Following up on the story I started here and here and since I haven’t heard from Advantage Rent-A-Car for two weeks, I decided to give them a call before disputing this through a charge back. After just 15 minutes on hold I got to talk to yet another rep that immediately told me that my contract didn’t exist. Thanks, I know that much already, all I need to find out now is under which contract you charged my card. Fortunately, she was able to locate the contract the money were charged to and things started rolling again. I was given a “manager’s personal fax number” (that was wrong, of course) and instructed to fax all the documents again to that number. The regular “we will call you back in 24 to 48 hours” cued in. After I figured the fax number was wrong it only took me another 22 minutes of hold time to reach them back and find out what the right number is. No big deal, right? In addition to the documents I have decided to document the whole story (the copy is below).

To much of my surprise someone from Advantage Rent-A-Car actually called me next day. Imagine that! I was told that they have recalculated my rates and the final amount would be something around 20 dollars less than the amount on the receipt I have. However, the representative declined the responsibility for overcharging my account. Overall I had a feeling she thinks she’s doing me a favor.

Therefore I guess the issue is resolved. I will try my best to avoid Advantage Rent-A-Car given how horrible their service is and how time consuming it is dealing with this company. Please understand – I am still at a loss here, since aside from the overdraft of the account I had to spend a few hours waiting on hold, dealing with ARAC customer service and so on.

Below is the text I had included with the documents from my car rental for Advantage Rent-A-Car.

The following contract is the only receipt I have so far for the Advantage Rent-A-Car rental that has occurred between May 24^th to May 31^st. As you can see the amount on the receipt is $XXX.xx whereas the amount that was billed to the card is $ZZZ.zz. Overcharging the account has also resulted in bank fees for funds overdraft.

The reservation was first made through Expedia.com. After 40 minutes waiting for shuttle to pick us up I have arrived at ARAC location near the Orlando International Airport. I wanted to upgrade the rental to a better car – Ford Mustang, of which a contract has been prepared by customer service rep. At the time of creating the contract I have declined personal insurance but kept the insurance that would cover the car.

At the time of loading my luggage into the car I have discovered that the car was infested with ants. I have quickly removed my luggage from the infested car and asked for a replacement. The car I was given (Toyota Avalon) was showing rusted spots. It also had mechanical issues at the speeds higher then 35 mph which were obviously impossible to spot while driving through parking lot to the exit.

Upon agreeing on the car the customer service rep decided to amend the receipt by hand writing on the existing contract instead of printing out a new one. At this moment the overall time spent at the Advantage Rent-A-Car facility was about one hour, which is about four times longer than any other rental car agency I have dealt with so far.

At the exit gate of the Advantage Rent-A-Car parking lot the security guard stated that the contract is wrong, but he’s going to let us through anyway because he’s tired of diverting people back to the office.

The car was returned on May 31^st, at which moment I was called into the reception area because of “some problems with contract”. After waiting just short of 20 minutes, I was told that the contract I had all along is wrong and not valid. A customer service representative spent another 20 minutes trying to enter a new contract into system, but for some reason was unable to do so. Another Advantage Rent-A-Car representative, who I believe was a manager, asked the rep who was working on our contract to draft one on a hand-written form to be able to let us go in order not to miss the plane, since the total time we have spent there was approaching one hour. The form was prepared by Advantage Rent-A-Car representative and signed by me. This is the only receipt I have in regards to this rental. I was also assured by Advantage Rent-A-Car customer service representative that $XXX.xx would be the final charge that should appear on the credit card statement.

Since Advantage Rent-A-Car failed to produce any other receipts that confirm that I had a rental agreement with Advantage Rent-A-Car/SimplyWheelz, I understand that the $XXX.xx is the final charge I am responsible for. Having my credit card charged for a greater amount resulted in overdraft of funds, and me incurring additional bank penalties of $68.00. Therefore the following charges are disputed:

Rental overcharge in the amount of:                                       $65.24
Bank fees resulted in account being overcharged:                      68.00
Total disputed: $133.24

On June 3^rd, 2009 I have called Advantage Rent-A-Car customer servce and spoke with representative called Denise. She asked me to fax the receipt and bank statement showing the overdraft charges to the fax # (800) 654-9925, which I did at around 3:40pm – 3:50pm same day. Denise promised that someone from billing department would get back to me within 24 to 48 hours period. Today is June 16, 2009 and I haven’t head anyone calling me with this issue.

I would like this issue resolved promptly and completely as soon as possible. So far Advantage Rent-A-Car customer service hasn’t demonstrated that they have any concern for the clients whatsoever. Hope you can break this impression and straighten things out.

There’s no doubt about various companies struggling in times of financial crisis. There is also little argument about lowered consumer spending. So if you want to keep doing business you have to provide an outstanding customer service to keep clients and to attract new ones – and that has to be just a part of overall picture.

Enter Advantage Rent-A-Car, where I booked my vacation’s car rental through Expedia. Upon  arriving at Orlando International Airport I was trying to figure out where’s their desk, since itinerary didn’t show anything about them. Finally I figured it’s out of terminal location (my bad, didn’t read the fine print) and nice electronic voice on the courtesy phone told me that there are Advantage Rent-A-Car shuttle buses every 10 minutes departing every 10 minutes from one of four locations at the terminal.

There were a few people in that location already, but they were quickly picked up by two other car rental shuttles. Then those shuttles came again. Then again. The Advantage Rent-A-Car representative told another waiting couple over the phone that they have four buses out there. As we found out later – he didn’t lie, we saw other three buses peacefully standing on their designated parking spots when we finally were picked up – 30 minutes later! Well, spending 30 minutes under Florida sun isn’t all that bad experience – but I rather do it on the beach, than all dressed up at the airport.

Upon arrival at Advantage Rent-A-Car off-the-terminal location (a convenient 15 minute drive, keep adding travel time) we were greeted by a couple of sales representatives who quickly distributed people among themselves. We’ve got nice young lady who were indeed very friendly. In fact, one thing good about this location is that reps are friendly. They obviously poorly trained and lazy, but at least they’re friendly. We picked gray Ford Mustang with black interior, just to have a bit more fun, turning down more bland cars. All formalities are done (took twice as long since there was this “one system not talking to another system” excuse that I keep hearing for the past few years pretty much everywhere), we started to loading our stuff into the car… only to noticed that this car is infested with ants. Ants were everywhere – in the trunk, in the salon, even coming and going through speakers on the door. They were hard to spot against black interior, but once you saw them – you saw them. Quickly, we got out.

Our nice young lady greeted the sad news with “Oh, our pet got away”. Still not sure what it means, but at the moment I translated that as “Too bad you found out while you’re still in our parking lot”. When pointed out there’s been enough problems with Advantage Rent-A-Car’s customer service already, we asked for another car. However, all they had to offer was either Toyota Avalon or Mercury Grand Marquise. With all the skills we couldn’t pretend to be 80-year olds, so we picked Toyota (is there a more bland car?). The lady, apparently tired of such demanding customers, didn’t even bother to reprint the registration, making some simple hand-written alterations to the previous ones while promising she would come with us to the security guard to let us through. Aside from one of the drivers who parked his bus right in front of our parked car (even though he saw us loading the car), there were no other issues we’ve encountered. We drove off to the gate.

When we were exiting the gate, the was no lady in sight. In fact, the guard admitted that he already diverted back quite a few people who’s registration wasn’t correct or some other issues with paperwork, but he’s just going to let us through, because he’s bored with people in the office doing stuff wrong. So we took off to our resort.

The car we got isn’t quite a pick either. Don’t know what happened to it before, but it jerks on the road a bit, like it’s transmission has run over 200K miles. The speedometer shows only 45K which is okay for a year-old rental, but the car sure doesn’t feel like it. Has dentures and benders on driver’s door, rubber pieces falling off here and there. Not exactly the experience I had with other companies.

My overall experience with Advantage Rent-A-Car in just a single day showed that this is a company that shouldn’t be trusted with your vacation trip. If you just need a box on a wheels to get from one meeting to another – it may suffice (given you’re not gonna get an anthill with it), but if you’re planning to enjoy your ride – pick something else, just don’t go with Advantage Rent-A-Car company.

Due to some personal commitments (read: being engaged to a wonderful beautiful woman) I spend quite some time in a Starbucks near 7th Ave South and East 11th Street, New York, NY, waiting to pick her up after work. Regular visitors and staff already know me well enough to stop making passes on me, as well as learning that whatever I order is “to stay” and not “to go”. So, this post isn’t about them.

Before the ill-known Wi-Fi take-over by AT&T this Starbucks’s connection never had an issue. I come here with either one of my three laptops (my personal favorite T60p, smaller X61s or horrible company issued HP Compaq 6710b). None of them had any troubles connecting to T-Mobile’s Wi-Fi. Not until some time after AT&T took over.

Now, I am not trying to bash AT&T altogether. I am happily using their 3G with either BlackJack or Tilt (sometimes with my laptop tethered) while my fiancee’s second most loved thing on Earth is her iPhone (I hope I still hold the first place). What I was expecting to see from this clash of providers is that at the converted locations customers would experience intermittent outages while on T-Mobile hookup. You know – login process times out on you couple of times. Then some of your web sites are so slow that you can’t really so anything. Then the connection is dropped for no apparent reason. And that is just what I have been fed up with for previous two weeks. So much so that I had changed my weekly routine that I only have to spend one day of the week at that location.

A ticket submitted to T-Mobile customer support two weeks ago finally got answered today. In brief it says: “Yes, it’s a converted location, if you have any problems – call this number or that number”. Surely, just a template, with some name attached to it. Two weeks to send a canned reply – something tells me it isn’t a company that cares about me being their client. After all, if I decide to go with AT&T for Starbucks’ Wi-Fi, it’s going to cost me two times less money. Once the takeover by AT&T is complete, there would be not much incentive to keep T-Mobile, right?

Don’t know about the rest of the crowd, but my budget is really limited when it comes to travel – be it vacation or business travel. Unlike some big-name CEOs I can’t afford business class (let alone a private jet), so I travel just like most of the Americans – the cheapo way.While traveling to Chicago and back, I refreshed on usual travel things. Like purchasing tickets for early morning flight, avoiding weekends (I flew on Wednesday to Chicago and on Monday back) and packing lightly (you can have up to three luggage pieces for free, but each must be less then 50 lbs. For me it would have been easier to pack one large suitcase then two small, but…

Another thing I figured out is how NOT to rent a car. On the spot, even if you have a reservation, agent will try to upsell you stating that they don’t have the car you reserved. In my case instead of Dodge Charger the company’s (Dollar Car if you’re interested) representative stated that the only car they have in the same class would be Dodge Caravan. How are they in the same class beats me, but I ended up renting Chrysler 300 which was good enough for my purposes. Next time I’ll skip online reservation altogether and just show up at their desk inquiring as to what they have. If I don’t like the selection – I’ll just move on to the next desk. In Chicago Midway airport (another saver on ticket price) all rentals’ desks conveniently form a single line, so it won’t be a big deal with two bags under 50 lbs each.

Hotels are finally catching up to the 21st century. Last year, when I was in Arizona, Hilton hotel wanted $25/day for high-speed broadband. One year later, on this trip to Chicago, I stayed in two hotels (how that happened – long story) – La Quinta in Arlington Heights and Holiday Inn. Both feature free wireless internet, no problems and no strings. Of course you have to jump through couple of screens and maybe enter the access code (listed on a special note in your room), but other then that everything worked smoothly. I even didn’t have to pull out my cell phones (I brought both AT&T and Verizon devices, just in case) to use as a cellular modem.

On the road I used my Garmin nuvi 360 GPS unit with firmware updated to version 3.90 (was actual as of the first day when I arrived in Chicago). Except for one total failure to deliver me to Olive Garden somewhere close to airport (almost ended up in someone’s backyard) the thing worked fine, much better and faster then Google Maps on my HTC Advantage.

Last thing I’d like to mention is the airlines (again). If the current trend is any indication – in next several years seat space will decrease even more (I guess we all be standing on short flights), the weight of allowed luggage will also decrease and there will be almost no room for carry-ons in cabin, so we will only be allowed one personal item (like laptop). But they will be banned for security reasons.

Yesterday I have returned from a Thanksgiving trip to Chicago. Aside from matrimonial errands (my friends were getting married) I had a chance to communicate to a lot of different people from various social groups. Aside from regular chit-chat I was inquiring on the cost of living. Obviously you can get data from various web sites, from Monster.com to specialized ones, including Craigslist. What you don’t get is a “feeling”, the whole picture of quality of life. What can you afford if you are making $XX,000 per year? What can you afford if you make $YY,000 more? Gas, insurance, food – you can get the numbers, but it is usually hard to get an idea.As in many smaller communities, much more business done on a personal referral basis. This is good, because you only need to be good at what you are already doing and think less about marketing to various groups. It is also bad, since “word of mouth” is the slowest communication tool. Also it won’t forget your mistakes as easy as larger, unconnected market. Last, but not least – it’s complicated, because there will be a lot of people with whom you will naturally trade, for example – I create a web site for a car dealer to get a big discount on a car I like. No actual money involved, but I still get something for something.Good thing about coming into such a community – you immediately get a lot of referrals and potential clients. Bad thing is – they all expect you to perform nearly for free, because they were personally referred to you. If you set initial price too high – they’ll just flock away without even bargaining. If you set a reasonable price – they will try to negotiate it down to ridiculous levels, spreading bad news if you don’t let them.Probably that’s why, even though so many people encouraged me to move, I still don’t. New York is still much bigger market.

As I was traveling to Arizona for New Year holidays, I discovered a great trick-in at Pointe Hilton in Phoenix. It’s easy – build a hotel in such a way that cell-phone reception is hardly present, charge $10.00/day for limited internet access and $24.95/day for true high-speed broadband and voila – you get even more money then if you tried to trick guests with those $2/minute phone charges.