The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

I'm annoyed with Thrifty, although at this point I'm mostly annoyed that they've interfered with my annoyance by doing the right thing, but not for the right reason.

When I went to Florida for election day I ended up with a flat tire. It didn't seem worth the trouble to try to get the rental car company to come deal with it, so I put the spare on myself (er, I got the retired law prof I was with to change it for me) and then drove it back to the airport to drop it off. I told them about the flat (they probably would have noticed it at some point) and said, "don't worry, I took care of the change myself."

"That's nice," they said, "but you owe us for the repair of the tire," and they charged me $20 for it. I was flabbergasted. They said, "You have to bring the car back in the exact same condition as when you found it. You're lucky we could patch the tire and only charged you for the labor. A new tire would have been $75."

Normally, yes, I agree that I'd need to bring the car back in the same condition. I should not bring it back with avoidable damage like dents or broken tail lights that would reduce the value of the car as an asset. But flat tires are not particularly avoidable (I'd been driving on the interstate, not offroading in the Everglades) and thus are fairly routine wear and tear. While it's entirely likely that with good driving a car may go its entire life without being dented or scratched, a tire is likely to go flat at some point no matter how skilled the driver.

Furthermore, they as a company are in a better position to absorb the costs of this kind of wear and tear than the customer. Now, I'm ok with them not being on-call to come out and change it for me. I'm in a better position to absorb that part of the flatting risk: while they might have customers hither and yon, making roadside repairs unpredictably expensive, I have AAA. So that's fair. But here they had control of the costs. I grant you they wouldn't have if I had gotten the tire repaired elsewhere and come back to them for reimbursement, but that's not what was happening. I was back at the company, where they had already-employed staff available to handle the repair. The $20 charge might have made more sense if they'd had to run out and hire a guy specially to take care of it. But it took a guy they already had working for them maybe 15 minutes, tops, to take care of it and didn't seem to particularly slow down any part of their operation. In other words, the repair did not cost them anything, or at least nowhere near the $20.

Worse, the idea that I would have had to pay them the retail cost for a new tire is preposterous. Not only would I not be about to control the costs (it's not like I could shop around for a deal) but it would reward the company with the value of a new asset. An asset whose value it would continue to be able to enjoy, though I, who paid for the entire thing, would not.

Tires have finite lifespans. Though an unpunctured one might last for many thousands of miles, the realistic lifespan needs to be calculated with the likelihood of puncture in mind. When the company sets its rates it should set them according to what it needs to charge to recoup its costs for general maintence, including for tire repair. Over an entire fleet of cars, however, that reduction will not likely be too great. But in any case, the company is in a better position to cheaply absorb the loss. Whereas sticking the cost to customers makes them bear a disproportionate and un-amortizable loss. Of course, in theory abusing the customers, while seemingly profitable in the short term, may likely hurt it in the long run when customers decide to do business with companies with less usurious policies.

Which leads me to my current dilemma, on whether or not to rent a car from Thrifty again. (Or Dollar, which seems to be the same company). I have some upcoming trips to rent cars for, and I needed to know if they'd do right by me before giving them any more business. So I called them, and they refunded my $20. But they seemed to be doing it as a favor, and not because it was the right thing to do. As I debated the policy with the rep she reaffirmed it. "I can give you back your $20," she said, "But that's our policy."

So they did the right thing but for the wrong reasons, which leaves me in an unpredictable situation. I rent from this company not infrequently, and I would gladly continue to do so if I knew I didn't have to absorb the risk of a flat. If they can be counted on to refund the cost for such repairs, then, while it's an annoying process to have to go through, I could still do business with them. But if there's the danger that they would ever defer to the policy and refuse the refund, then the rational thing for me to do may well be to rent somewhere else. Of course, given the regularity of my patronage the rational thing for them to do is not inflict this policy on me again at all. So I guess what I really want to know is whether they are a rational actor or not. Unfortunately, in light of their pursuance of the policy in the first place, I fear the answer is no...