Blaglash.com

 

U-Haul

Enterprise Car Rental

IKEA

What do these three companies have in common?  Besides the first two, they’re both vehiclular rental companies.  NO ALL THREE!  These three large corporations have something very specific in common.

All three of these companies have fucked me over in the last week in varying degrees.  Their mistakes have run the gamut from poor customer service to blatant rudeness.  And trying to do something about these companies’ negative impact on my life has proven to be very difficult in two out of three cases.  And while I don’t subscribe to “The Customer is Always Right” idealogy, I do believe that companies should take responsibility for the customer service issues, when they do exist.

Good news first- Enterprise is the clear winner of these three, in any kind of race or contest.  I have always had a good experience with Enterprise (they don’t charge you an extra day if you drop off your rental past 6pm) so I was surprised to see that they had charged me an extra 250 dollars for my rental.  When I called them all I did was tell them they made a mistake and they fixed it.  I love Enterprise.

IKEA made the simple mistake of not labelling their product.  Everything in IKEA is pretty much thrown into bins that say what’s in them.  You trust the labels on the bins, because the boxes don’t say anything.  So I brought the wrong bed home.  Which sucked, but doesn’t suck as much as their resolution: return it.  My humble opinion is that a company should fix a mistake it made.  So when I mentioned that it costs me 60$ to rent a U-Haul to come to IKEA and make a large purchases they said “I am sorry” and refused to deliver the correct bed and take away the wrong one.

 

Which brings me to U-Haul, the worst of the three, because they’re complete total assholes.  I rented a U-Haul van and waited at the place for an hour and a half.  The man there kept ignoring us for other customers, and when I finally protested (an hour in) he yelled at me, said it was my fault and left to take care of another customer.  Apparently, he released our car and then waited half an hour to go over the fuel levels and give us the keys.  Then he charged me the wrong amount on my debit card. 

When I called customer service, it just goes to this random dude who answers “hello” and there’s all this background noise.  He said he spoke with the “representative” who says I’m lying about the whole thing and that he, Ron, can’t take sides.  BUT he’ll give me a 10 dollar voucher off my next rental.  No sorries, nothing.  Just a bunch of dicks being dicks. 

So I feel kind of helpless because I feel like there’s nothing I can do in these situations, where I’m clearly being fucked over by a huge company, that can afford to fix the problems it’s created in my life.  IKEA said I would have to pay DOUBLE for any delivery/take away action when it was caused by them.  U-Haul stole an hour and a half of my life and abused me.  And what can I do about it?  Even the problem with Enterprise, though resolved, embarassed me when my credit card was denied at the grocery store. 

I don’t think it’s fair that these places can do this to people.  I know I am not the only person who has experienced bad customer service before.  I never have complained about it in the past, beyond taking a dollar off my intended tip.  I want to run to these people’s bosses and get them all fired.