How to keep customers (happy)

In my previous post about The great holiday ripp-off... I spoke about Expedia and Hertz, on baby car seat rental charges and thought I'd let you know the rest.

I've complained to both companies about the doubful practice of allowing you to rent a device to make your children safe while refusing to let you know how much it will call you. Hertz came back to me (only after I threated to blog about it) and said they will refund me EUR33 -half of the charge.

And as good news never comes alone, Expedia also called me back because I complained my rental accomodation was far from being clean (we had to bleach-wash the fridge before storing anything). They will refund me £200 on my holiday bill, which is much welcome.

Note to self: I should have known better, since a great feature of the Expedia web-site is that it allows clients to rate their hotels/cottages. This is good use of the Web 2.0, I really like it.

So while it's best to make sure you don't make your customers unhappy in the first place, Hertz and Expedia deserve brownie points for addressing my complaints.

My advice: ALWAYS write to the customer department. It's not only that you might be compensated but it's also a service to the company (poor service will kill a service company) and other customers.

Tags: holidays, money, richmondtransits.blog, expedia, hertz

The great holiday ripp-off...

A cautionary tale today because it's bad enough that the Euro makes holidaying on the Continent much more expensive.

Car Seat Hire with Car Rentals Companies

We've rented a car through Expedia and Hertz came up at a quite competitive rate (about £85 for a week -you can only figure out this by removing or adding the car to the trip as Expedia doesn't provide a breakdown). I've asked for a car seat and was told by Expedia they could not get the price before and would need to see on the spot.

So we turn up at the aiport and they tell me a car seat it... 66 Euros! I complained on the spot and raised the matter with Hertz customer service which answered they "[were] sorry to learn that you were not satisfied with the price of the child seat you received. Unfortunately this is the locations privilege to quote a price for the additional equipments.
[We are] sorry [we] cannot be more of a help for you now." I've came back threating to make sure I would tell as many people as possible and blogged it. And to their honour, they came back and said they'll refund half.

Which is nice, but a shame putting things right needed a an argument.

My advice: either check-in a your own car seat (make sure you have a good travel insurance, I got one damaged between Pisa and Gatwick on Monarch once) or if you arrive not too late, buy a cheap one from a local supermarket. Oh, and by the way, do check the car thoroughly before you go: the first one Hertz wanted to give me had a flat tyre and the other one was dented all over. Do make sure you take pictures before you leave the rental company parking, it may prove useful if you misplace the rental contract.... And make sure they charge what they're supposed to: Avis two years ago tried to apply me a different tariff than I had booked!

Bank charges
I have a Coventry Building Society current account because it pays 5.60 AER without cap, however their charges for cash withdrawals abroad are steep: up to £3.50 for EUR200 (2%). I was with Citibank before and they don't charge for getting money out of the wall overseas. But then their interest rate on current accounts is misery. So,do check the charges carefully and try to pay using a credit card without fixed charge such as the Nationwide Cash Reward.

Air travel

Did you book a cheap air ticket with a low cost carrier? Just check how much luggage you bring, make sure you bring your own sandwiches and turn up way in advance: Ryanair once closed it checkin desk although it was over 40mn before the flight and we were in the right queue. The guy just left the counter! At first they were not even rebooking us and it took a 10 mn heated conversation to fly us to Limoges or Bergerac instead of Bordeaux. Quite inconvenient as you can imagine...

On the luggage front, most low cost charge you for checking in stuff: remember you always bring too many shoes, that you can wash clothes and buy shower gel anywhere in the world!

Read also in The Guardian: BA and Virgin face compensation deluge
Apparently "British Airways and Virgin Atlantic face a compensation deluge after agreeing that any passenger who flew long-haul on those airlines between August 2004 and March 2006 can claim a £20 refund per journey following a $200m (£102m) legal settlement."

PS: read also on the Fool.co.uk how to Avoid These Airport Rip-Offs!

Tags: holidays, money, richmondtransits.blog