Ticking Off Your Customers

In addition to being unable to use the balance of the card, gift recipients discover that after six months of non-use, a $2.50 per month charge may be levied until the value dwindles down to nothing.

This is hardly—in Don Jackson's words—providing "continual delight" to their customers.

In addition, go to the Visa Gift Card Web site and it's filled with tiny dense prose in light gray type with light yellow headlines. It's both unfriendly and unreadable.

It's obvious that Visa's Web designers are as mediocre as the product.

Hertz Hurts

Bean counters look at "growing the business" as bringing more money to the bottom line.

This isn't growing the business; rather it's growing profits. But at what cost?

From Christopher Elliott's Feb. 14, 2006, story in The Wall Street Journal:

Among the most noteworthy changes are these: Hertz is holding its customers responsible for "any and all" loss or damage to a rental car resulting from natural disasters, from hailstones to hurricanes. If you return a rental car after hours, Hertz may continue charging you for the car until the rental office reopens (it used to consider the vehicle returned when you brought it back). And it abbreviated the grace period for returns to 30 minutes, from one hour.

Quite simply, this stinks.

Hertz gave The Wall Street Journal reporter a lot of doubletalk about how the cost of maintaining a fleet of new cars is rising, which requires a system of "unbundling" the costs—starting with a base rental price and adding individual services.

Okay, I can buy into that.

But charging for damages by hailstones and hurricanes, and charging rental fees after the vehicle is returned because the office is closed is, in my opinion, unconscionable.

I will never use Hertz—even if the rental office is open 24/7.