TRAVEL TROUBLESHOOTER
Dollar rental reservation leaves customer spinning
A: Dollar shouldn’t have accepted your reservation if it didn’t have a car for you (although I know why they do that — I’ll explain in a minute). Dollar should have resolved your problem in five minutes, not five hours.
I agree, the rental company should compensate you in some way. But a full refund for your rental? That would be very generous. It looks as if you paid $103 for your one-way rental, and Dollar provided you with a car, even though it also gave you a massive headache.
This car-reservation problem is at least partially Dollar’s fault. One of its franchisees had trouble managing its fleet inventory and appeared to have accepted more reservations than it had cars. I promised to explain what’s happening behind the scenes. Here’s the Reader’s Digest version: Because of the car-rental industry’s liberal cancellation policies, which allow you to make a reservation and cancel at any time without penalty, some rental companies have a difficult time managing their fleets. At the moment you booked your rental car, the Melbourne location may have had a vehicle in inventory, but by the time you arrived at the counter, it did not.
Next time, you might want to reserve a car earlier than a few hours ahead of your arrival. I recommended that you give Dollar another chance to resolve this, and sent you the names, numbers and emails of the Dollar Rent A Car customer service executives listed on my consumer-advocacy site (Hertz owns Dollar): www.elliott.org/company-contacts/hertz.
Clearly, we had a breakdown between the Melbourne franchisee and Dollar corporate. I wanted to be sure Dollar had a chance to resolve it. You contacted the executives in an attempt to fix your problem. A manager from Dollar’s Melbourne location called you and said that although this was the Orlando location’s fault, the company would offer you a full refund. I think that’s beyond generous.