Avis Lost Property

Way back in March I rented a car from AVIS. I inadvertently left a suit carrier with a business suit in the back seat. I was flying out so when I returned I went and reported the loss at the desk in terminal 5 where I'd returned the car. Secretly hoping they'd kept it. Even though the guy who checked the vehicle and took the keys from me was sitting right(he never looked up BTW) there no-one remembered anything. The girl on the counter rang the lost property department and they couldn't find it. It was an Avis preferred booking, (Which they kept telling me was a "totally different company" ) so they rang them and I was told that they would contact me back. They never did.

What I wonder is with the booking being linked to my name it should be really easy to give me a call and say they have my stuff. I'm sure they have millions of pieces of lost property in any given year, but it's not liked the underground where anyone could have left it they have the name and phone number on the rental the item is associated with. So why not give the customer a call. I'd have happily paid a £20 recovery fee to compensate for their time to get my suit back.

I have to say I'm done with Avis. Their customer service is generally bad. When you talk to their staff if you point out an issue they always go on the defensive and then try to blame the customer. In a separate incident, I was given a price for a walkup if £450 and then the guy tried to charge £950 to my credit card. When I asked him why he didn't give the total cost he said he had and that I didn't understand about extras. On the occasion when I picked up the car where I lost my suit I arrived with my wife and young family. First, they couldn't find the booking, then they realised it might be a Prestige booking, then they couldn't find the keys. Then they found the keys the car was a 5 seater rather than the 7 seat model I'd ordered, then when they saw my valid driving license was near expiry (but was still in force for the length of the rental) and called to check with Prestige if I could still rent the car. I was there for two hours with a 1 year old and 4-year-old child who were hungry and tired. When I mentioned that all the driving license data was available in AVIS's system at the time of the booking, I was asked "what system Prestige is a totally different company" when I pointed out I'd used the Avis system to book the car they kept explaining that "Prestige is a different company, it not our fault". Well if they're dealing with Prestige bookings they should know the rules. Anyway, as a contrast to the original complaint regarding lost property. Here's what happened when I left my 10 Euro hat in back of an Uber yesterday:

MESSAGE DE UBER Saturday, May 19, 2018 at 10:22:29 AM · uberX Hi Michael, Did you happen to forget a black cap in a car on our network? If so, don’t hesitate to contact the driver through the application. If you don’t find an easy way with your driver to get back your lost item, your driver can drop it at our offices and we will contact you when you can pick it up. Have a good day. If Uber can do this with a vehicle that being used a multiple times a day, why can't Avis do it for a car that I had for a week.