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Holiday Travel Hell Part 3: If you book with Payless Car Rental, make sure your flight is on time
As I've written over the past few days, my and my sister Ali's trip to Tampa started about fairly rocky. There was the disinterested and blatantly untruthful American Airlines customer service agent, and then the lost car rental reservation with Expedia and Payless Car Rental (we still don't know who to blame, but Exepedia eventually worked it out for us).
But while I sat around the Payless Car Rental office, watching a TV blaring Fox News and learning new swear words from Ali, I witnessed half a dozen clients come to Payless to pick up a car, only to learn that their reservation had been cancelled because the customer was late. Payless employees maintained that reservations are only held for four hours after the original booking time. No cars were left once the reservation was cancelled, so travelers had to take the shuttle back to the airport and start over with a different agency. This was December 28th, right in the middle of the holiday season, and I couldn't help but feel sorry for travelers that were late for their reservation through no fault of their own -- flights were delayed and connections missed, as I knew well. One couple was late because their luggage was lost, and they had even called Payless to let them know they'd be late.
On the other side, I witnessed Payless employees take abuse after abuse, when I'm certain many of the situations weren't directly their fault. To their credit, they handled each outraged customer well, moving on to deal with the next one after the previous stormed out. That's got to be a job that requires a strong cocktail at the end of the shift just to get your blood pressure down near normal.
So what's going on here? It's hard to say -- Payless cars seemed to be the cheapest, and judging by my experience there, it's a bit of a fly-by-night operation. I doubt the employees were getting paid enough to handle the kind of abuse they received -- but it also seems completely ridiculous to cancel a reservation if a customer is late. I can't imagine how many reservations were lost in 2007 when flights were delayed.
Is it possible that Payless profits from canceled reservations? That's definitely worth looking into.
Has anyone out there had this kind of experience with Payless Car Rental? We'd love to hear about your experience.
Filed under: Business, North America, United States, Airlines, Transportation, Airports
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Charlie Murphy Jan 13th 2008 8:14PM
I had the same experience with Paylee in Atlanta and ended up paying a higher rate with them because the type of car I reserved was given to someone else. They really stuck it to me as they had me by the balls. Thake their car at the much higher rate or go back to the airport at 11:30 PM and start from scratch and take the chance I could get a car from anyone. I will not use Payless ever again.
Anonymous Apr 8th 2008 9:35PM
Charlie, if you want to really stick it to them you should have taken their insurance and wrecked the car once you were done with your trip :)
Kris Jan 10th 2008 2:45AM
I have not used Payless, but know I have had a similar experience with budget. They claim that if you give them your flight information they will hold your car until your flight arrives. We flew from Vegas to Chicago and were delayed five hours on a red eye nonr the less, only to arrive and find out they had given away our car. They only had two cars left and did end up honoring the rate on one of those two cars. But it is un neeeded stress added to a situation that just is not needed.