Travel Chaos: Avis Car Rental rubbing Salt in the wounds....

[Gardenshed]

Great fun at Heathrow Yesterday, but dissapointed with Avis's reaction to the crisis:

Arrived at 06:00 after 12 hour flight and 7 hour time difference.
Text and email message on arrival from BA to let me know that the flight to Scotland was cancelled
BA kindly rebooked me on an 11:40 departure
Went to the lounge & heard the wonderful news that they had thrown the towel in early and were cancelling ALL flights from 10am until 5pm
Chaos. 43,000 passengers expected to transit Heathrow that day
Luggage booked through to Glasgow but no chance of retreiving it, made more difficult after all passengers were moved "land-side". No chance of another flight on Sat, no chance of getting a hotel in the London area, Trains a) reduced services b) likely to be full c) difficult to get info on the schedule and availability d) hassle to get into Lon to the station

Car Hire:
Ony Avis were allowing a one way hire, all others refusing/no cars available

So what would Avis offer:
Class B car, 23.9 hour hire, return to Stirling, including insurances (worth it due to the weather conditions): £410.49

Now, I'm all for market forces and not naive, but extreme expolitive pricing is extremely hard to stomach.

The alternative: Wandering around Heathrow for an unspecified period of time until a seat could be released for me. Given the massive disruption, who knows when that would be, so I spoke to another North bound passenger (poor sod had already had 12 hours at H'row after flying in from Mumbai, left to sleep on the concourse floor overnight) who agreed to split the costs, then met a mother and son who were also going north but were shocked at the price so split the price 3 ways.

M6, M40 and all of the south west snow bound, so I drove up the M1, A1 and apart from 20 mins of snow near the border, it was an easy drive North dropping the car at Avis Stirling at 17:45.
Wonder how many other north bound H'row passengers made it home yesterday?

Will I ever hire from Avis again given their shocking price gouging?
or
should I consider this the best £410.96 (luckily later split 3 ways) investment of the year

What would you have done.........

PS: driving 467.8miles non stop after a 12 hour flight is a good recipe for getting a decent nights sleep!

[Alan_D]

I thought at first it must be a steep one-way charge. The Avis on-line quote for Heathrow to Stirling for one day from 9am on 21st December was £396, without additional insurance. Then I tried the same but Heathrow to Heathrow and it came back at £349.
Last weekend I hired from Avis Stansted to Stansted for three days for £97.

I think you are right, it is exploitative (or good business practice as it is otherwise called).

[Orla]

You did the right thing, your home, a lot of peeps still down there....

I was in Baku earlier on this year, been working for a month, when it came time to come home Iceland put a spanner in the works.

I seriously thought about buying an old banger and driving back to the UK with a mate, would have taken several days and been a bit of a dodgy adventure.
But my flight took off in the end, we were very lucky.

I have always refused to sit around and wait for other people to get me home, i'll get there one way or an other.

I'd have done the same as you, Avis taking the P$ss though....

[sahona]

We had to drive back from Stratford-upon-Avon early in November, having overspent time with friends rather than do the Ryanair shuffle. We could have had a G2 car for £40 from Friday night to Monday night locally, which jumped to over £80 'cos we were dropping in Ayr...... and I thought I was being hard done to!! (Enterprise car hire... now seems a good deal)
Incidentally, Enterprise were the only ones we could use because the big names didn't have any cars they could release from the local circuit. This is because they seem to operate in franchises, with two fleets - the 'corporate' one which is flexible(and has the BIG name), and the locally owned one, which they don't let out of sight. Problem seems to be ~ not many corporate cars in each franchise location.

[Silkie]

Now, I'm all for market forces and not naive...

Market forces innit - as you say yourself.

On the plus side the price filled the car.

[Gardenshed]

Its amazing that snow on Sat and today Wed, the airport still isn't back to normal.
Despite not checking in any passengers since Sat, BA still haven't traced my bags. Wonder what all the baggage handlers are doing?

Avis's £410 in retrospect was a wise investment, but I still object to their profiteering, but "gethomeitis" is a powerful disease.

Oh well, different challenges & frustrations ahead in 2011

[Arghiro]

Now, I'm all for market forces and not naive...

Market forces innit - as you say yourself.

On the plus side the price filled the car.

Yup, they lost 3 rentals for the sake of profiteering on one. sadly, they're probably still better off tho & may not have had enough cars to fulfill all requests anyway.

[Silkie]

I doubt if Avon lost any rentals. Surely the reason they charged as they did was because they could have hired out 100 times more cars than were available?

I was looking at it from the point of view of the three who shared with GS. Had Avis charged him the usual £100 he would have driven off happily and his passengers would have spent another night at the airport because there wasn't one left for them.

[Gardenshed]

Slikie,
There appeared to be no shortage of cars. There were thousands of cancellations due to incomong flights being cancelled but the car hire firms want to keep their fleets local so that they don't have them all in the "wrong" place. As the demand for one way hire goes up, the price rockets accordingly.
Supply and demand & exploitation all in one economics lesson.
BA are now bodyswerving any responsibility for compensation.
They would pay hotels & food (if you could have found one!) but not alternative transport costs despite this reducing their problem. Most annoying are the changing stories from them (lies and inconsistency) and the fact that there was no proper contingency plan. A "customer Services" rep told me in one call a) that they provide customer care (!!!) and b) that they wouldn't be able to do much this week as they all had to have their holidays..

[bosun higgs]

When normally you hire a car you check what the prices are and most people chose the cheapest suitable option. If you think about it, when you dont show loyalty to one hire firm and take advantage of lower prices elsewhere, how can you complain when the hire firm doesnt show loyalty to you and tries to get the highest price it can. They are mirror images of each other.

The public's idea of fair play only works one way. Thats why nso many shop at the shops but then go and buy cheaper on the www.

[Gardenshed]

I take your point however when a standard one day hire (go to the AVIS website & put in a date e.g. in March using Heathrow to collect, Stirling to drop off and a mid sized car) is £96.00
no customer loyalty, no special discounts, is taking 4x that acceptable?

I chose to do so as it got me out of a hole, but Avis's blatant price gouging is difficult to defend.