Customer Service (or lack thereof)

This is a customer service story, where to organization is thinking of neither the customer, nor the service. Please bear with me.

So, this holiday season I will be leaving on a trip to Tofino, BC. This requires flying from Toronto to Vancouver, renting a car, taking a ferry, and driving over a small mountain to the far side of Vancouver Island. This customer service story relates to the car rental portion of the trip.

Since we will be driving over mountains, I thought it would be prudent to ensure our rental car was equipped with winter tires. So I called our car rental company to ask that our vehicle come with snow tires. This is how the conversation rolled out.

* HQ tells me they can only put in a request. 

* I call headquarters and ask about our reservation and to get snow tires. 

* I tell them this is not a request – I NEED these tires to legally drive through the mountains.

* HQ calls the location to see if they even have any tires available, but even then, they won’t guarantee I can get them.

* I am informed that the location (the airport location) doesn’t even carry them, ever.

* I ask if the rental company feels perfectly fine sending off their passengers all willy-nilly into the wilderness with ill-equipped cars.

* She tells me, and this is a direct quote “you can bring your own if you want”

So…am I to pack four winter tires as carry-on? This was their suggestion. I’ll let you all come up with your own moral to this story.

Michelle DeVerno