My family of 8 planned a trip to Montery California for our yearly family reunion for the weekend of Friday July 16th.3 weeks prior to our trip we recieved a phone call from State Adoptions and CPS that the little boy we had adopted 6 months earlier had a newborn sister 3 days ago and if we wanted to adopt her also she was waiting at the hospital for us to pick her up.
My wife and I jumped at this opportuniy since we have wanted a little girl for quite some time. Well as you can see that now puts our family at 9 and we only have an 8 passenger SUV.
So that next day my wife called Enterprise rent-a-car's 800 number, entered our home zip code and got transfered to an office in Ukiah California. She spoke to the agent (a man) and informed him she wanted to rent a 15 passenger van for our trip. The usual information was exchanged and my wife kept asking are you sure you dont need a credit card to reserve this. His answer was always no you just need to bring that when you come to our office to pick up the van. With the car situation taken care of we made our final arrangements with hotel rooms and mapped out our routes and waited for that Firday I was to pick up the van on my way home from work.
Well that Friday came and I didnt realize there were infact 2 Enterprise car rental locations in Ukiah, Ca so i called one and they checked my reservation and confirmed the vehicle was a 15 passenger van we reseved but it was at the other location and gave me the address of 1403 S. State Street it was their airport location. When I arrived there a few hours later to meet the agent to pick up my vehicle I was informed that since I didnt leave a phone number at the time of my reservation they could not confirm with me and they didnt aquire the van I needed. You could only imagine my anger at that point. Especially since the girl there made it out to be my fault I didnt confirm with them. Not the fact that the person my wife made the reservation with either didnt ask her for a phone number of she gave it to him and he didnt enter it into the data base.
So being that he made a mistake it was now my fault that I didnt call them to make sure they did there job correctly. So there solution was to rent me 2 vehicles for the price I would of paid for the van i reserved. Well that was totally unacceptable. I could drive my own vehicles if thats the case... Wow some weekend family trip that would of been driving 5 hours in 2 cars having to use twice as much gas then needed with californias gas prices as high as the are. 2 parking vouchers for any parking garage we need to use, bridge tolls ect ect... I just could not get over the fact that Enterprise Rent-A-Car was making a customer pay for there mistake. At first the lady in the office told me that she had been trying to reach my wife to confirm for the last 2 weeks and she never called back. I have and answering machine and my wife is a stay home mom and she doesnt miss many phone calls since we are foster parents and we get calls from CPS and EA everyday and plus she forwards our home calls to her cell phone when she leaves the house. So my wife called her on this excuss she started and then she corrected herself by saying she didnt call us because WE... We... Never left our phone number with them... Now really, dont you think its more reasonable that either the guy who took the resevation didnt ask for it or he forgot to enter it into the computer??? I truely doubt me wife refused to give out our phone number.
After leaving the office in flames there was nothing they could do for me... There was no way they were going to pull a 15 passenger van out of the air and no way I could even find another company to rent one from with it being 5:30 on a Firday night.
Enterprise really showed no remorse though this whole orderal that was just icing on the cake.in the end we had to find a place for our 2 foster kids to go for the weekend, you dont know what its like to have to disappoint 2 kids from a trip youve been planning for weeks and to now find a way to make this up to them. Ive promised that a big trip to toys-r-us this next weekend for new bikes and some toys. Hopefully they will forgive me but theres no way my wife could of driven 5 hours by herself... Just no way so we have to let down these kids and parents out there you can understand how hard that is to have to do... in the end I will never... Ever... Ever... Use Enterprise again. The way I feel towards them right now id rather walk. This did however truly come at a good time. I just was told by my office id be going back on the road for one of my trips around the country... I had Enterprise on my mind as my car company to book my trips with since I was about to us then that next week. Well I changed everything and went right back the Hertz who has never let me down with probably over 200 rentals.
Douglas
lakeport, California
U.S.A.
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