Author Topic: Getting compensation for car repair during rental (National/Enterprise)  (Read 642 times)

Offline Woofwoof

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Hello:

Three weeks ago, I booked a car with National (Emerald Exec) to be driven out of their Zurich downtown location. However, at 4pm before the rental start date, I got an email from the local manager saying that they had to close the entire downtown location. She told me to get the car from Zurich airport and offered a miserly 30CHF rebate as compensation (my actual taxi ride cost almost 60CHF). I knew that driving the car off the airport entails a 20% premium over the entire rental cost and hence called National in the US to reconfirm that I wouldn’t be charged this airport-pickup fee.


On the next day, I went to the airport. The counter staff was very rude  >:( (yet not unexpected in this city). She said she didn’t know about the 20% fee waive and offered an undesirable car (of course she said it’s the last automatic car left). We didn’t have a choice and therefore took this car, hoping that the dust had settled. Yet, on the third day of our road trip, the car’s engine oil needed to be topped off. We called National’s roadside service hotline and were told that it needed to taken to the dealership for service (reimbursement to be made later) on the next day. We complied, spending a precious half day traveling to + having service done at the nearest Citroen dealership. (We were staying in the mountains at that time.)


Upon returning the car at Zurich airport, yet another issue arose. The staff inspected our car (we made no damage) but couldn’t print out a receipt to acknowledge the condition. We heard from internet travel websites about car rental agencies scamming foreign tourists for damage that the latter weren’t responsible for. We feared that the local staff at National Zurich airport was playing this trick on us. He said the printer wasn’t working. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to believe this but I had to check-in for my flight. After I checked-in, I returned to National and demanded the receipt. Voila...the printer suddenly was working. Yet, the return timestamp was not correct.


In short, I heard of all of these bait-and-switch tactics before, but was still appalled that National tried to mess with me multiple times in one roadtrip. The part I was most upset about was driving all the way to a major city for the oil top-off. I guess National wanted to use customers’ time to service their cars.


In this case, how should I proceed with demanding National to compensate me for the time loss and inconvenience? In fact, not only was my precious vacation time taken up, I had to pay for this time loss from my wallet. Servicing the car is their responsibility. The reason why I chose National was their good customer service in the US. However, once outside the US, anything can happen.

Would appreciate your wisdom and guidance. Thanks.