Why, Avis, why?

I'm going to start off with an admission that this article, while principled in some of the most baseline teachings in customer experience work, will come across as a bit of a rant and I apologize as such. Not to Avis Budget Group , mind you, but to you as the reader.

I travel often for work and pleasure and find myself renting cars on most of those trips. This has earned me prestigious, yet worthless status with Avis, amongst others.

I was in NJ this week on business and rented a car to get myself around. Their website positioned a Tesla Model 3 as available and it was an upcharged option above a similar-sized gas-powered car, but as a Tesla owner, I grabbed it.

Strike 1: Upon getting to the Avis preferred pickup area I noticed the assigned car was neither a Tesla nor even an EV. It was a conventional "sports car" which I had no interest in, and again asked for a Tesla as reserved. The agent told me they did not have any Teslas and that I could take a conventional car which would normally be at a lower per-day rental rate but because I prepaid for the rental I'd not get refunded the difference. I in effect would have to pay the EV rate for an otherwise lower-priced product. I nudged a little harder and the agent came up with a good compromise, they had one EV on hand from Mercedes, the small EQB SUV which I took and left. It was comfy and drove well, although again, as a Tesla owner, I am accustomed to the Supercharger experience and non-Teslas do not generally have access to those high-speed outlets. Recharging the battery would take the better part of a day while I was grounded at the charging station waiting. So, I let the battery run down and did not recharge during my rental.

Strike 2: The car turned out to be fine and was pretty comfy to drive. I was pleasantly surprised in fact and went about my rental period with things looking up. My colleague I was traveling with and I returned to the Newark airport Avis station to drop off the car and make our return flights home and elected to turn the car to the man in the parking garage returns area who promised to sign in the car and close out our return. "You'll get a receipt in your email" he committed which of course is the normal process I was used to and did not think twice. When after a couple of days, no receipt came, I checked online and saw they still have this rental, which I returned days ago, as open and unreturned and in effect, still "on the clock" and incurring added days of cost to the agreement, open-endedly. Frustrated, I called customer service about this.

Strike 3: Customer service said they could not help me because there was some sort of unusual situation with this particular rental and I'd have to contact the Newark airport station for help, so they gave me the telephone number (973-961-4300) which as you may have guessed, only routes callers back to the same central call center location that just sent me to Newark to begin with. There was no way out of the vicious circle of call forwarding regardless of menu selections made on their call director menu. No matter who I spoke with at the central customer service department the answer was the same. They were powerless to help. When I then asked to escalate to a more senior agent for maybe more creative assistance, I was told they were "too busy to speak with me" and dismissed me as unnecessary at that moment.

Strike Out: Picture this..... Now I'm frustrated AND MAD, and I am tearing through Linkedin to find senior folks at Avis I can call to complain to about this garbage treatment and worthless customer service department and easily identified a half dozen senior folks both at corporate and in the field - most closely associated with the Newark terminal - and through my own tools, was able to source telephone numbers and email addresses for them and most of them even had a mobile telephone number available. I started dialing for dollars and each telephone number I called led me to the same place, "There is nobody here to assist you at this time. If you need more immediate assistance kindly contact Avis customer service at ...." What the hell, Avis?

Lesson Learned: Don't trust the company to do what they are supposed to do, just because things seem normal. If I had thought a simple car return to a rental station could stir this much grief I should have waited for the guy to finish the check-in and hand me a receipt there and then. My fault for not, so shame on me for that. The rest of the story, however, is Avis has set up ways to block any ability for a customer to get any amount of special, situational help and the normal channels they've established are generally unempowered to think and act even an inch outside the box. If Avis Budget Group truly cared about their customers they would find a way to be reachable and act in earnest to resolve what should be an easy problem to solve. Is the car there in Newark? Yep. Check it in. Done. But seems even that, these days is asking too much.

I may go dust off my National Car Rental account as I hear they still truly do care about their customers and the service they provide them. Yes, I think that is exactly the plan.

/End Rant

Marc Mandel is a Vice President at QuestionPro , the only full-stack customer experience solutions company. These views, however, are strictly his own.