I've just rented a car from Hertz, but I'm wondering if it's the last time I'll bother. Hertz is a wonderful company in some ways, especially since I'm a "#1 Gold Club" member, but Hertz hasn't bothered to update their business practices to keep up with modern times. I think they're in danger of being knocked off their perch by a more clever, more customer-centric competitor.
Back in the days when everything was done by print or through travel agents, every travel arrangement was a treasure hunt. You had to read the newspaper to catch word of sales, you had to make note of each possible way to save money, and you had to hope that your travel agent knew his or her business. In some sense, this was an unavoidable complication of paper-based information.
The web changed all that. Now I expect that all the information I need will be at my fingertips, and if a company really wants my business they will keep me fully informed of all discounts and related information. That's what happened when I recently rented a car online with Budget: they applied discounts to my rental, automatically, without me having to lift a finger (other than to click on "purchase"). It was a pleasure to use.
But at Hertz, I had quite the treasure hunt. Hertz gives out 10%-off "memberships" to any number of organizations, such as credit card companies that give a membership to each of their millions of customers. In other words, these "memberships" constitute a discount known to some members of the public and not others — irritating, to say the least. Why does Hertz bother?
The other information hidden on the Hertz web site was a series of special offers. These offer aren't integrated into my reservation process — I have to read each and every one separately, not all the details are disclosed up front, and the only way to find out if a deal works is to enter all travel information and see what price comes up — over and over and over again. I had trouble understanding why one offer simply wasn't available, and after speaking to three separate agents we finally understood that the deal just (mysteriously) wasn't available, period, for that car in that city at that time — despite what the web site said the offer actually was.
The right way to do this, obviously, is to let me enter the dates and times of travel once, and then either offer me a series of choices or apply all the mysterious "rate quotes," "CDP numbers," "coupon codes," and other arcane information automatically. That's how the modern web works. The modern web does not require me to cut and past "RQ" codes from one part of the web site to another; the modern web makes reservations transparent, easy, simple, and inexpensive... but not at Hertz.
Link to this story · Comment form · Blog Home
To leave a comment, please fill out this form.Comments are closed for this story.
Trackbacks are closed for this story.
