I’d hate to say that Europcar and Cartrawler suck, but…
well, they do…
I hate that my latest post turns me into one of those expats I hate. You know the ones – they wax lyrical about how they love France, move here and then do nothing but moan about the weather / bureaucracy / French / schools / taxes etc etc etc 
I have to say though that my recent experience with Europcar St Martin au Laert near St Omer is the WORST I have ever had in terms of customer service in France – or indeed anywhere for that matter!
Turning up at 10 ready to pick up a 9 seater vehicle to take 5 kids on holiday (gotta love blended families, eh?) we were faced with the most po faced and unhelpful woman I have ever had the displeasure to meet.
There was a mix up with our booking, and she was determined that she was not going to help. She could have made a couple of phone calls and sorted it out, but refused.
We had paperwork clearly saying we had paid E350 deposit – her screen said E170, so even though I had paperwork and bank statements to prove otherwise, it ‘wasn’t her problem’.
Our paperwork said we had E650 left to pay. Her screen calculated that we had to pay E1200 – and again, this wasn’t her problem, it was ours.
Our paperwork said unlimited mileage. Hers said we could only do 250KM a day – not even enough to get us to our destination and back.
We spent a fortune calling the UK on our mobiles, as we knew people in Europcar head office. We spent a fortune calling Dunkerque as that’s their French head office. We spent a fortune calling Ireland, where the Cartrawler website that we had booked the vehicle on was based.
We spent SIX HOURS sat in her office while she gave us smug smiles and refused to help. I accept it wasn’t her problem – but her complete refusal to even care that I had kids ranging from 4 months to 18 years at home waiting drove me mad.
AND THEN she had the cheek to charge me E15 because she had top keep the office open over lunchtime because she refused to help with my problem and we refused to budge!
EVENTUALLY after a lot of phone calls we paid a security deposit (something else my paperwork said I didn’t need to pay as I’d paid extra for an all inclusive damage waiver) and finally left on our holiday – almost 7 hours later than planned.
We arrived at our mid way destination at 3am after an 8 hour drive, knackered and hungry and with another 4 hour drive ahead of us the next day.
I won’t say that Europcar and Car Trawler ruined our holiday – but they certainly set it off to a really bad start, and it could all have been helped with a little customer service and courtesy.
The thing these people don’t realise though, is that in the age of the Internet, their reputations can be ruined in one fell swoop – I for one will ensure that everyone I meet / speak to / come into contact with online will know about my crappy experience with Europcar St Omer – it only takes one or two more to do the same and that woman’s smug little smile might not be so smug anymore…
About NikkiPilkingtonNikki owns NikkiPilkington.com, anInternet Marketing Agency based in the UK & France, helping small and medium sized businesses to promote themselves online through SEO, Social Media Marketing and Blogging. She has 2 gorgeous daughters, 18 years apart, too many cats, and not enough chickens.
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10 Responses to I’d hate to say that Europcar and Cartrawler suck, but…
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All I can say is I completely agree with you and all she had to do was use some common sense and decency. we had this with an estate agency Lloyds in Poole When they answered the phone never heard such a snooty voice and so rude.
She did not know who I was why I was phoning. Lloyds was highly featured once in ponsy Morgan distasteful ruining of the Sandbanks making it sound snobbish and elitist which it isn't.
anyway she spoke rude and down to me I could of been phoning to spend millions and when I confronted her with this fact she just went O and continued to be rude. so I spoke to the boss and explained the situation that if this was my member of staff I would have her in my office phoning the person up to apologise but got a a well so what attitude.
When I spoke the next day to Patrick who works there again rudeness in overflow with a side order of snobiness and well Piers Morgan featured us.
SO WHAT
I told him how rude he was and that I would let everybody know who I can tell online what kind of service you get. His reply was:
“If you do that our team of highly experience internet marketers will be brand monitoring all activity and will find you out in no time and retaliate”
I have used hastags their full name anything online to tell everybody about this and guess what?
To this day I'm still waiting for this team of highly experience internet marketers to contact me.
I hope that you Shaun and the kids had a great holiday.
catch up soon
Jay
Gosh, what would they retaliate with Jay? that you tried to help them improve their customer service and you are a naughty person for doing do? Seriously, they need to get a grip, and if I were you I would go and investigate google sidewiki and leave a little testimonial to their bad service… but that is just me and I would have to be extremely hacked off to do that… now, where is the 1&1 internet site…
Nikki, sometimes a bit of naming and shaming will help their business no end, I hope they get in touch and compensate you adequately for their faults.
From a business point of view, the worst of this customer service fiasco is that it was largely due to the bad attitude of one employee – which is now quite deservedly ricocheting around the whole Europcar and CarTrawler brands. And firing the woman in question won't do much to solve the problem; it will take a lot more than that for the two brands to recover their good reputation in Nikki's eyes and those of the people she shares the story with.
I'm not sure that you can train bad attitudes out of people – but could a more effective direct-report manager and/or HR function have spotted that this woman was a potential customer-loser?
I'd be interested to see responses from the training/recruitment/HR wallahs about that…
Twitter: SuzeStMWrites
You say you know people at Europcar head office in the UK, Nikki?
How about pursuing your gripe with them? I always find it really rather useful to have a quiet chat with the PA to the MD or CEO when there's something rather nasty in the air that's about to hit the fan…
The one thing about this very special PA person is that it's in her interests (yes: it normally IS a she so let's not get our wotsits in a twist) to look after her boss:
That means not only protecting him/ her from people/ things they DON'T want anything to do with but also drawing attention to those they DO need to know and do something about – before a storm in teacup becomes a raging tempest across Europe.
Might be a nice bit of fun for your Shaun…
Twitter: Linda_Mattacks
A strong case for psychometric testing – @LynnTulip – your thoughts please!
I would be mortified if any of my staff treated any caller like this but anyway I will be moving down to where they trade and have not finished with this subject but just been very busy with our new website and dissapointed that we have not moved yet.
This has been the worst case but in general all estate agents( there are far to little companies like Sally Aslings Surreylets) are like this as they hold the keys and we just have to well adhere to them
I think not.
Dear Nikki
My Name is Paul McGovern and I am the Customer Service Manager at CarTrawler. I'm so sorry to read of your recent experience while booking a Europcar rental vehicle through the CarTrawler booking engine. I would really appreciate it if you would give me the opportunity to investigate the manner in which your query was dealt with by CarTrawler and Europcar and see where there are areas for improvement.
If you could mail me your booking reference number at Customercare@cartrawler.com and mark the mail for my attention. I am committed to ensuring that Cartrawler delivers a level of service meets your expectations and is fair and balanced in its approach.
Kindest Regards
Paul McGovern
CarTrawler Customer Service
I'm not sure that assessing people will identify rudeness but it will highlight people who are better suited to customer facing roles or not as the case may be and those that can manage / multitask without losing their rag. Certainly I'd be more than happy to talk to Paul McGovern about assessing their customer service / call centre staff to ensure that they are all well skilled, better informed and well able to deliver good service to their clients at all times.
Customer service is so easy to get right, there's really no excuse for being difficult. I didn't spot if you tweeted this (I expect you did) – the really good companies have alerts set up for their names and respond. Car Trawler seem to have got that message OK and taken action, maybe that says a lot about EuroCar – they're not even slightly interested in customers service.
If you know someone in Head Office, have you jumped up and down and got them to take action?
I'd love to find out what 'episode 2' reveals!
Twitter: lesleywriter