August 2012 by Robert Romance
This specific location was the worst experience I have ever had with truck rentals. The woman who ran the office that day was named Gladys and she was terrible. I grew up in retail, parents owned a store, and I am quite familiar with customer service. She was rude, unaccommodating, and very unprofessional. Allow me to explain: The office location is in a spot that is hard to see. Unlike most Penske locations, this one does not have a truck lot. It is nestled into a building of businesses, with no visible signage or convenient location o part the truck. Gladys unfortunately doesn't speak clear English, so it was very difficult to get directions over the phone. After a few circles around the block she agreed to meet me out on the busy street of DeSoto. I parked and locked the truck and met her on curb side. She asked me to let her in the passenger side so she could check the gas and mileage (due to heavy traffic on the driver side). She stepped in the vehicle and turned it on to check the numbers. Gladys then climbed out the passenger side and closed the door, and proceeded to tell me it wasn't full. I had filled the truck up no more than 20 min ago, and her idea of "not full" was literally right below the full line, which was the gas used to get to the location. Rather than argue with her, I decided to just go around the corner and top it off. When I went back to the truck, I tried the handle, and soon realized that when she left the vehicle, out of habit she must have locked the truck door behind her. So now the truck is locked with the keys in the ignition, running. I proceeded back to the office space to speak with Gladys. When I explained to her that when she stepped out of the vehicle and locked the keys in behind her, she immediately exclaimed it must have been me. After a few back and forth banters regarding the issue, she resulted in telling me that I needed to call someone to get the keys out. This is absurd, not only is she telling me it was my fault, but now she is telling me I have to pay to get it fixed. Mean while, while I get on the phone with corporate, the car is running and I am losing more fuel. Finally after about a half hour, her nephew Michael comes into the office and tells me that they will take care of getting the keys out, and they will only charge me street price (which I provided a receipt of date/time/price of when I filled it up before drop off). The gas was under $4/gal. An hour after this fiasco started, I was able to leave and go home, irritated with the experience, but I guess satisfied that they offered to take care of it. A week or so later, I get my bill from Penske including the rental charge, and a $25.20 extra charge for gas. Now I am no math expert, but if the agreed gas price was under $4/gal, that means in the couple hours it took for me to drive there, and idle with the engine on until they got it open, it consumed 6-8 gallons of gas. This leads me to believe that they charged me Penske value, rather than the receipt value that we agreed upon. Terrible service.
