Odd rental car story
-
My first car rental was from Avis, but i rarely use Avis in the last two decades. It’s not because I had any problem with Avis, just that often times their rates are not as competitive as the alternatives.
As for this rather messed up “Avis stole their own car” incident, it’s a huge hassle for the unsuspecting customer for sure. Though I don’t think there’s malice, most likely just gross incompetence mixed up with miscommunications inside a small part of Avis. I’d file this under “shit happens” rather than “they’re out to get you!” Still, it would be interesting to know what else Avis will do to make this customer whole.
-
I can’t get past the 5th tweet without logging in. As I don’t have a membership and don’t want one, can someone summarize why they took the car?
Me/rry/Christmas
-
@lufins-dad said in Odd rental car story:
I can’t get past the 5th tweet without logging in. As I don’t have a membership and don’t want one, can someone summarize why they took the car?
Unknown.
-
That was when I got the idea to check the EZPASS activity on that transponder. Like if it had been stolen and the transponder wasn’t removed, then it would have pinged whenever going through a toll and I could sort of track what highways and exits the car went through.
Tarikh Campbell
@tarikhcampbell
·
Aug 20
And this was the first real clue that something was fishy about this. Looking at the recent activity, the transponder entered the NJ turnpike at 10:30PM at exit 18W (closest exit to my home) and exited at exit 14 for Newark Airport 11 minutes later...Tarikh Campbell
@tarikhcampbell
·
Aug 20
Strange…so right around the time I noticed the car was missing, it was on its way to the same area where I picked it up. What a coincidence that a thief would take it there…By itself, this wasn’t much…but then I got a call from my aunt about what her home security picked up.
Tarikh Campbell
@tarikhcampbell
·
Aug 20
My aunt has a home security system that’s constantly recording the area from her front door to the street. She zeroed in on the time window when the car must have been taken. Low and behold, a large red tow truck drives straight to where the car was parked….and stops.Tarikh Campbell
@tarikhcampbell
·
Aug 20
The tow truck spent 12 minutes loading the car and then left with it, rejecting the theory it’d been stolen. But remember, the police hadn’t ordered it to be impounded. Also I hadn’t given out my NJ address to anyone, not even
@Avis
. My driver’s license address is in Boston.
Tarikh Campbell
@tarikhcampbell
·
Aug 20
The only way that truck could have found where the car was parked is if it had the ability to track it. I called
@Avis
immediately about this. But all I got in return was an acknowledgment that this discovery was strange and that they still couldn’t track the car themselves.
Tarikh Campbell
@tarikhcampbell
·
Aug 20
The
@Avis
app on my phone suddenly showed the vehicle was “returned” at 11:59AM on Sunday, 4 hours after I returned to the Newark branch by lyft and 90 minutes after I'd already landed in Boston. Well geez, who could have returned it??? By now, it should be clear what happened.Tarikh Campbell
@tarikhcampbell
·
Aug 20
For some ungiven reason,
@Avis
sent a tow truck to repossess the vehicle and return it to their lot. I had no tickets or infractions while using the vehicle prior. And up until I figured this out, their representatives seemed to have no idea this even happened.
Tarikh Campbell
@tarikhcampbell
·
Aug 20
So now I’m really blowing up
@Avis
' lines. Remember the business card I was given for someone at the branch to follow up with? Out of service. Another local number I was given: no pick-up and doesn’t take VMs. Customer service reps refusing to connect me directly with the branch.Tarikh Campbell
@tarikhcampbell
·
Aug 20
I’ve made tons of calls, wasting hours trying to connect directly with the Newark branch. I’ve been given misleading information on how to reach it and even been hung up on by customer service reps. The local number doesn’t even directly connect to any employees or managers thereTarikh Campbell
@tarikhcampbell
·
Aug 20
And to add insult to injury,
@Avis
has proceeded to bill me as if I returned the car AND they’re charging me late fees! All without any acknowledgement that they repossessed the vehicle and that I’ve been trying to reach out to them for days.
Tarikh Campbell
@tarikhcampbell
·
Aug 20
If you’ve read this far, it means you care. I appreciate you for taking the time. Please retweet this thread to get
@Avis
attention and to warn people traveling that this can happen to them.
Tarikh Campbell
@tarikhcampbell
·
Aug 20
For all the trouble I’ve been caused: losing my rental, filing a police report, worrying my neighborhood, being told I was liable for a $20K+ car, hours wasted trying to reach
@Avis
, and being charged full price + late fees. I just want
@Avis
to do the right thing.
Tarikh Campbell
@tarikhcampbell
·
20h
OMG the outpouring of care, concern, and solidarity is AMAZING! I appreciate you all! Because of your voices, Avis has responded! I just got a call informing me that Avis will refund the full charges including the undeserved late fees.
Tarikh Campbell
@tarikhcampbell
·
20h
Avis is also escalating and investigating this matter. Now while my charges are rightfully being refunded, the overall ordeal has yet to be redressed! And I will not let up. Being made whole will require a lot more than just a refund!!! -
I hate seeing these things on Twitter. You can only ever know one side of the story.
We had a situation where a woman called us up needing to get her piano tuned that very afternoon. We normally have to schedule a tuner a week or more in advance… But this lady keeps emailing our service email line insisting it needed to be that afternoon. One of our technicians is monitoring the email chain and states he is working in that general vicinity that day and if the piano isn’t too far out of tune, he would have 45 minutes in his schedule free to tune it. The woman promises it is a a 3 year old piano and was just tuned 6 months ago. Okay, he will be there at 3:00… He shows up at 3:00 only to discover the woman had gotten the building number number mixed up on the emails, and she was 13 blocks away (Arlington at 3:00 on a weekday…). So he drives to the other building, gets there at 3:20 and discovers that the piano is 40 years old and is BADLY out of tune (like 30 cents). He explains to her that there is no way he can tune this piano in the 40 minutes left, but offers to come back at 7 and at least get it into relative pitch.
The woman throws a complete fit, kicks him out of the apartment, then proceeds to blow up our review pages, Twitter, and Facebook page. We still haven’t gotten her reviews pulled from our Google page.
I always treat any of these one-sided stories with a healthy amount of skepticism…
-
@lufins-dad said in Odd rental car story:
I hate seeing these things on Twitter. You can only ever know one side of the story.
We had a situation where a woman called us up needing to get her piano tuned that very afternoon. We normally have to schedule a tuner a week or more in advance… But this lady keeps emailing our service email line insisting it needed to be that afternoon. One of our technicians is monitoring the email chain and states he is working in that general vicinity that day and if the piano isn’t too far out of tune, he would have 45 minutes in his schedule free to tune it. The woman promises it is a a 3 year old piano and was just tuned 6 months ago. Okay, he will be there at 3:00… He shows up at 3:00 only to discover the woman had gotten the building number number mixed up on the emails, and she was 13 blocks away (Arlington at 3:00 on a weekday…). So he drives to the other building, gets there at 3:20 and discovers that the piano is 40 years old and is BADLY out of tune (like 30 cents). He explains to her that there is no way he can tune this piano in the 40 minutes left, but offers to come back at 7 and at least get it into relative pitch.
The woman throws a complete fit, kicks him out of the apartment, then proceeds to blow up our review pages, Twitter, and Facebook page. We still haven’t gotten her reviews pulled from our Google page.
I always treat any of these one-sided stories with a healthy amount of skepticism…
Read the freaking thread, man. He spent hours on the phone with about a dozen phone numbers just trying to figure out what happened. He had to sort through his relative's security footage to even determine that the rental car place did in fact hire a truck to remove the car in the middle of the night.
-
@lufins-dad said in Odd rental car story:
We still haven’t gotten her reviews pulled from our Google page.
Reviews like that give the anonymous consumer a crazy disproportionate amount of leverage.
There should be a better way to deal with them.
Google allows business owners to reply. I have had to use this feature more than once.
-
@aqua-letifer said in Odd rental car story:
@lufins-dad said in Odd rental car story:
I hate seeing these things on Twitter. You can only ever know one side of the story.
We had a situation where a woman called us up needing to get her piano tuned that very afternoon. We normally have to schedule a tuner a week or more in advance… But this lady keeps emailing our service email line insisting it needed to be that afternoon. One of our technicians is monitoring the email chain and states he is working in that general vicinity that day and if the piano isn’t too far out of tune, he would have 45 minutes in his schedule free to tune it. The woman promises it is a a 3 year old piano and was just tuned 6 months ago. Okay, he will be there at 3:00… He shows up at 3:00 only to discover the woman had gotten the building number number mixed up on the emails, and she was 13 blocks away (Arlington at 3:00 on a weekday…). So he drives to the other building, gets there at 3:20 and discovers that the piano is 40 years old and is BADLY out of tune (like 30 cents). He explains to her that there is no way he can tune this piano in the 40 minutes left, but offers to come back at 7 and at least get it into relative pitch.
The woman throws a complete fit, kicks him out of the apartment, then proceeds to blow up our review pages, Twitter, and Facebook page. We still haven’t gotten her reviews pulled from our Google page.
I always treat any of these one-sided stories with a healthy amount of skepticism…
Read the freaking thread, man. He spent hours on the phone with about a dozen phone numbers just trying to figure out what happened. He had to sort through his relative's security footage to even determine that the rental car place did in fact hire a truck to remove the car in the middle of the night.
So he says. He could be a complete freaking nutter. It doesn't look like it, admittedly, but it's still a possibility.
I'm no expert, but...
-
@doctor-phibes said in Odd rental car story:
@aqua-letifer said in Odd rental car story:
@lufins-dad said in Odd rental car story:
I hate seeing these things on Twitter. You can only ever know one side of the story.
We had a situation where a woman called us up needing to get her piano tuned that very afternoon. We normally have to schedule a tuner a week or more in advance… But this lady keeps emailing our service email line insisting it needed to be that afternoon. One of our technicians is monitoring the email chain and states he is working in that general vicinity that day and if the piano isn’t too far out of tune, he would have 45 minutes in his schedule free to tune it. The woman promises it is a a 3 year old piano and was just tuned 6 months ago. Okay, he will be there at 3:00… He shows up at 3:00 only to discover the woman had gotten the building number number mixed up on the emails, and she was 13 blocks away (Arlington at 3:00 on a weekday…). So he drives to the other building, gets there at 3:20 and discovers that the piano is 40 years old and is BADLY out of tune (like 30 cents). He explains to her that there is no way he can tune this piano in the 40 minutes left, but offers to come back at 7 and at least get it into relative pitch.
The woman throws a complete fit, kicks him out of the apartment, then proceeds to blow up our review pages, Twitter, and Facebook page. We still haven’t gotten her reviews pulled from our Google page.
I always treat any of these one-sided stories with a healthy amount of skepticism…
Read the freaking thread, man. He spent hours on the phone with about a dozen phone numbers just trying to figure out what happened. He had to sort through his relative's security footage to even determine that the rental car place did in fact hire a truck to remove the car in the middle of the night.
So he says. He could be a complete freaking nutter. It doesn't look like it, admittedly, but it's still a possibility.
If my time here at TNCR has taught me anything, it's that that's always just a given.
