Unfiltered Story #206294

Its early in the morning and at that moment it was pretty slow, so I decided to head into the back office to grab a quick bite to eat and some water. While inside I hear a customer come up to the counter, where my coworker is at, and says she has a reservation. She also said that she wants something that can help her get around because last time she was here, she got stuck in snow and had to get pulled out. My coworker tells her that we are short on vehicles this week and most likely we will be short on vehicle next week because of an event in town but she will see what she can do. My coworker finds the reservation but the reservation is for 3 hours later, which caused an extra day charge. (To help make sense of it: If you reserve a vehicle at 10am and say you will return it a day later at 10am, that makes it 24 hours which is a one day rental. If in this scenario, you pick it up earlier but still want to return it at the same time, for example, picking it up at 7am but returning it at 10am, it goes over 24 hours, so it would be considered a 2-day rental). My coworker explains this and the customer replies,

Renter: No, this is a “bait and switch”. This is a “bait and switch” because I know what time I put down. I rent from (company) 5-6 times a year because of my job with the federal government and I know what I am doing and because I do my own bookings all the time.

Co-worker: Ok, by any chance, do you have your reservation paperwork?

Renter: Yeah, I do. (Pulls it out of her backpack and looks at the paperwork. She notices the time that she reserved the vehicle for was actually for later.) Oh, I don’t know what happened here. I know I put it down for this time. Something must have gone wrong. God…… why would I have done that? I always take a direct flight here so I know what time I would be here by.

She collects her self and then says:

Renter: Anyways, what is my new total going to be? and give me a courtesy discount.

Me: (saying this to myself and trying hard to stifle my laughing in the back office) Yeah, like we’re going to give you a discount for a mistake you made. Especially after you accused us of doing a “bait and switch”.

My coworker didn’t give the discount by the way and thank god she didn’t.