Larry sent a message to Roger S. Penske – Chairman of the Board and CEO of Penske Corporation – Email Address that said:
Wanted to write to complain about the service I received from Penske for my resent rental. I rented a 26' truck from Gurnee, IL. I rent it as a local truck but drove it to Sarasota FL and back. This was understood at time of rental. The transmission started acting up as I closed in on Sarasota but I made it to my location and that coupled with the horrible weather forced me to unload the truck that night. I also called road side assistance and they said I would need to call again the next day. Instead I took it to the local Sarasota Penske shop. They worked on my truck and reprogrammed the computer. They did not test drive it. The person at the counter expressed concern as he said it is a local truck.
I set off home and made it Ocala with the truck getting worse. They needed to replace the computer and needed a part which was three hours away. Here I heard a bunch more how it is a local truck and talked to someone in IL who said I would get a free day if I waited the 3 hours.
I took off again and did not make it far, stopping in Greenfield FL and I was done and said I need a new truck. The local storage place put me on the phone with Al Mitchell who treated me like dirt. Again mentioned over and over about it being a local truck and how it must be brought back to IL. He was very rude on the phone and did not seem to care at once about my driving a faulty truck and also wasting 7 hours of my time at 3 Penskes locations. He said the only way to get a new truck was call road side assistance. I did and they did send someone out and I finally got a new truck.
On checking the new truck in when I returned I found my bill was the full days minus one day but also $480 in gas tacked on even though the truck was a break down. I got that taken off the bill luckily.
My concerns are as a customer I should not ever hear about or know about a local or one way truck. I am sure Penske knows locals are not kept local by the mileage logs so for a customer they should treat a "local" as a one way. Maybe the internal system needs to be changed but that is not my concern.
Next I mention that if I owned Penske or was a manager I would have done more to make me happy after the experience. Rather than charge me the 5 days I would have either charged 3 for actual use. The day off as promised for the fourth day (which was spent all in Penske locations) and the $350 one way charge for the 16' truck I brought back to IL. Or at least give me two free days. One for agreeing to wait that 3 hours and another because I would have been able to be home a day earlier without that wasted day.
Sincerely,
Larry
