Blacklisted: 4 travel companies people avoid

Thrifty. As with the hotel category, there is no monthly report card for rental cars. I can review my own files, which have more than their fair share of Thrifty complaints. I could look at the latest J.D. Power and Associates ratings which give Thrifty a below-average grade, overall.

But it’s the surcharges that put Thrifty over the top, according to the customers I talk with. And we’re not necessarily talking about the little fees here, either. We’re talking big extras and possibly illegal ones, too. Last year, the former owner of a Thrifty location in Billings, Mont., was convicted in a federal court for conspiring with an auto glass business to overcharge for windshield replacements.

I’ve seen this kind of thing before. A few years ago, I was flooded with complaints about Enterprise. Seems the company was aggressively — and some customers said, fraudulently — pursuing damage claims. Eventually, Enterprise backed down, to the relief of its customers. In other words, the lead car in this race changes often. Yesterday it was Enterprise. Today it might be Thrifty. Tomorrow, who knows?

Princess. Picking a cruise line for this list was the biggest challenge. There’s no way to independently verify the number of complaints about cruises. The Federal Maritime Commission doesn’t issue a regular report on the number of grievances it gets in the same way the Transportation Department publishes an airline report card. And even if it did, I’ve found that cruise complaints tend to be among the most frivolous — long laundry lists of nitpicky items that don’t always rise to the level of legitimacy.

It isn’t even that Princess generates more grievances than the others. (I asked Princess spokeswoman Julie Benson, and she said the cruise line hadn’t experienced any recent surge in complaints.) It’s that when passengers do complain, the company’s attitude often seems to be dismissive. And that doesn’t exactly encourage customers to book another sailing on The Love Boat. My colleague Anita Potter documents the company’s apparent indifference in a recent column in which a passenger is wrongfully denied boarding and then ignored when she asks for a refund of her expenses. Princess is remarkably consistent. Even my requests for assistance on behalf of other travelers are usually met with a “we’ll look into it” followed by a long silence. One reader recently referred to its passenger relations department as a fortress. That’s a good way to put it.

Should you avoid these companies, too? In a perfect world, travelers would be able to boycott companies that gave them bad services. In reality, they can’t. You don’t always have a choice in airline, hotel, car rental agency or even cruise line.  But that shouldn’t stop you from keeping score.

I’ll be taking a close look at what makes the travel business tick in this column that appears here every Monday. Your comments are always welcome, and if you can’t get enough of my column, drop by my blog for daily insights into the world of travel.

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