If I were you, I'd consult with a criminal defense attorney before speaking further. You wrote a blog post admitting to a federal crime under the CFAA, and phone hacking is in the spotlight at the moment due to what's going on with Piers Morgan's former haunts.
If you do not have a criminal defense attorney, you now need one. If you're banking on Jason's good will, the decision to prosecute you is not in his hands.
Is there anyone there who can proof read your landing page at skurt.co? I know you don't need it to be perfect but it reads like an email from a Nigerian prince.
Underage fees are one thing, but policies like extremely large deposits if you won't pay for their insurance, paying surpluses for diesel models if petrol is unavailable (and they never are), having to pay for the first tank of fuel as well as the one you return it with, etc.
This, I think, is the biggest problem. You get told your rental costs 100 Euros on a website, you do that and turn up and suddenly you're looking at paying two or three times that on top of a deposit which must be paid by a credit card and may well be above your limit.
I think this is largely a problem with holiday destinations trying to fleece unwary tourists, I've had good experiences with local van hire companies who make things straightforward.
Can you elaborate on 'dealing with staff'- as in they're rude? Or having to wait?
You mention you book online. Do you find that process tedious?
I agree overall it always had a godaddy vibe where I feel as if they're trying to upsell me on everything- but find that more annoying from a UX point.
I've never liked dealing with the staff either. Many of the times I've done it in the US I've had to deal with foreigners who speak very poor English, and just don't seem to care at all about giving even a basic level of customer service. I don't expect much when renting a car, but being able to understand the agent does matter to me, as does them showing even a slight amount of interest in making it a tolerable experience for the customers.
Standing at a counter having an absurd conversation that we've all had dozens of times. Saying no to the insurance. Saying no to the GPS. Waiting in line. Paying. Having the contract explained, again.
Yeah, signed up a long time ago and I never saw any drawbacks and it didn't cost me anything. I did initially get Hertz Gold through work but was free to use it privately. I signed up for the other ones myself.
Reserving and finding they oversold is one i've heard a bunch. deff working to change that. As for the tranny, was this something that happened at one of the "main brands" (hertz, avis) or a second tier one?
and could the fear be solved by automatic free insurance?
It's even worse when the vehicle you reserved days before isn't there, but there are several equivalent vehicles on the lot, and no other customers obviously waiting for them, yet the rental agents insist those vehicles aren't available. I've had problems with a well known national brand. The problem I had wasn't obvious unless going at freeway speeds. A replacement may have been available, but that would have cut into the rental time, which just isn't an option when there are places to be and things to do on a tight deadline. And I just can't trust these companies to honor whatever damage waivers or insurance they might offer. I don't want to waste my time arguing this crap with the foreigners who often work as agents at the rental counters.
Ryan, thanks for your input!
I was under the impression Silvercar required you to take a shuttle there, is this not the case anymore? Or maybe not an issue for you?
Many airports have shuttles anyway. I'm not Hertz Platinum or anything, so I don't have someone usually bringing my car to me -- it's a shuttle ride to the rental place, which tends to be close.
SFO has the airtrain/car pez dispenser, but I never need to rent a car at SFO.
Hertz and Avis shuttles, at least, are frequent, and usually fast. It'd be a slight positive to get Hertz Platinum style "driver drives to curb with you car, gets out, you get in, and the delivery driver takes a shuttle back to base", but I don't think I'd pay much of a premium for that. Maybe $25 per rental, tops.
At airports with big on-site car vending machines, you're not going to generally be able to do that at any scale without being arrested, and you'll probably be inferior to my current experience of walking across to the car vending area gold stalls, going to the number which was emailed to me, picking up my car, and driving off.
It might be more of an issue at smaller airports with no onsite cars, or where at certain hours all the shuttles are infrequent.
This is a slippery slope. You have to keep in mind that >2% (some estimates as high as 7%) of Google Queries are related to lyrics/ RG related content. They also (arguably) have much better, much more relevant content.
As such a large amount of google searches would end up with someone wanting a RapGenius page - it's only fair that they would get preferential treatment over a niche startup/site/blog.
