Have you tried to provide feedback to a company online?

[cab67]

It's become bloody impossible.

As some of you know, my wife and I live about somewhere between 3.5 and 4.5 hours apart, depending on traffic. So while classes are in session, I commute every weekend.

My wife was in an accident three or four weeks ago. She and our daughter were fine, but the car was a total loss. It was one of those chain-reaction multi-car affairs on a city freeway, meaning insurance companies are still trying to sort out the liability; until then, it's hard for her to get a new car. Before classes began, this merely meant I took on the title of "chauffeur." But classes started last week. I headed back, and she got a rental car to keep her going until I returned.

A leak arose in the cooling line of my own car. The part of the line with the leak in this particular car (Kia Niro hybrid) is part of the same unit as the catalytic converter. Thus, the whole unit - including the catalytic converter - must be replaced. The repair has to be done by a Kia dealership, and they wouldn't be able to look at it until next week. (The diagnosis was made not by the dealership, but by a local auto service business I trust. And on the bright side, this setup does make the catalytic converter more theft-resistant.) Thus, I had to rent a car to get back with my family. Slight nuisance and a cost I'd rather not have to absorb, but things are how they are, so off to a local office of a rental agency I went.

(This is one of the major international car rental companies. I probably shouldn't name it, but it rhymes with "hurts.&quot

The car made it about a third of the way. I stopped to get something at a convenience store in a very rural area, and after that, the car basically wouldn't start completely after I pressed the start button. (I won't go into details, but the problem appears to be with the car's entire electrical system and not the battery or transmission.)

I don't blame the company for the faulty car. Cars break down all the time, and one cannot always sniff out a lemon from a car that otherwise looks fine. Nor do I blame the agent who set up the rental - he was, presumably, not a trained mechanic. But I nevertheless ran into a comedy of errors from the company as a whole.

First - we eventually established that the car wasn't drivable, but my first impulse was to check the user manual to make sure I wasn't overlooking something. But the user manual wasn't in the car.

I was able to find a pdf of the user manual online with my phone, but between the size of my phone screen and the setup of the manual, it was all but useless.

Second - the first person I encountered on the company's roadside emergency assistance line listened to me for a few minutes, then switched me over to an automated message with instructions for filling out an accident report and bringing it to the local rental office. Beyond the fact that I wasn't actually in an accident, this was worthless advice - I was stranded in a very small town with no way to take such a form to a rental office.

The next person was a lot more helpful. She arranged a tow for the broken-down car and a Lyft ride to the nearest office that was open - which happened to be 2.5 hours away at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. These seem like simple tasks, but it took more than an hour, much of which was spent on hold. (O'Hare is actually close to my destination, so that wasn't really too big of an inconvenience.)

The problem was that nearly all of this company's offices close at noon on Saturdays. This includes Moline, IL, which is a reasonably large town with a regional airport less than an hour from where I was stranded. I mean, I get that some businesses haven't recovered fully from the pandemic, but you'd think a company in the business of renting vehicles that might break down, stranding a customer in the middle of nowhere, might keep longer business hours on days when many people travel. (For some reason, the tow company they hired also came from Chicago. The Quad Cities may not have an office for the rental company with reasonable working hours, but they certainly have towing companies.)

That agent - who, as I said, was overall very helpful - gave the Lyft driver the wrong address for my location. He ended up driving 20 miles in the wrong direction before realizing I wasn't just standing at the point on the side of the freeway provided by the agent, to whom I provided the precise address of the convenience store where I was stranded. I also told her which exit on the freeway the driver should take; the store is something like a third of a mile off the freeway.

The bright spot was the staff I encountered at O'Hare, all of whom were paragons of courtesy and professionalism. They all went out of their way to help. But that help was delayed because I was never given a case number, nor had they been informed that the original rental vehicle was being towed. (They learned of this from the text message the towing company sent me.) In fact, they appear to have heard nothing about the situation at all, and they were (properly) reluctant to just hand a vehicle over to me.

I finally made it back, albeit several hours late and in a sour mood.

So - for obvious reasons, I want to provide some feedback to this company. Some of it will, of course, be in the form of a nastygram. I encountered one employee who was incompetent, and their internal communication system sucks. They failed to provide a user manual for the car I was provided. I was almost left stranded in a town with no hotel, no taxi service (and very few people who drive for Lyft or Uber), and limited ability to tow a rental vehicle to the closest business location.

But go to the web site for this company, and there's no meaningful way to provide any sort of feedback. Go to "contact us," and they phone numbers where I can set up a new rental, along with "frequently asked questions" that came nowhere near to describing anything I dealt with.

At this point, I may just end up sending the letter to the company's president. It's the closest thing to an email address for complaints I can find.

Do they not want to improve their business? Do they not want to know of employees who should be replaced? Or employees who should be recognized for exemplary service? Or issues that really should be addressed if they want to keep customers returning for business?

Seriously - am I the only one who's encountered this?