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Tags: National Rental Car / Car Rental / Cars / Driving / One-Way Road Trip / Passenger complaints / → All Tags

Brits On An American Road Trip: A Dud Car Nightmare

Planning a road trip? HotelChatter contributor London Town is on one from LA to New York at the moment. Some top tips from a week on the road…

If there’s one thing we Europeans know about Americans, it’s that you love your cars. We also know that your customer service is second to none (tell us to have a nice day when we’re over here, and our cold little British hearts will melt all over you).

So we were pretty confident about hiring a car for our road trip in the land of the free. We’ve done it before—we drove from Chicago to Nashville earlier in the year with Avis, and that worked out just fine. This time we were going further, though—LA to New York, to be precise. National came through with the least extortionate one-way fees, so we went with them.

Big mistake. We arrived at LAX late on a Wednesday night, jetlagged and extra cranky as United had managed to mislay our bag for a whole two hours, and at first we were pleasantly surprised at the ease of the pick up service. We literally signed the contract, and were told to choose a car and drive off. We chose a nice red Chevy and headed off. It wasn’t until we reached the interstate that we noticed it kept pulling to the right, trying to drive us off the road.

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Tags: Airlines / United Airlines / Delta Airlines / Code Shares / Passenger Complaints / → All Tags

United and Delta Get Off Easy in Codeshare and Denied-Boarding Violations

Chris Elliott has the scoop on the latest fines that the Department of Transportation issued to United Airlines (who was already having a bad week, thanks to the broken guitar video) and Delta Airlines for failing to notify passengers of codesharing flights and for denied-boarding violations. Elliott reports:

United Airlines faces $80,000 in penalties for neglecting to inform travelers that certain flights were operated by another airline. And Delta Air Lines is being fined $375,000 for bumping passengers from its flights without compensation.

The investigation of United declared that phone reservations agents were not disclosing the codeshare partners while Delta's investigation was based on passenger complaint records. But these fines are extremely minor as Elliott points out that each airline will probably only pay half so long as they promise to not to do it again. (In our best Church Lady voice) Wellll, isn't that special?

Related Stories:
· All Together Now: 'United Breaks Guitars' [Jaunted]
· Delta and United face steep fines for codesharing, denied-boarding violations [Elliott.org]

[Photo: Paul Brady]