Autohuur: Bekentenissen van een Alamo Baliemedewerker

[corrus]

Dit interview gevonden op: http://consumerist.com/345044/6-confessions-of-an-alamo-car-rental-agent

6 Confessions Of An Alamo Car Rental Agent.

By Ben Popken:

After reading these six confessions of a current Alamo car rental agent, you will learn:

- The commission hungry mindset of a car-rental agent.
- How they're always trying to get you to do unnecessary upgrades.
- How the cost of these upgrades are discretionary, and therefore, negotiable
- What a "deeker" is
- But most of all, you will learn just how much, for at least this Alamo agent,
.. you are his absolute adversary in his battle to get you spring for costly upgrades and beef up his bonuses.

6. IT'S A SALES JOB
First I'd like to let the cat out of the bag. Yes, we car rental agents do work for commissions! If we can get you to pay more for an upgrade, insurance, gasoline, a GPS, even an additional driver, we get a cut of the extra charges.

5. I HATE "DEEKERS"
At Alamo Rent A Car in [redacted], we are handsomely rewarded for good sales and punished if our sales are poor. The pressure this environment produces leads many of us to fine tune our skills to not only offer extras effectively and to have comebacks to all customer rejections, but to also be able to identify the customers in line as to whether they are buyers or decliners, which we call "deekers". When a customer declines everything you've offered, you've been "deeked". Get deeked enough times by a certain type of customer and you begin to feel resentment towards that group. Sometimes a customer can't be identified as a buyer or deeker until you see the state or country of the driver license. Evidently some states and countries produce more deekers than others. Deekers may at times be legitimate but often they are just cheap people.

4. CHEAP PEOPLE CAN'T FULLY ENJOY A VACATION
A typical example of a deeker is the young couple with two kids, a 3-year old and a 10-month old, on-line with strollers and packing their own child safety seats. He produces his license and credit card but she does all the talking. Offer them a more comfortable or fun vehicle than the sub-compact they have reserved and she will cut you off with a "no". She will also cut you off when you offer her the peace of mind that the insurance will give her or the convenience of prepaying for the gasoline at a discounted rate. Of course there's also a "no" to the GPS because she'll raise the stack of MapQuest printouts in her folder. Listening in silence is the helpless husband as he looks on while imagining driving a sporty SUV instead of the tiny economy car reserved. Enough of these deekers and you may find yourself working in the exit booth of the garage the following month. This punishment can cost you thousands of dollars!

3. TO ALL YOU DEEKERS
First of all, you wonder how this family can fully enjoy its vacation. They are staying in a cheap motel far from the theme parks. The couple's freedom to roam the theme parks with the kids and the strollers is limited. The kids are too young to have future memories of this trip anyway. You even wonder how this cheap couple is going to eat while on vacation. Are they going to smuggle peanut butter and jelly sandwiches into the theme parks to avoid paying the high priced foods there or are they just going to go hungry? Here's a suggestion to those of you that fit this customer profile, leave the kids at home! Leave them with grandma or Aunt Betty and enjoy your vacation! Let your husband drive the SUV he'd like or treat yourselves to a convertible! Wander the theme parks freely and enjoy greater intimacy in a nicer hotel located closer to the parks. You'll enjoy your vacation more and you will help me feed my family!

2. I AM ROLLING IN THE SCRIZZLE
I was a manager with Alamo and I quit to become a rental agent. Why? For the money. When I realized that the average rental agent was making far more than I was and agents didn't have to put up with the stress and responsibilities of management, I resigned. As a part-time agent, I am now making more than 3 times what I was making as a full-time manager! Aside from my modest $8 hourly rate, I'm receiving about $4000 a month during the low season in sales commissions alone! I can't wait for the high season to begin to see how much I'll be raking in. I'm not among the best sales agents but believe it or not, the better ones make six figures. Even some part-timers are earning six figures or close to it. So now you can understand how one too many deekers can have us assigned to the exit booth in the garage and cost us thousands.

1. I WILL CHARGE YOU FOR THE UPGRADE FOR WHATEVER PRICE I CAN GET AWAY WITH.
If we make so much money, obviously many customers are paying more for our extras. Thank you very much! In particular, we love our UK customers which we affectionately call "the Brits". When the Virgin and British Airways flights are in, the Alamo counter is full of agents. The Brits are fun folks and love upgrades. We Alamo rental agents have autonomy when it comes to the price of upgrades. There is a minimum which we must adhere to, usually $11 per day, but we can raise it to whatever we believe the customer is willing to pay. If the Brit wants an SUV instead of the midsize sedan reserved, we may charge him $11 more per day or maybe even $99 more per day. Even better, many Brits have long term rentals, 2, 3, 4 weeks or longer. The longer the rental, the better for us if the customer buys something. For instance, an upgrade of $49 per day for a 3-week rental equals a total of $1029. If the agent can average just one or two sales like this per day, he/she will get a 15% cut of the upgrade sales alone. For this one sale, that means $154.35 commission. Add 15% for all the upgrades for the month, plus say 12% of all the insurance sold, plus 4% for all the gasoline sold, plus 10% for all the GPS sold, and more for all the additional driver charges, and you've got yourself a pretty commission payout check for the month. Monthly commission payouts of over 10 and 15 thousand dollars are not uncommon to the top agents. Again, thank you very much to the buying customers, you are good sports.

[Njit]

Leuk verhaal. En geeft ook de motivatie weer van de medewerkers. Het is niet de bedoeling om jou een goede deal te geven, het is de bedoeling om hun eigen bonus te vergroten.

[Ta2 Gerrit]

To all you Alamo (and other) conmen out there; "I'm still not giving up being a professional deeker, yet" :-) :-)

Ach, als een verrassing komt het niet, het is alleen nu "officieel" bevestigd.

[Njit]

Misschien dat we maar Florida Forum 'Deeker' buttons moeten laten maken.

[rembrandt]

:razz: Super sticker, waar kan ik hem kopen?? :mrgreen:
Maar als we een upgrade willen, macimaal 12 dollar per dag betalen dus

[corrus]

Het kan ook anders lopen... behoorljk anders...

Bij een kennis van me, gingen ze nog verder...
Die hadden een midsize suv en een gewone midsize auto... Die suv kregen ze gewoon niet mee omdat daar volgens de baliefiguur de koffers niet zouden inpassen...
Maar in die gewone midsize zaten maar 2 personen dus daar had de rest van de koffers gemakkelijk in zouden kunnen...
Ze kregen de suv gewoon NIET mee...
Uiteindelijk moesten ze 500 dollar betalen... en kregen een 12 persoons van...
Daar zaten ze dan met een midsize en een enorme bus...
500 dollar armer en heel boos...
Als mij dit zou overkomen, was ik daar nooit op in gegegaan...
In tijd van nood had ik gezegd dat ik 2 keer op en neer ging rijden... om van het gezeur af te zijn.
Volgens mij moet ik helemaal niets...

Bovendien had ik hiervoor noooooit getekend, maar ja... je kent dat wel... doodmoe vanwege lange vertragingen, hebben ze getekend, puur en alleen maar om er vanaf te zijn...

[JKG]

Moe of niet, 500 dollar krijgen ze echt niet van me.
Flikken ze toch elke keer en de vorige keer ging het redelijk geloofwaardig, maar toch maar 'nee' gezegd en weggereden met een 'gratis' fullsize ipv economy 2 deurs.
Alleen lekker makkelijk hoe die lui dan weer in de parkeergarage zijn 'ja ga daar maar heen in die rij staat wel wat'.

[knaapje]

En toch kan het bij Alamo ook anders:
Vorige maand in Pensacola vrijdagsavonds om 9 uur.
Sleutels lagen met mijn naam op de enveloppe klaar bij de balie.
Contract in orde gemaakt. ... U heeft alle verzekeringen behalve Roadside assistance..... niet nodig... en ....Uw auto staat aan de overzijde van de straat in de parkeergarage groundfloor vak 9 het is een zwarte Pontiac Torrent........... Goede reis.....

Knaapje

[corrus]

Die had z'n commissie kennelijk al ruim verdiend... :mrgreen:

[knaapje]

Die had z'n commissie kennelijk al ruim verdiend... :mrgreen:

Die gedachte kwam ook eerst bij mij op.
Dan rekenen ze vast niet af per kalendermaand, want het was op 3 oktober j.l.
Knaapje