Jul 18, 2007

and people say everything is crazy in Israel!

A lot of people complain about Israel that it is so hard to do anything here.

You can't just go and order something you need. You never know if you will get what you ordered. You have no idea if it will come in working order. You have no idea if it will come looking like the one you looked at in the catalog/website/brochure.

I now have proof that this is not unique to Israel. people who use this as a way to kvetch about Israel are just kvetchers in general.

We are planning a trip to the US. We are scheduling a trip for one day to NJ during the trip. We have been attempting to rent a car for the day. I tried to do so via the Internet using the various rental company websites, along with the discount websites,

We need a large car. On the various websites it is very difficult to figure out the sizes of the cars and how many passengers they hold. When finally making my way through all that, and selecting the appropriate car, which was only available on a couple of the sites, I ran into trouble.

I called the rental company to ask a couple of questions to be clear. One was whether GPS was available, as I do not know my way around the area and do not want to spend half the day getting lost. Some said yes, some said it depends on the day. Ok, no problem.

Then after getting everything clear I would say, ok, I want to make the reservation for car x or something that size. The operator would say, each time, that they do not have that size car at Newark. What do you mean? On the website where I just spent the last 45 minutes wading through irrelevant information it says it is available???

Sorry sir, we do not rent this size vehicle from Newark.

Eventually we found one that did and booked it.

But man, people just provide bad service and incomplete information. It is easier than making sure the website is accurate. It does not matter where you live. It has nothing to do with Israel.

5 comments:

  1. You left out how many times you were transferred and how much time you spent on hold!

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  2. that's right. I forgot to mention that.
    The best one was when I called the national number of one of the companies and after he answered my questions, there was one question he could still not answer. He told me to call the local Newark rental desk and they would have the answer.
    he gave me the phone number for the Newark desk direct line.

    I called it and got the standard machine saying for reservations press 1, for information press 2, for....

    When I pressed the number I needed (I thought I needed), I got someones desk. As I am asking my question they tell me that because I pressed 3, I got transferred back to the worldwide center and I need to call back the Newark desk and only press 0, as all other extensions transfer out to the worldwide center. She could not even transfer me back. I had to call again!

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  3. I don't agree with your hypothesis. I believe that all of the Israelis who now live in New Jersey and Brooklyn have brought with them the Israeli version of "customer service", and that's why everything was so messed up.

    The rest of the country should be no problem.

    :-)

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  4. we hope u realize that your call is important to us... so please wait..... press 1.. press 2.. press 3...

    its all part of the golus

    ReplyDelete