How Enterprise Lost my business and Budget Won

So, I’m in NYC for the Web 2.0 Expo, and decided that I wanted to rent a car for one of the days I am here.  I was on wireless on my BlackBerry 8900 curve, because data roaming is killer on these things.  Unfortunately, the G band wireless at the conference leaves a lot to be desired and the organizers are well aware of it.  Needless to say, surfing on it was like being on dialup.

First, I tried the Enterprise rent-a-car site as I recalled they had the best prices the last time I looked at rental car options, and I remembered they had a location at Newark airport which is very close to where I am staying.  On the positive side, their site, while not tailored for mobile users, at least rendered on my phone (so many non-mobile sites give a “Request Entity too Large” error).  On the down side, I could only get two steps into the reservation process before it hung loading a script.  I tried going in another way – by city name, but the javascript on the page didn’t play nice with my 8900, so that was a no-go.

So I broke down and PHONED them.  Guess what? The cars at the AIRPORT are only for people coming in on a flight.  “Oh”, I said, “But I’ve booked online in the past for cars at the airport without needing to specify an inbound flight”.  But I was told by the agent that she simply could not book me a car if I was not flying in that day. *argh*. I explained very politely that I was staying at a hotel very near the airport which has a free shuttle there, so it’s my best option for picking up a rental car.  She wouldn’t budge from the corporate policy.

I guess they didn’t want my business.  I guess they like having excess rental inventory sitting there doing nothing.

So I went to budget.com, and LO!  It rendered a mobile site.  It was a VERY streamlined experience. It wasn’t fancy, but it was quick and painless. It did not require a credit card – just name and email address and date/time of pickup/drop off.  Brilliant. AND it let me rent from the nearby airport.  The confirmation email was instantaneous, even if the wireless access on the floor was not.

Did Enterprise not do any kind of user profiling?  Wouldn’t it make sense, if you were a car rental company, to cater to one of your primary user demographics – the traveling business person, who is tied to their mobile device and may well try to rent a car using that device?

In any case, I’m sending props out to Budget, and a raspberry to Enterprise.