Customer service is letting me down hard this week. Today, I had an honest to Buddha Planes, Trains and Automobiles moment.
Here’s the thing … without going into excruciating details, I’m picking up sticks and heading to Florida to help out my parents for a while - and so they can help me out as well, I’m not going to lie. So I’m out of my apartment, I’m in a temporary rental for the week while I finalize plans to rent a vehicle big enough for some of my stuff, me and my dog for a five day drive across country. I went through Booking . com as they’ve always done me well. I thought I was all set with my booking. I had confirmation numbers and a voucher pdf and receipts and all sorts of shit. So I go out to the rental building at PDX and step up to the Budget desk …
“Hi, I booked an SUV.”
“Ok, well, some problems. We don’t have the SUV you wanted but first we need a major credit card.”
“But I already paid via Booking.com”
“Oh, we don’t know anything about that.”
She shows me her screen - which is just a green text dumb terminal - like I’m fucking NEO and I can interpret this gobbledygook on her screen. I’m literally like, “I don’t know what any of that means.”
I search through my Booking . com app and see that there’s a pick-up instruction pointing me to a different location altogether, so I ask the clerk if that’s where I’m supposed to be, if that’s where I’m supposed to pick up my vehicle.
“Oh, yes sir. That’s it. No question. Just go there and you’ll be all set.”
Guess what? I wasn’t all set; I was pretty fucking far from all set. First al all the location was a mile from the train stop. It was raining. I walked a mile in the rain to get to a building with a bunch of rental cars in it.
“Hi,” I says to the guy at some security booth, “I’m here to pick up an SUV from Budget.”
“There’s no Budget here. This is Enterprise. You have to got to the airport for Budget.”
Fucking joking me. I wander around the neighborhood just in case I got some direction wrong, but there was nothing but mud puddles. A mile in the rain back to the train stop and then to the Budget desk. At this point I’m in full-on Steve Martin mode. I’m dripping wet. My pants are soaked from the knees down. My jacket is saturated. I walk up to the desk - the same woman who told me to go to this phantom building and I say, calmly, “Hello, may I speak to either a supervisor or a manager?”
“For what reason?”
“Well, because you just sent me to a building that doesn’t exist, I’m soaking wet, and I still don’t have me vehicle so I’d like to speak to a supervisor, please.”
I wait for like five minutes before this guy comes out and asks how he can help me. I take a deep breath and - again, calmly - reiterate the whole affair. I end with a plea to just help me get things resolved so I can be on my way. He informs me, tersely, that he’d love to help me but I can’t rent with a debit card, I need a credit card. Fine, my father will be happy to help me out, I’ll give him a call.
“No, he need to be here in person.”
“Well, he’s in Florida, so that doesn’t help.”
I got shit from him. Not one, “I’m sorry,” or “we apologize for the inconvenience,” nothing.
I say, fine, but you’re going to refund me the money I paid for the insurance, $72.
“You’ll have to do that through Booking . com.”
I was so pissed off, I just said, “Alright, good-bye,” and turn to go and this unmitigated asshole had the temerity to call after me, “Have a nice day, sir.”
By the time I got home I had scripted the perfect walking up and down of that dickhead and back again, but at the time I settled for a emphatic, “Fuck you!”
So. back to square one. I extended my temp rental so I can regroup. I’m pretty sure I have the resource to square everything away tomorrow, but I swear to Vishnu, I thought I was on some sort of practical joke show today.