I clumsily stumbled up to the Fox Rent-a-Car desk at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and dumped my bags in equal amounts of exhaustion and disgust. The desk was closed. Hoping to find someone in the lot, I dragged my luggage and backpack to the parking garage and couldn’t find anyone. My exhaustion turned into crankiness and I walked back to the counter, hoping I missed something. I didn’t.
I travel a lot. There are some years where I travel at least once a month. When you’re a travel writer, you are always on the search for the best deals. I often use websites that advertise great prices. Over the years, I have used Booking.com frequently and I have an affiliate account with the company. Before my trip to visit family in Georgia, I clicked around on Booking and bundled a room and car rental and I’ll never do that again.
On the day of my flight to Georgia, I had a flat tire on the highway. I contacted Delta and found a later flight. I tried to change my flight number on Booking’s site, but the site wouldn’t let me change anything. I didn’t see a big issue because I was still going to get into Atlanta at a decent time.
While at the airport, the flight was delayed by an hour. I called Fox Rent-a-Car and there nobody answered. I sent them a message on their “contact us” section on their website and gave a rundown of my situation. I did not receive any messages back before I boarded the plane. After the plane shut the doors, we rolled out onto the runway. While on the runway, the captain stated there was severe weather on our flight path and we needed to wait on the runway. We sat there for another 2 hours. I called Fox again, hoping to find someone to talk to, but there was no option to leave a message or another number to call. All that was said on the message was that cars would be held 6 to 12 hours after a reserved time. Because I was going to be within that time frame, I figured all would be fine. Obviously, it wasn’t.
When we finally touched down in Atlanta, I went to the baggage claim and, of course, in keeping with the theme of the night, I had to wait an excessive amount of time. I don’t know why it took so long for the luggage to plop onto the conveyer belt, but we waited for 2 hours before my suitcase came around.
And then I stood in shock at the Fox Rent-a-Car desk.
Because I had to rent a car from someone, I chose the desk with the shortest line, which was Enterprise. I was ready to crack and hoped that I would receive an easy rental, which I did. The folks at the desk and in the garage gave me great customer service.
The next day, I contacted Booking.com and received horrible customer service. I stated I should not be charged for the car rental and the person on the other end at Booking told me I should’ve called, which I emphatically explained several times that I did.
After I posted a message on Instagram about what happened, several others shared a similar experience using Booking.com. I will never use them or Fox again. Since Fox is owned by Europcar, I will use another company when I’m traveling overseas.
I generally don’t like to bad mouth a company on social media or on my blog, but if that is the type of customer service I received from a major travel company, then I want to share with my readers what they are getting into when booking with these brands. If you are planning on using them, good luck.
And lastly, my negative reviews on Booking or missing. Go figure.
Sounds like you paid ahead of picking up the car. What a terrible tale.