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Better business, please
Sort of. Over a week after she returned the laptop, we were driving back from our week away from civilization out in upstate New York and found we had voicemail messages. Seven of them, all from Rent-a-Center, six of them demanding in varying degrees of surliness that she return the laptop or pay the next month’s rent. One of these messages—and not by any means the last of them—was an apologetic recognition that she had returned the laptop already. Given this, she called to make sure that it was taken care of. It wasn’t, but they acknowledged in fairly short order that it was their mistake and assured her that it was taken care of.
Which is odd, since you’d think if it was taken care of, she wouldn’t have gotten a call from them the next day, again demanding payment or the return of the laptop. Or, for that matter, the day after that, when someone called again.
You’d think that a place that rents out computers could afford one to keep track of who’s returned what.
Billed twice. Twice.
I meant to blog about the Rent-a-Center incident some time ago but forgot until I returned to my mother’s from Memphis and she arrived home to find her credit card bill, on which all sorts of things had gone wrong. First, the Holiday Inn Express that we’d stayed in this past weekend had charged us for 2 rooms or 2 nights back in July, a month before we stayed with them and about 10 days after Mom made the reservation. Chalk it up as another in a line of reasons that we probably won’t stay there again. First, we arrived and they didn’t have our reservation. Mom pulled out her reservation number and they said it looked like it had been cancelled, but they did still have rooms, so it was okay. But obviously it wasn’t. The best I can figure is that they took down her reservation as being for July 10 instead of August 10 and then when we didn’t show up in July, they charged us as no-shows on the 11th. Whatever it was, they were reluctant to admit their mistake, and as of this moment still haven’t. A manager is supposed to call us later. For the record, we were also less than impressed with the way we roomed with a whole bunch of ants, or the way that one of the microwaves didn’t work.
And under the heading “it never rains but it pours,” on the same credit card statement, she found that her natural gas company billed her credit card for something that she paid with a personal check. Evidently everyone and their kid brother wants to charge Mom twice.
How about you? Any frustrating and/or hilariously frustrating experiences with businesses?