Horrible company, bad treatment of employees, bad management, lying, bullying, mistreatment
I have worked for many companies, avis budget is amongst the worst. First off, this stupid company hires people deceptively- they hire only or mostly for peak season but make people think they are going to be permanent employees. The employees are told they are on probation and are made to come to work every day---even while sick, missing everything else, while the older employees call in sick whenever they want. There are no standards or fairness with this stupid unethical company. Older employees can call in sick as much as they want, those on a 'false probation' will come to work sick and be put on crazy shifts, sometimes even 9 days in a row. New hires will have to take bullying from other employees, from managers, because they are on probation and are scared- and the worst part is, in the end before their 90 days is up- avis will just GET rid of them, for no reason-- even if they did everything right, even if they are good sales reps, came to work everyday-- avis will jsut get rid of them. Avis treats these employees as if they are nothing...avis basically just USES them for three months while lying to them. THe bad thing about this sick company is that-- it gets rid of GOOD employees and keeps BAD ones or ones who arent good sales people or who call in sick or who don't even want to be there or who don't even work at all. . They have no ethics nothing. The managers even sabotage them by not telling them if they are doing something wrong so in the end they'll find any ex
Prosuncapped commissions, 40 hour work week
Consbad management, bad environment, bullying, bad employees, unfairness, no standards or ethics, favoritism
3.0
Customer Service Representative | Denver, CO | May 27, 2014
Horrible Management Practice and No Products, but Expected to Sell to Keep Job.
You apply online, take the typical personality assessment (choose extreme answers so you can remember your position), take a common sense sales scenario assessment if you're going for RSA, and follow up with drug test. They offer paid training for 3 months with a performance review at the end (never consistent unless managers can remember to do so).
You get to clock in 6 minutes before or after your start time, before being considered late. Same method for finishing your shift; overtime is always available due to high turnover rate. You get 24 points to call in sick (2 pts each) or be tardy on (1 pt) in one year. If it becomes a habit, they have a disclaimer saying they can tack on points as they see fit and fire you. Shifts are based on seniority; meaning you'll be stationed to receive returning cars on "the hill" unless you can learn the 40 year old Wizard DoS system that they established their User Interface software upon or can handle customers yelling in your face. The system never integrates properly with 3rd party software (Amex, Concur) used by corporations (Lockheed, HP, Boeing, J&J, and Black&Veatch), so be prepared to answer the ultimate question "Why is my name not on the board?". Denver's Avis location uses union members with low cleaning quota of 4 cars per hour, while their Budget side uses GCA with no set limit. If you work on the Avis lot, you will never have vehicles due to this stipulation or if managers did not do last night's car head count correctly;
Pros8 Hour Shift, 30 Minutes Included; Benefits.
ConsManagers, No Cars, No HR, High School Drama Complete with Coveting Locker Space, Part-time College Load Capable Only, and Broken Equipment Fixed by India.
They want you to omit facts to swindle money from customers
If you have a moral compass, this job is not for you. You have to upsell people into "nicer", more expensive cars and you reap little to no benefit from doing so. Even when my sales were up and I was being congratulated by upper management, I was severely unhappy.
Your commission is based on how many people tell you "no" throughout the day, and I don't know if you've noticed, but the entire country is losing money right now. You could be taking someone's food money away. But the sell is more important to ABG.
*The more people that tell you "no", the less you get paid.
*The more people that tell you "no", the more sales pressure that comes down on you. If you don't sell well enough, they can suspend you on a weekly basis until they feel you've "learned your lesson."
Since the company reformed in 2008, they claim to have made more money from 2008-present day than they have since 1954, when they first went into business. The only two things that have happened since then were the new sales regiment and the fact that they changed how employee commissions were payed. The commission used to be based on what you sold during the month.. ie: If you sold a GPS, you got a dollar a day for however long they had the rental. Now it's based on a sliding scale and tiers. You can sell, sell, sell, sell and never reach your tier. There were plenty of times where I'd sold thousands in ancillary products, prepaid gas and upsells and (literally) got an extra penny or two for it on my paycheck.
Prosgreat people working at the airport, very supportive network of friends
Consavis budget group takes advantage of it's staff and customers to make a profit
Washed up company trying desperately to relive their golden era...
ABG is desperate for decent managers and can rarely get out of their own way when hiring and/or promoting. Someone who is a strong leader and can thrive in an ambiguous environment has the potential to look like a rock star and get promoted up a few ranks quickly. It's decent money for a short while before it becomes nauseating.
That said - here's where the bad parts come in: Like much of car rental and air travel - ABG is living on the memories of what it once was. They remain stuck in the management cultures and physical structure of the 1960s and seem to be unaware that things have changed. The company today is so unprofitable they can't afford to replace worn out furniture and repair building wear/damage even when safety is compromised. If you are in a newer location you wouldn't know this, but anywhere else, put a bag over that toilet - it's dead for eternity now! Managers tend to be veterans who get rewarded for their time served as opposed to actual job proficiency (job proficiency for them is the words "yes sir") - many of which have only ever worked at ABG and might never have had a college degree (you know - like the one they require for even entry level manger roles now). The result is a culture of thinking "we're so great here" and a near-total inability to see how wrong they are.
Worse yet is that there is little to no official structure for growth. Regular reviews - nope. Formal promotion or talent development programs - nope. L&D department - eliminated. An
ProsStrong leaders who work well in ambiguous environments look like rock stars, company car for managers, you'll gain transferable skills in logistics/process improvement/customer recovery/crisis management, you will leave with a firm understanding of how NOT to lead a team
Consno work-life balance at all, managers forced to spend 10+ hours a day performing hourly roles, total lack of development or career potential, horrifically bad mangement that gets worse as you go up the chain, terrible recruitement of hourly staff that turn over 100-200% per year!
This was the worst experience I've ever had in a work place, save yourselves, don't hassle with this place.
There are four shuttlers at this location who are horribly verbally and physically abusive to new employees, that's why they can't keep new employees. At this location, I was verbally abused by four drivers/shuttlers that work here and physically assaulted by one. The management does absolutely nothing to these individuals. The drivers have been there for years, apparently dislike their jobs and the climate is the worst I've seen in all of my years of employment. It does not have to be this way, but it is...for $8.46 an hour. This place needs to get rid of all of the old drivers who complain and hate their jobs and abuse new employees and get new people. The women drivers are the worst, not driving but how they treat others, it's not worth it, don't do it. Many of the drivers don't take care of themselves so they smell bad, look bad, imagine shuttling with unkempt people in small cars in the summer time. I will say it's absolutely not what I thought it would be. The old drivers who have been there for years get away with horrible treatment of new people because management just doesn't care, honestly, I've never seen anything like it. All management cares about is moving cars, aside from the old drivers killing the new employees, they don't care. I will say management is incredibly overburden, the scheduling is the worst I've ever seen, you can't plan anything ahead of time, there were times when the schedule wasn't even available and employees had to wing it, this i
I wouldn't recommend working for Avis as a company. They do not pay fairly for the amount of work that you will be doing. They always ask you to do more and more tasks with no extra pay to show for the long hours you work. Most employees tend to work 60+ hours there with no extra pay, and that includes working constantly over the weekend. If you do not have a plan in place to have a successful work/social balance you will be finding yourself constantly working. At Avis, you are merely treated as a "head" and that's all corporate sees you as. Every manager there from City Manager, District Manager, Airport Manager, Supply Chain Manager, Corporate Manager, Region Manager, etc all have their own agenda because it is tied to "their bonus" so they want things done their way, or that's what it seemed like when I was there. This is the only company that I know that doesn't tell you how much of a bonus you can make and how you can achieve that bonus. You won't find out until the end of the year and you never reach your full bonus because they will find something to take that away from you no matter how well the company did. It's all about putting more money into the top people's pocket.
Moving into a manager role, they have no training program set up for a fleet manager and what they expect. I received no training whatsoever as I was always pushed off to someone else to train me. In fact, the first two weeks I started there, I was asked to spend time going over how to rent a car, u
ProsFree company vehicle, free gas, and free insurance - only thing that kept me around for so long
ConsEverything - the stress, the managers, the way corporate just viewed you as a head, terrible pay for the amount or work, everyone wasn't on the same page as a company, no training, you name it!
The way that Avis pay structure works is lets say a customer walks into avis with a reservation for a little cheap car for the day.The more you upgrade that customer to take expensive insurance or more expensive "cooler" car than what they are reserved in, gps systems etc,the more you get payed on a commission check every month.
So here is the catch.
For every customer that walks up to you in line and doesn't want any extras,upgrades,insurance etc,MONEY is taken away from your commission check based on how many days they are renting the car.Regardless if they already have personal insurance or from there company or credit card.Or the company they work for says they can not upgrade doesn't matter.No ifs ands or buts.It is all automatically done instantly through the computer.For example if they rent the car for 30 days( which is very common) and they don't want to pay 27 dollars a day for insurance or 40 dollars a day for an upgrade to a better car that's negative 30 days against your commission.So other employees will dodge in the back if customers come to the counter so you will have to take them and chance being negative more days.(managers do not punish for this)
Micromanaged every second every day.
Not only does that hurt but a manager stands behind you and has a list of over 40 things that you are to memorize and literally puts a check mark beside everything that you say and don't say.(will do it about 5 times a week) Its not about your selling ability though its
Prosif you are really considering avis please read
Consplease read the review
2.0
Customer Service Representative | Tulsa, OK | Sep 6, 2017
Mind Boggling Call Center
OMG, it's a mind boggling job. I knew it was time for me to leave when I started laughing uncontrollably at a customer on the phone who wanted to rent a car but had no credit card. There's nothing funny about being an unqualified renter, but i was losing my mind from all those calls. Call after call. All day. Every day. By the way, the man on the phone had no idea I was having a meltdown, because the headsets have a mute button you can quickly activate. All he heard was silence as he was explaining what a good driver he was even though he didn't have a credit card, and assuring me that he wouldn't wreck a luxury car rental. It wasn't a prank call, either. These are the kind of legitimate challenges that you must deal with when answering dozens of calls per day. The prank calls are the easiest ones to.deal with, because it's an automatic disconnect. If somebody asks what you are wearing or whatever, then you push the disconnect button, and click ! , they're gone. Immediately, a new caller is automatically routed through for you to answer. It becomes extremely monotonous very quickly. I worked there for about seven months before I quit. The call volume is overwhelming. I was at the bottom of the totem pole, so I worked the evening shift. The people with seniority got the day shift and the night shift. (Yes, the graveyard shift is a promotion from the evening shift.). The day shift employees are busy getting all the really good callers who are professional, experi
In the brief time I worked there (a little over 2 months), I found that the people I worked with were great. Thank goodness they were helpful in answering my questions and helping me learn the ropes. I found that you received very little training before being left alone to fend for yourself. Although the owner expressed a desire to be very professional, her solution to training involved my standing in front of the customer and calling her to walk me through screens I hadn't yet learned. Although effective, it appeared to me to be very unprofessional and quite embarrassing. At my interview I expressed to the owner that I was NOT a salesperson and not comfortable with sales practices. I was told it was not sales it was more of a numbers game. NOT TRUE. By the time I was "laid off", I had learned most of the screens used (there are like 20) and had the all the reports and procedures down. Unfortunately I was not producing sales to the owner's satisfaction. Exactly the thing I told her at my interview that I was not comfortable doing. I ALWAYS asked the customer if they were interested in buying the supplemental products/coverage. However, I didn't possess the ability to fancy-talk or trick them into paying to upgrade their vehicles (especially when I was required to give them the upgraded vehicle because we did not have the vehicle they reserved). I'm not comfortable lying and I did not like the idea of being caught in a lie. However I do think the worst part of th
ProsThe staff were all very friendly and helpful in my training
It was ok while it lasted but don't stay here for long because there's zero opportunity for advancement on the processing side. Every associate in the department has the same title regardless of tenure or quality of work.
Pay was just ok and benefits were decent. Lots of OT during the busy season (late fall to early spring) but you can't take a good chunk of time off until summer. OT was flexible too because the building is open 24/7. They have a nice cafeteria and security on site. There are annual bonuses but your yearly raise is like 25 cents.
Another pro is that you'll have Fridays before Monday holidays off or off early with pay. You are allowed to listen to music on your cell phone. If you need a 5 minute breather to stretch and get coffee or a snack they're cool about it.
The work itself was easy to catch on but extremely repetitive. You definitely must be efficient at typing, sorting documents and putting packets together. Training is poorly conducted and very rushed. You're just sat at a desk, told to key VINs all day and left to your own devices. You have to figure out the logic of the whole process on your own. It can be stressful but the hours will fly once you get into your groove.
Main con was a certain head processing manager; extremely condescending and snarky, out of touch with what the work entails, will tell you to do something that ends up being incorrect then will throw you under the bus in front of others just to save face. Never takes accountabili
ProsOn site cafeteria, lots of extra days off, good benefits, location
ConsNightmare head supervisor, no promotions, insultingly low raises, use it or lose it vacation days, 6-9 month probation period, dead-end job
From my experiences and those of my colleagues too:
- Let me make it clear that your manager will throw you in the deep end as soon as possible with the absolute minimum of training and support. This seems to be the company’s general attitude to supporting their colleagues.
- You’ll get told to “deal with it” a lot especially if you ask managers for support.
- Management is slow to respond to any issues unless it’s against someone they dislike.
- Managers have a “I am the Boss” entitled attitude.
- They will try to pass on manager-specific daily tasks onto Rental Sales Agents or Customer Service Reps and will throw a strop when you say no but can’t do anything because they can’t make you do their job for them so rely on your ignorance and fear of reprisals.
- I’ve seen managers talk to and treat their drivers and staff like trash.
- Managers will come into work late and leave early but if you come in 10 mins late one day and stay back 10 mins at the end of your shift you’ll still get deducted. They will also disappear for hours on break.
- Overtime and even normal work hours are most times not paid properly as managers have total control of the Kronos system that controls hours worked and thus pay and you’ll have to chase this up which sometimes takes months for it to be rectified properly.
- You’ll be required to finish late one day and start early the next and whole weekends off are RARE! No such thing as work/life balance unless you’re a manager and can take adv
ProsWorking with a few decent people
ConsToo many to list here. Read the review it’s long but detailed and accurate
Questions And Answers about Avis Budget Group
What is the dress code at corporate HQ and what is the general culture?
Asked Aug 15, 2016
In 2018, they went to casual wear (jeans, but neat).
Answered May 13, 2019
Slacks and neat shirt or top
Answered Aug 17, 2018
What hours does a part-time Avis shuttler usually work?
Asked Mar 14, 2016
I was told by the manager that the part time is kind of a full time where you work 10 hour shifts or more, depending if the job is not done.
Answered Jan 16, 2020
Here in Pensacola the hours are 6:30am to 2pm or 2pm to 10:30pm.
Answered Oct 16, 2018
What is the best part of working at Avis Budget Group?
Asked Dec 5, 2019
Profesional work
Answered Nov 8, 2020
There really wasn’t a best part. Unless you consider the other employees other then upper management as a plus. Usually you grow a thick bond with people you suffer through hardships with. That is if they’re a good employee and have strong work ethics like yourself.
Answered Oct 5, 2020
What is a typical day like for you at Avis Budget Group?
Asked Mar 20, 2020
Controlled chaos.
Answered Nov 14, 2020
Saturday sunday
Answered Nov 8, 2020
What is the interview process like and how long does it take for someone to get ahold of you if you applied online?
Asked Nov 8, 2016
I was contracted to do a google hangout interview. Was offered a job. Then a check arrived FedEx for over $4k to purchase equipment for the job. The check was fake. Please be carful.
Answered Feb 5, 2020
Someone contacted me via text message and conducted a Google Hangout interview. Seems like a scam but I decided to follow through and provide the information they requested to test out if it's a scam. Will update soon.
