dslade.blog

Filing this under rants on poor customer service.

Exec Summary: Europcar lost our reservation, we couldn’t continue with the rest of our weekend trip, and had buy an extra train ticket to return home, thus ruining our weekend. (la lettre a la DG d’Europcar en francais ci-dessous)

We had made a reservation for a car for our recent weekend in the Alps (near Grenoble), specifically for a friend’s birthday party in La Grave. My wife (Patricia) had her parents travel from Germany to watch our baby boy over the weekend, it was an intensely needed weekend away, and out of town.

Patricia made the reservation on Thursday, December 13th around noon, via Europcar’s central reservation phone number, for a class B car, and was given a reservation number (422892017, which also corresponds to their reservation numbering in length and incremental count), priced down to the last cent (if I recall, 213.12 euros) and everything. We’ll over look the fact that to add snow tires and chains doubled the price, which is almost close to being a scam considering Grenoble is wedged between the mountains, and there’s not a whole lot else to do there (sorry Grenobleans), but I guess that’s what rental agencies do, give you a nice price and then add a bunch of costs later.

Back to the story. The person at the central reservation number even contacted the local agency in Grenoble to confirm everything. We were told that since we’d arrive after agency opening ours on Friday night, that we would have to go to the Novotel (a hotel) next to the station to pick up the keys and papers.

We arrived around 11pm went to Novotel, no keys/papers, nada, nothing pour les Slades. It was too late to get a bus or anything up to La Grave. We called the central reservation line, they didn’t have any record of the reservation, nor nothing under my name (I’ve spend *thousands of euros* with them in the past several months for business, so seemingly, I’m not hard to find in their system). There was no manager to escalate to at that hour, and they said we should talk to the local agency (who was closed!). The ping pong match between central reservation and local agency starts. Did I mentioned we paid .35 cents a minute to get help on something *they* f**ked up? nice customer service strategy.

We spent that night in Grenoble so we could talk to the local Europcar agency first thing in the morning. An extra cost, we already had a Hotel reserved up in La Grave.

We trekked through Grenoble with all our stuff, to the nearest hotel we could find, utterly exhausted do to our baby being sick that week causing a nightly wake up ever 20 minutes, for 5 nights. Considering sleep deprivation, and getting sick ourselves, we needed a bed.

Next morning, Saturday 14th December, we went to the Agency, asked for a manager, instant wall was thrown up and a terse “why?”, so we quickly explained the situation, well, we were promptly rebuffed and had to stand in a queue. The agent, then went through all the questions, and said, “There is no reservation in our system”. At this point she almost lost her life, considering this was a live replay of the night before on the phone with them. We argued, and she said she’d offer us the best rate! But, laughingly, was nothing special at all. And the car didn’t have snow tires (not even chains were available), so we’d be risking a lot traversing the highest mountain pass in the area. We walked out of the agency having been talked to like we were insane people. I guess spending thousands with a company doesn’t get you far any more. Where has customer service gone??? Has France banned it, in the name of snotty national protectionism?

side note: What seemed very suspicious is that none of the other 4-5 car rental agencies there at the station had cars available, so why did Europcar have one available? was it the one we had reserved? or just mismanagement of inventory? Maybe people just prefer the others, as Europcar surely isn’t without complaints here and there, but so do most rental agencies to be fair.

It’s now past noon on December 14th, the day is lost for skiing. a taxi up the mountain would be a fortune, a bus too late. Skiing the next day was out, since everyone was partying that night, and we’d have to head back to Grenoble very early afternoon the next day (so only a couple hours skiing) and then a costly or complicated trip back down the mountain.

We ended up having to buy a train ticket home, ours were non-refundable/exchangeable. We lost around 400 euros in total, but it’s almost worst that we lost the weekend. And now my head cold is even worse from the stress, lack of sleep and walking around in the cold late at night.

I called the central reservation, when we got back to Paris (costs .35 euro cents a minute. again.), escalated to their Supervisor finally after explaining the story for the nth time. I gave all the details (nth+1), and she said she would look into it. I mentioned I would post this story on the internet if I didn’t hear back (hey, I’m a reasonable person, if they make the effort). She said someone would call me, but nobody did. I guess I could have talked all I wanted, they still made another 6-10 euros off of me for the call.

Update December 20th, 2007:
I called Europcar again, and talked with Nathalie, the supervisor at the central reservation. I’ll give her credit for looking into my situation and checking with their IT department (who found no record of our reservation, big surprise).

What shocks me is that Europcar has mountains of paperwork for you (much more than their competitors), for every little thing, and yet our reservation was lost. Perhaps their systems/processes are too complex.

Learnings:

• don’t use Europcar unless you absolutely have to
• You can spend 3000+ euros with them, and they still won’t care about your happiness as a customer
• get confirmation in paperwork, emails etc (we didn’t, too trusting that they were competent), although, given that they bow to their IT department and not their customers, I don’t think it would have made a difference.

Advice for Europcar Managment:

• Fire the Grenoble Agency manager for incompetence (inability to train her staff to treat customers better and mismanagement of inventory)
• Don’t charge your customers if they are calling with any emergency (or for anything really)
• Teach your IT staff to have better systems auditing and how to track database logs, you would have probably found our reservation. I’ve worked in fortune 100 companies managing web operations and infrastructure
• Given the experience, I could probably help advise on a few other areas as well.

What’s next?

• Get this complaint highly indexed in the search engines, so others don’t make the same mistake. And it’s already working.
• I’ll post this to epinions, and all such forums
• and try to find the email address and contact for some execs.
• I’m sure their might even be a consumer rights group or a lawyer out there waiting to listen. Googling Europcar seems to bring up a lot of complaints posted online.

Letter that we’ve sent to their execs:

A l’attention de Monsieur Eric Ledroux

Monsieur,

Nous tenons, mon épouse et moi, vous remercier pour un week-end GACHE et 300-400 euros de perte !!!! Pour un cadeau de Noel, en voila un !!!! Et pour cela, il a suffit qu’Europcar perde notre réservation : nous voila coinces a Grenoble, obliges de prendre un hôtel sur place et d’acheter un billet de train retour pour Paris le lendemain matin.

Avant d’entrer dans les détails, laissez-moi vous préciser que nous avons dépensé plus de 3000 euros chez Europcar cette année. Voila pour vous dire que vous ne perdez pas seulement un client lambda mais un client important sur lequel apparemment vous crachez.

Pour la petite histoire : Nous avons réservé une voiture de location de categorie B le jeudi 20 décembre 2007 en fin de matinée en passant par votre Centrale de reservations. Nous avions déjà 2 allers-retours Paris-Grenoble pour aller passer un week-end avec des amis a La Grave pour celebrer les 40 ans d’un ami proche. Nous avions egalement fait venir mes parents a Paris d’Allemagne pour garder notre fils de 11 mois bien malade par-dessus tout manque de chance. Ce devait etre un week-end unique apres 5 nuits d’affilees sans sommeil a cause d’un bebe se reveillant toutes les 20 minutes.

Lors de ma reservation par telephone, on me communique notre numero de reservation (422892017) et un prix de €212.13 il me semble, pneus neige et chaines inclus. La chargee de clientele me garde en ligne et appelle l’agence de Grenoble en parallele pour lui demander les consignes pour recuperer les cles de la voiture en dehors des heures d’ouverture de l’agence. Elle me repete que nous devrons recuperer la cle du vehicule au Novotel a cote de la gare de Grenoble dans le quartier Europol.

Jusque la tout va bien ! Comme prevu, nous sommes arrives comme prevu a Grenoble vers 23 heures. La reception du Novotel sort une caisse de cles de voitures Europcar mais ne trouve aucune trace de notre reservation. A cette heure-ci plus aucun moyen d’aller jusqu’à La Grave sauf en taxi pour un minimum de €110 sachant que nous aurions besoin d’un vehicule le lendemain matin pour aller de La Grave a Serre-Chevalier. Notre 1ere reaction a été de contacter la Centrale de reservation qui ne trouve aucune trace de la reservation faire la veille non plus.

A cette heure-la, aucun responsable n’est disponible non plus. La chargée de clientèle au bout du fil nous conseille de nous rapprocher de l’agence locale bien évidemment fermée a cette heure-la, un vrai match de ping-pong.

Par la force des choses, nous avons donc passes la nuit a Grenoble dans un charmant hôtel proche de la gare pour €54 la nuit sachant qu’une chambre d’hôtel nous attendait a La Grave et que l’annulation de dernière minute elle aussi a engendre des frais.

Nous voila a traverser Grenoble avec tout notre équipement de ski sachant que notre bébé de 11 mois est avec mes parents venus exprès d’Allemagne…

Le lendemain matin, samedi 14 décembre, la saga continue….Nous nous dirigeons vers l’agence Europcar de la gare et demandons un responsable. Encore une fois, aucun responsable n’est présent et on nous prie de faire la queue interminable…

Tout cela pour nous entendre dire qu’il n’y avait aucune réservation a ce numéro dans le système. Aucun geste nous est propose, seulement une voiture au tarif normal et sans pneus neige ni chaines.

Midi approche vite, la journée de ski est perdue, un taxi trop couteux et il est trop tard pour le bus. Dégoutes, nous avons décides d’acheter 2 billets de train pour rentrer a Paris dans l’immédiat sachant que nos billets ne sont ni échangeables ni remboursables.

Résultat : notre week-end qui devait être exceptionnel s’est transforme en cauchemar et nous a coute bien au-delà de €300 sans compter les billets de train de mes parents venus d’Allemagne pour garder notre petit.

En début de semaine, de retour a Paris, nous recontactons votre Centrale de réservation et demandons de parler a un superviseur/responsable. La communication avec votre charmante Centrale nous coute a chaque fois 0.35 euro cents. La superviseur prend note de tous les renseignements et nous dit qu’elle nous rappelle mais bien sur personne ne nous a jamais rappelles. Bien sur, je suis bête, il y avait encore un manque a gagner, le prix de la communication vers la centrale Europcar.

Aujourd’hui le 19 decembre 2007 nous rappelons la Centrale de reservation et demandons de reparler a Nathalie, la superviseur de la veille. Elle n’a toujours pas retrouve de trace de la reservation et reste sans proposition commerciale.

Lecons retenues :

• Evitez Europcar a tout prix
• Peu importe le montant que vous leur laisser, ils s’en foutent royalement de leurs clients
• Insistez toujours pour avoir une confirmation ecrite