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As last year came to a close, I had to go to Ankara. Ankara is the capital of Turkey and happens to be where the headquarters for TÜBİTAK, the Turkish version of NSF, is located. Our company was applying for a small business incentive grant; the fact that we decided to hand-deliver the application (due December 31st), rather than trust the Turkish Post, UPS or any other courier service, speaks volumes about the reliability of process in Turkey. I decided to rent a car and drive there. Since I had rented from Europcar in Scotland before and since they are a large, respected operation, I decided to go with them. They had an office in Taksim, which is close to Cihangir as well. So it happened that the morning of the 29th found me and Emre (who kindly decided to keep me company on the way even though he himself had just arrived in Istanbul after an overnight trip) on the road to Ankara. The plan was to make the ~900 km roundtrip in one day. While I was renting the car from Taksim in the morning, I specifically asked where I could drop it off late at night. I was told that the airport office was open 24 hours. I was given instructions on how to get there (unlike many other rental companies, Europcar does not have a drop off spot in the airport itself). I asked the agent whether he had to let the airport people know in advance that I would be returning there and was told that it was not necessary. The trip itself was quite uneventful; the mission was accomplished and we got back to Istanbul in the evening, having used up ~ 200 YTL worth of gas throughout the day (Turkey has one of the highest petrol prices in the OECD). At around 11 that night, exhausted from an entire day's driving, I finally arrived at the drop-off location, which turned out to be a warehouse off to the side of the road to the airport, about a kilometer before the airport entrance. Apart from a dirt road leading to the warehouse and a green Europcar neon, there was no other sign of any life or civilization in the vicinity. My "I have a bad feeling about this" sense was sadly justified when repeated knocking on the shut and locked door brought no response. Just to make sure I had not misunderstood the instructions, I drove to the airport and went in to the rental car return area. After driving around there for a while, the person working in the Hertz booth confirmed that the Europcar return area was indeed the desolate warehouse I had visited. His suggestion was to call them and have them come and meet me at the parking lot. I started dialing the number for Europcar airport office (strangely, it was a cell phone number). I got a signal indicating that the number would not connect. The phone was either off or not receiving. I then called the 24 hour emergency number listed on my jacket and got a message from the phone company informing me that the phone number for that subscriber had changed. The new number rang but was not picked up. After several tries of this, I gave up, feeling very frustrated. It was close to midnight, but fortunately, I had a place to go fairly close by (my parents' house), so I decided to spend the night there. What would have happened if I did not have a place to spend the night? What if I had a plane to catch? How would I make my flight? I could not even leave the car by the warehouse and leave, since the odds of getting a free taxi to come by the airport access road in the middle of the night looked quite low. When I got home, I told my sister and parents what had happened. They could not believe it either. We just could not let go of it, so we started calling all the Europcar numbers on the booklet. Their main office did not pick up. We finally found someone (ironically) at the Ankara airport. He gave us another cell phone number that they used internally, he said, for emergencies. Predictably, this number did not pick up either. When we called him back with the news, his solution was for me to leave the car with the Avis booth and give them his name and number so he could arrange for the car to be picked up next morning. At this point, I went to bed. I started calling Europcar the next morning at 730 am, and still did not get any answer on any of their phones. The airport office (cell) phone continued to not connect at all. The replacement number for their disconnected 24 hour phone did pick up finally, but it turned out to be a cargo company who had never heard of Europcar! When I finally managed to return the car at the airport, I was told that they did have someone last night but they were off helping with an emergency and their cell phone was in another vehicle! Sounded like a lot of bollocks to me. It is inconceivable Europcar has a single person who mans their 24 hour emergency service and their airport office at the same time, if their story is true. They offered me a day's free rental credit, which I have no intention of collecting. The reason of course, dear friends, is that I will never rent from Europcar again (in Turkey). Cihangir, 15 January 2006.
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Copyleft notice: Copyright (C) 1999-2005 Mustafa Ünlü. This information is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. |