect the tire. We paid her instead.
When we arrived back at Goodyear to have them replace the tire with the spare, the Assistant Manager, Perla Jara (480-922-4501) advised us that the tire was not repairable due to the size of the hole. She then offered that the tire had already been previously repaired and the patch did not hold. So, I am enclosing a letter from her on this subject, as she concludes with, “This tire should have never been repaired in the first place!”
So now, Dollar, it is clear to me that you put my family in jeopardy by repairing a tire that should have never been on the vehicle in the first place! It is also clear that you cut corners on the maintenance and service of your vehicles. Please let me elaborate.
We spent the next three hours driving in rush hour to the airport to again swap out the vehicle. We told the agent our plight and he advised that we “pick any vehicle on row Five.” There were about 15 vehicles there and we started checking each one, thoroughly. What I found each time I checked the first five vehicles was that the “service engine soon” light would come on, indicating the car needed an oil change. The next several vehicles had extremely poor air conditioning output, and I noticed that several of them had nearly treadless rear tires, that would not have withstood a safety inspection.
I am now taking this time to insist you refund my $213.87 for the sorriest vacation I have had in recent memory, as I wasted almost two days of it being a bitch for Dollar, returning their lousy rental cars. I would also like to enclose your mission statement I pulled from your Corporate Web Site, as you exclaim, “the foundation of Dollar Rent a Car, is built on a philosophy of exceptional customer service. Our attention to customer service and our fleet of quality rental cars are at all our Dollar Rent a Car locations.” I would suggest you either rethink and change your mission statement, or seriously start being a professional car rental agency.
As an epilogue, I felt I left my camera in the third car we had in six days. I tried to contact lost and found and found out they are closed on the weekend. I finally received a call back from the agent in Vegas, and he said the car was rented until the 12th and he would call me back when it was returned. Today is the 14th, and I still have not had a call back.
So, thank you Dollar for making my driving experience so memorable.