3 years ago, in July of 99 I rented a truck from Ryder. I had rented from the before and always done well, but those were local moves.
This time I was moving from near St. Louis, to St. Petersburg, FL.
I planned accordingly, made all the reservations well ahead of time, allowed myself 3 days to cover the 1000 miles so that I only needed to drive 8 hours a day if it came to it, although I normally make this trip straight through in my car.
We loaded up and headed out fine, but had only gone about 80 miles when the truck decided it only wanted to do 50 miles an hour, like someone had turned a govenor on.
I had my cell phone, so I called Ryder's 800 number, they infomed me that the truck had no gevenor and should be able to do the 70mph speed limit. I stopped at a rest area and let the truck sit for abit and when I got back onthe road it ran fine for awhile, but then dropped back to 50mph.
I had my wife following me in her car, along with one of my daughters and our Great Dane, my sister in law in another car with another of my daughters and my ferrets in their cage, we all had radios to keep in touch and we chatted along as we putted along since it was after hours for most shops and we had originally planned to drive through the night.
We ended up stopping in Paducha KY, when we should actually have been well south of Nashville by then, but the slow speeds really messed us up. I got a room for the night and called ryder in the morning, they had us drive down the road (about 100 miles) and meet up with aguy who came out and replaced a filter and something else (I forget what now, it's been 3 years..) he drove off, we drove off... At 50mph, this did nothing to fix the problem, but had me now 6 hours out of my day wasted, and this was day 2 of the 3 I had planned for already. We got back on track and I called Ryder from the truck as we putted along and they gave me the address of a place in Clarksville TN to take the truck.
Mind you I have 3 children, a large dog and a pair of ferrets with me, it is 100 degrees outside and this shop is on the edge of town, with no place for the kids to go, so I got a hotel room. Again...
The Ryder rep at the time informed me they would be re-imburse me for the extra hotel stays and that I should keep receipts.
The garage in Clarksville fixed the truck and I went and picked it up, test drove it and all was well, we went back to the moel, loaded everyone up and took off again... 10 miles later POOF 50MPH and I turned around and went right back to the motel, the nice folks at Super 8 let me have my rooms back without charging me new, just handed me the keys back to the smae spots.
I called the shop, it was closed, I left a message ont he voice mail and was surprised when I actually got a call back about an hour later from the owner who came out to the hotel and worked on the truck again. He got it fixed, but my day was shot so we decided to drive through the night.
Truck ran great... For a couple of hours, we got to the bottom of MontEagle and started up... The tucked poofed againa dn I spent the rest of the trip at 50mph, @700 miles worth because the Ryder rep said there was nothing else to do and they would not authorize any more attempts to repair this problem, it would have to be handled by a shop after I turned the truck in.
However he did re-verify that they would be paying my hotel stays and that they would knock 20% off my rental.
I stopped in N. Georgia late that night to get some sleep at a hotel, this was the morning of day 3 and I had only covered half the trip! About 600 miles total, the rest wasted driving out of the way for repairs, or sitting around waiting on repairs to be done.
To make this long story short, I had to stop 2 more times on the way down to sleep, and sometimes coud not do over 40 on the highway, I never did find out what was wrong with that truck but I did get a a check for just over $100 from Ryder as the 20% refund they promised...
BUT after 2 years of arguing about the hotel bills, speaking to numerous reps, faxing the receipts many times over and being told multiple times that it was on it's way. So and so was hanling it, so and so doesn't work here any more... Please resend everything... They finally told me that someone noted in my file that I had cashed that refund check for the 20% and that I was not getting anything else.
The truck was faulty, Customer Service made promises the company refused to keep and I had to spend ungodly amounts of time on hold trying to get it all straight.
Ryder still owes me several hundred dollars according to their 'promises' but has stated I will never see it because they just don't think it's important I guess. I'm a past customer, one they know will never rent from them again, so they don't care if they promote any good will with me by keeping their promises.
It might not have been so bad if they had never made the promise, or if they had told me right away they had no intention of keeping it, but they strung me along for months at a time with one story and another before finally just blowing me off.
I wish I had known about this site sooner, but I am glad I found it now and hope my story will help others to choose someoen besides Ryder when they need to move.
Jim
Seminole, Florida
0 comments