The latest James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, hit the big screen last weekend breaking box office records. But, did you know that James Bond is a customer of ours? In “Tomorrow Never Dies”, it was Avis that Mr. Bond selected for his car rental needs (either that or we have negotiated preferred supplier status with MI6), hiring a car with us from our rental office at Hamburg airport.
Clearly our Rapid Return service wasn’t quite good enough for our heroic secret agent. Not content with waiting 60 seconds, he decided it would be far quicker to drive the car directly into the rental office. Given that he was trying to save the world, we decided to over-look the matter.
Still, despite creating a substantial repair bill, MI6 were kinder to us in other ways. We were delighted when they lent us the master of gadgets that is “Q” for the day, who had to disguise himself as an Avis rental agent to help with this top secret operation.
Reading some of the comments in the Customer Opinion Survey that was conducted during Q’s time at Hamburg Airport, there is plenty of feedback to suggest that our customers loved his sweet, bumbling manner. Although we thought it best to decline his kind offer to make a few “modifications” to our rental cars!
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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Perhaps James Bond could investigate what is going on at Avis & try to discover whether it has been infiltrated by Smersch or some other evil organisation.
Only such an organisation would be so cruel as to punish their shareholders by slashing their discount after making their shares worthless & removing dividends.
Hi Richard, I totally sympathise with your sentiment. This decision was not one that was taken lightly, but in response to the worsening economic conditions across many of our geographic markets. Unfortunately, in these tough times, we have to make some tough decisions and continue to focus on cost reduction.
I appreciate that with an underperforming share price, a reduction in your car hire discount benefit does little to restore your confidence in your investment. But generating confidence from our shareholders is absolutely critical to our success and we are in no doubt that the tough actions we are taking now will help shareholders realise the kind of returns they are expecting in the longer term.
If you have any other thoughts or comments then please feel free to post them.
Rob