Advantage Rent a Car Customer Service, Fixes My Problem!

June 1, 2007 by Josh · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Customer Service, How To, Rant, Reviews

advantage rent a car logo

Providing good customer service is so very simple yet many companies can’t seem to get it right for all the customers on the net. Recently I had a bad experience renting a car from Advantage in San Antonio, in reality it was a combination of bad things which led to a bad experience, if only one of them had occurred it would have been an OK experience. Late Last Tuesday I posted my letter to the CEO of Advantage here on my blog and followed up with a postal mail letter to the CEO and CFO which I put int he mail Thursday afternoon. I was very surprised when I received a email Friday at 12:57PM apologizing for my experience, promising to correct the issue for future customers and refunding my full rental fee. This was less than 24 hours after I dropped my complaints into the mail leading me to believe that Advantage was reading the complaint on my site and responding to it. Congrats, that is a proactive method of fixing problems customers have already had. You can check out the full text inside as well as my “patent pending” method of how to fix a problem a customer has had.

Email from Advantage customer service:

customerservice@advantage.com <customerservice@advantage.com>

Fri, May 25, 2007 at 12:57 PM

Reply-To: customerservice@advantage.comTo:

5/25/07Dear Mr. Smith:

Thank you for taking the time to comment on your recent experience with Advantage Rent A Car. You are an invaluable part of our business. Your feedback provides us with the opportunity to improve and grow in order to offer you the customer, the best experience possible. We are distressed to learn that you did not find your entire experience to be satisfactory. Our customers deserve immediate attention and excellent service. We strive to do everything possible to provide and ensure customer satisfaction.

We appreciate hearing of rentals such as yours in which our service was not up to a customer and our standards. By making us aware of the situation, we are able to prevent a possible similar situation.

We apologize for any inconvenience or distress that was encountered due to the inconsiderate service you received. There is never an excuse for poor service. I assure you that your experience at our San Antonio Downtown location is not indicative of our customer service at all of our locations. We have informed our Location Manager of your experience. In addition we refunded the full amount of your rental to your credit card.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to contact us with your concerns. It is through insights such as these that we are able to prevent similar occurrences in the future.

Sincerely,

Christine Means

Customer Support Supervisor

Julia Maher-Naranjo
Manager, Customer Retention and Reservation Sales
Advantage Rent A Car
6660 First Park Ten Blvd.
San Antonio, TX 78213

If a company learns of a negative customer experience the steps it needs to take are so very simple.

Apologize, sincerely!
Promise to fix the problem in the future.
1. Really fix the problem (This is a little harder.)
Meet the customers demands
1. Even at a loss to the company.
2. As Long as they would be considered reasonable by the general public, i.e. Me.

Simple, but so hard to implement. I applaud Advantage for their excellent customer service from the corporate office. I can’t say I will search out Advantage in the future and especially not in San Antonio, but if they have the lowest price in another area I will likely try them out again.

Tags: