Before I begin here, I just would like to point out that this is a review only on the service given at the Alamo in Los Angeles.
Here goes ...
I had booked to hire a 4x4 online through Alamo - the only reason I picked them was that they were the cheapest I could find.
We had a one way hire from LA to Miami, and the car which was a Chevy Blazer was great in itself, spacious, it held all our luggage (we had a lot for just 3 of us), comfortable, decent radio cd system, the lot. Nothing luxurious, but it did us for our trip across America. (Visiting San Francisco, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Roswell, Dallas, Memphis, New Orleans, Orlando, and Miami - so we did a lot of miles).
Anyway, we collected it on July 13th 2004 from the 'airport', which isn't actually at LAX, but you get on a shuttle which takes you there. Which took us ages to find, as it wasn't very well signposted.
When we got there, the queue was an hour long, which I'd expect for a busy company, so that wasn't the real problem, but when we finally did get to the counter I gave our papers that I had to print from my online order. The woman said we wasn't on the system. We were like, 'riiight, well we should be, why do our papers say confirmed?' Oh, but then she found us on the system, but we wasn't due to collect it until the 31st, not the 13th. As it was clearly stated on my receipt the 13th, she had to go sort it out, which took about 20 minutes.
It got sorted, and she gave us a lot number. Just find your number in the car lot, keys already in the ignition, get in drive off, hand papers at the barrier.
Weird.
Well, our number was blue 195, which is the furthest you could ever be away from the building, there was us dragging our cases each plus rucksacks and carrier bags, to find nothing in our space.
My friend went back in, while 2 of us waited outside with the luggage. She thought she had to go upstairs, as it said customer enquiries, and downstairs - short of pushing in you probably would have to queue again.
Anyway, she was ages, so I went in to find her getting flustered, she said upstairs was a different company, thus wasting another 20mins. There was no one at the reception desk downstairs, and all the other staff ignored us, until I said rather loudly to someone passing 'excuse me, can you help us?!'
We eventually got to speak to a manager, he said that car we got, probably already got booked before us. Duh! He offered us a premium car, but he said it would have to be the same price we paid for a SUV. And it wasn't just a premium car, it was a rather small one. I was like 'great, if you can fit our 3 huge suitcases, a laptop bag as well as another rucksack, shopping bags and 3 people in it'. And for no discount no way. I said we'd asked for a SUV and a SUV is what we'd wanted. After the manger umming and ahhing for another half an hour, making calls here and there, he finally got us the keys for a SUV he said was waiting outside.
Finally we were happy, after being there for about the 2 most frustrating hours of my life. We figured out you open the boot with a latch on the inside of it after 10 more minutes, and had to quickly figure out how to drive an automatic vehicle with the gear stick on the wheel.
Not rocket science, but was a bit daunting when your'e just given the car and left to it. We were happy to get ourselves out of there.
We all really felt like they didn't give two poo's about our custom, they already had our money and that was all for them. It was like being dehumanised on a factory line or something.
Everything else about the hire was great, just their extremely poor customer service.
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One to avoid I guess when we visit there next year! Great Review. Tim
tel1 16.03.2005 21:54
I had a car from Alamo in Florida. It had 3,000 miles on the clock but the door handles were hanging off, the radio was shot and the cruise control kept jumping out (tho' admittedly, it was an American car). The Alamo staff were pig-ignorant and couldn't have cared less. Tel
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