Enterprise Rent-A-Car Reviews

Pros

Pay is quite competitive
Company is WILDLY profitable
IT initiatives can be challenging
Good employees in IT
Benefits are decent
Work life balance exists depending on team

Cons

Senior Management eats their young
Education is not valued, and advancing your education to graduate or beyond is frowned upon
You must know someone or make an impression on someone to get ahead
Promotions leave you scratching your head as to why
You either make senior manager within 5 years or you will be fired for no reason
Currently firing a lot of management and staff in less that optimal ways (but right-to-work legal lol)
Managers are not encouraged to actually manage and are instead directed to fall in line and act like project managers
Upper management does not communicate well with the down levels which forces people to manage upward
Psychopaths and egomaniacs abound here, in IT anyway
Company is blowing money on worthless initiatives on the software side and allowing so many useless senior managers and directors to shuffle the chairs as the ship slowly sinks
Company is wildly profitable but only takes care of the locals who went to the right high school
At least 30 people in management or otherwise have been fired or forced into early retirement since the first of the year. So much chaos.
Company allows complete psychopaths to run certain IT departments. Once again, the only motivation these morons have is the elusive "Level 3" position. So, they use and abuse you and will throw you under the bus immediately if it means a promotion or even a glimpse of that carrot.

Advice to Senior Management

Get a clue. Your systems are old. It is hard to attract talent that wants to stay for very long. You eat your young and do not encourage managers to focus on any of the people aspects of their job. Instead, managers are allowed to drift aimlessly from meeting to meeting and ignore their teams. As a manager you are expected only to track a bunch of dumb projects and you get no input or advice from upper management. No support. It's a pretty chaotic place to work in IT right now, no doubt about it. I am scrambling to find a different position ASAP.

Pros

great training program where they teach you how to run your own business as well as the ins and outs of the business

Cons

long work hours and at times it feels as if you will never be able to grill due to the amount of sales and numbers you need

Pros

The best thing about working at enterprise rent a car is that you learn a lot about running a business. If you are working really hard at enterprise, you learn a lot about your own strengths and weaknesses as a leader.

Cons

Work/life balance is pretty bad. I don't have any kids, but I couldn't imagine attempting to have a family with a job like this. Staying over at this job, means you've probably put in a 13-14 hour day.

Pros

+good benefits
+great experience out of college
+co-workers are like-minded individuals
+management sets goals for you and you are aware of career path
+training in sales/reviews on progress
+opportunities to make additional money (car sales+employee referrals)
+drive different cars
+learn key business components

Cons

-the hours are very long and hard to get used to
-no work/ life balance whatsoever
-large branches make you feel burnt out
- working with insurance customers/some retail customers makes it difficult to enjoy the job
-starting off pay is low (but management does encourage taking necessary steps to advance)
-a lot of pressure to milk insurance customers
-you find yourself being in uncomfortable situations (cash qualifying renters, callbacks, having no cars with a lobby full of customers and phones ringing off the hook etc.)
-take a lot of mess from customers and expect to just swallow it for esqi reasons
-being the middle man between body shop and insurance companies and upset customers who are left with paying the bill
-branches are short staffed
-although they say do not overbook and under deliver it is inevitable!!!!

Advice to Senior Management

I think that my management team does a great job and I like how personable they are. However, I wish they would experience some of the situations we deal with at the branch and adjust the goals accordingly.

Pros

The people you work with day in and day out are great and the company really does give you the tools to be your own boss.

Cons

Promotions are based on sales numbers so if you can sell you can do really well within the company. However, if you lack sales ability you will most likely be forgotten about regardless of other skills, abilities, and performances in other areas.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep offices fully staffed so everyone can enjoy a good work life balance.

Pros

Great opportunity to build relationships and networks. Opportunity for promotion seems optimal in the beginning. Great resume builder. Skills learned are beneficial for future opportunities.

Cons

LONG hours. Promotes work life balance, but that is NOT typically the case. Did I mention LONG hours? Take your pay rate including commissions and divide it by the hours worked and you will find yourself making less than minimum wage in most cases.

Advice to Senior Management

Be more engaging and understanding. Always place yourself in the MT's or ASM's shoes. Every person entering the MT program want to be successful and in most cases can thrive with your support. Work as a team!

Pros

Days fly by, good benefits

Cons

Long hours, high stress at times

Advice to Senior Management

Pay us a little more

Pros

Management is very understanding and supportive. I like my co-workers but the sales aspect of the job can be difficult. However, it is a flexible work environment.

Cons

The customer service part of the job is the worst because we are expected to bend over backwards to make esqi. Pay outs for sales only happen when we reach esqi which is notmade every month.

Pros

Great place for recent grads.

If nothing else, ERAC is a well-respected company in the business world and it makes for good resume fodder.

Managers at the Area Manager level and above are smart and always available for consultation.
There is good money to be made at the Branch Manager level, though the opportunities for advancement to Branch Manager aren't always there.

The chance to get promoted to other positions within the company ("corporate", car sales, HR, etc.) should never be passed up, as these are prized positions. Working in a position that is "non-rental" actually does give the employee the work/life balance that ERAC promises.

Non-rental positions are much more structured in that Mon-Fri, 8-5, 7:30-5:30 type model. Car Sales follows its own schedule, but there is good money in that department if you are a strong closer.

Great co-workers, and most are usually in the 22-30 age group, which can make for fun and entertaining work days.

Time spent in the "Airport Rotation" is pretty fun. Having to work weekends isn't for everyone, but it's nice to be just on the counter writing contracts, or just in the return lane greeting customers and logging their returns, all without the branch phones constantly ringing or having to rush out of the office to pick up a customer (situations you encounter every day in daily rental).

Cons

Sales, sales, sales! If you do not like selling and don't like being told to continually maintain a certain level of numbers, this might not be the right fit for you.

Long hours and very few breaks in daily rental, especially if you are in a busy branch. While they don't necessarily take advantage of Management Trainees and Management Assistants, Branch and Area Managers do stretch their employees very thin and it's easy to burn out. Part of this stems from keeping labor margins as thin as possible, so you have situations where branches are understaffed for the amount of customers (cars in fleet) they are handling. On the point of long hours, in order to make a reasonable pay check, you have to work the 8-9 hours of overtime asked of rental branch employees. So, you are looking at an average workweek of 48-49 hours. The average workday looks like: arrival at 7:15ish (need to be there before the branch opens at 7:30am) and leaving work at 6:15-6:30pm, and often later. So, while the overtime is not really optional, it's also necessary for you to make reasonable pay.

You are frequently (read: daily) dealing with customers who are forced into renting a vehicle because they were hit by someone else. Many of these people expect the world to stop everything for them because they were not at fault in the accident and they often do not see a difference between ERAC, the insurance company, and the repair shop. It's all one big organization to them and dealing with this mentality can be very frustrating.
As seen through the eyes of Management Trainees and Management Assistants, promotions to Assistant Manager and Branch Manager are often based entirely or almost entirely on sales numbers and the ability to maintain those numbers. It's rare to see an AM or BM with a good mix of personality management skills, scheduling talent, and a high sales acumen. So you get managers who can sell like crazy and maintain a heavy fleet, but they make you feel like you are failing everyone if you need to call in sick or want to use some of your vacation days. This also goes back to running branches with close to skeleton crews. One person needs time off and the machine quickly starts breaking down.

Daily Rental is a very, very reactionary environment. As a rental branch, can try to plan ahead for the next day, but you never know how many body shop and dealership customers will pop up, nor can you control how many customers put in reservations overnight for first thing in the morning. There is a kind of "smoke and mirrors" effect in that you have to always assure customers that you have cars available, while behind the scenes the area managers are shuffling cars around the city and making sure that your office has only the vehicles that it needs and not much more.

Advice to Senior Management

Give daily rental employees a slightly higher hourly wage, and try to stagger employees' shifts each day. Working 11-12 hour days Mon-Fri and then every other Saturday for 3-4 hours leads to burn-out and it's the main reason for high turnover.

Coach your branch managers to not make employees feel like he/she is single-handedly sinking the ship by calling off sick or asking for a few days off when those days off are available to them.

Be more up-front about the company's heavy focus on sales in the recruiting/interviewing process.

Take "people skills" into more consideration when interviewing for promotions. The mentality that promoting "anyone who is killing it in the sales matrix will allow everything else to fall into place" creates a culture where the wrong people are often given management positions. While it can create a short-term gain for the branch and the area, in the long-term that same promoted employee will either burn out or get fired for low numbers, while another, more management-ready employee could have provided some stability for that same branch and area.

Pros

meet goot people and networking

Cons

a lot of pressure to sell insurance and road side assistance and upgrading customers into bigger cars. if your numbers arent good you get written up and warnings

Advice to Senior Management

this isnt an easy job so be prepared to put your personal life aside and to work work work...doing everything from washing cars to running a branch