WORST rent-a-car experience ever
In all my rent-a-car experiences which I had quite a few in different countries, this was by far the WORST rent-a-car experience ever. The company is named GLOBAL rent-a-car and the service took place on Warsaw’s London Chopin Airport, on 8th of September 2018, from 13:00 to 15:15. We wanted to rent the car just for the day (booked a car from 13:00 to 21:00) as we wanted to visit friends 200km from Warsaw. We booked it 3 days before, paid for it and came to the airport terminal office around 13:05. There was a line for about 5 people, looked like a busy day. Through all my experiences with such service, with at least average service a client stands by the desk up to 10 min (possibly longer if the client is problematic), then he receives the key to the car and goes for the car. I always tried to keep myself up to 5-6 mins as I know how the procedure works and can make it quick. To my surprise, every client was services for about 15-20 mins, problematic one’s (and there were 2) took 25-30 mins. There was only one employee (with two possible desks to be used) who was servicing all of us waiting there. She saw the line but throughout the whole time never tried to get help/call someone so it would go smoother. Ok, maybe everybody else called in sick that day (that’s what she told us when we were at the booth) or just didn’t want to work there. Wondering why it is taking so long to service one client, we saw people coming out but without car keys – being told to wait for the car because it’s not ready. I mean, we all had prebooked cars for that day, the company knew when and what car they rented, so they had just one thing to do, have the cars ready when the booking starts. That’s not asking too much, isn’t it? I would understand if it would be maybe one car, but every person that came out of the office had to wait for around 30 mins or even longer for the car! We waited to be serviced until 14:15 so over an hour and started the paperwork. As it turned out, it took that long because the company is using mainly a smartphone to put the data in. Imagine receiving a smartphone and you have to type in your address, name, ID number, etc. instead of just putting it into the system on a normal keyboard (like every other company does) by the employee. Then, no scanning of documents, but instead making photos with the smartphone and ensuring that the quality was good in order for the photo to be used with the agreement. I think we kept it under 12 mins but no wonder it took longer with older people which are not used to tiny letters on smartphones. “That’s our system” we heard from the lady, and I think, GLOBAL – you wanted to be cool and innovative, but you just worsened customer experience. When asked about when can we expect our car because it was too much for them to prepare the car as according to the booking (we booked it from 13:00, it was 14:30 and the car wasn’t there), the lady out of nowhere, with her stupid smile, told us ‘7 mins’. I asked her, are you sure you want to give us such number, as everybody else is sitting out there and waiting over 30mins for the car? She said yes, around 7 mins. Surprise, surprise – we waited for over 30 mins and nothing happened. Then, at 15:15 our whole trip was senseless and we decided to not rent the car. Our day was destroyed due to incompetency and terrible customer service, the worst I ever got with rent-a-car. Of course the lady couldn’t care less as she said ‘I’m just coordinating it from here, not my fault we do not have the cars’. No sorry for what happened, no trying to reimburse us are give any voucher, just ‘thank you and goodbye’ with her stupid smile in the end. I’m not sure if we will receive our money for the booking back as ‘you have to contact the broker with which you booked, I can write an email from my side but that’s not enough’. As we never received our rent agreement on mail (as was supposed to happen), I doubt she even cared to sent such mail on our behalf to the broker. I lost 2,5h with GLOBAL rent-a-car company just to receive tragic customer experience and no car. The WORST rent-a-car company ever, I advise you all to stay away from them and choose anybody else. At least on Warsaw Chopin aiport.
