Technology-driven customer service ineptitude

At the risk of sounding like a “Get off my lawn!” old person, I can’t help but marvel at how technological failures can ruin a customer experience.

As I descend (ascend?) into “Get off my lawn!” maturity, I have noted a steep decline in customer service in all facets of life. Perhaps you have as well. This deterioration has even infected the hospitable South where waitresses in diners still call you “Darlin’” and “Hun” while refilling your coffee.

A less-than-satisfactory customer experience Labor Day weekend is Exhibit A. Here’s what happened:

For the past few years, I’ve flown to Orlando, rented a car and driven to Lake Wales to see my folks. Being a cost conscious consumer, I used the travel site Expedia to price rental cars, and Sixt offered the best deal the last two years. Before 2024, I had never heard of Sixt. Fortunately, my days of heavy travel for work are past, and I’m not renting cars nearly as frequently as in olden times when Enterprise would “pick me up.”

So I rolled the dice on Sixt. The process in 2024 went fine with a couple of notable exceptions. First, all rental car companies insist on having some kind of human interaction on the front end, so they can scare you into purchasing their insurance. When I really want automation in the process, Sixt wouldn’t let me skip the counter. Maybe if I were a more “valued customer” and rented more frequently, I could earn enough “points” to have a status in which I could use the app they made me download to go straight to my car, but a lot of things would have to go wrong in my life before I earned enough points with Sixt to accomplish this.

When I did finally convince the person at the counter that I would rely on my own auto insurance that I already pay for, I went to find the vehicle in the parking deck late. A previous renter had smoked in the vehicle. It was late on a Friday night, and rather than trudge back into the terminal to find the only human in sight to arrange for a different vehicle that wouldn’t give me a headache all weekend, I just rolled down the windows and went with it. I regretted it all weekend and said as much on my customer service survey after I returned the vehicle.

Fast forward to Labor Day weekend 2025. That nicotine Nissan was on my mind when I engaged with the super friendly customer service agent at the Sixt counter at the Orlando airport. Yes, I am a cost conscious consumer and rented with Sixt again for a visit to my folks’ house.

In my friendly banter with the agent, I told her about my previous “smokey car” issue. She was very nice and apologized. She told me if I had any problems this time, George would be happy to help me out there in the parking deck. She also did not twist my arm to get insurance, which I’m sure violated company policy. Having to stop at the counter to talk to her was not unpleasant, and even though I began the interaction skeptical, so far Sixt was redeeming itself.

George turned out to be, in fact, super helpful. We had a nice chat, he got me into my car, and off I went. If you’ve ever rented a car from Sixt at the Orlando airport, you can’t help but notice their illuminated orange branding everywhere. It casts an eerie glow in the concrete parking structure at night, and the entire floor of the rental car deck at the B terminal made me feel like I was in a tanning bed.

With all of that luminous orange, it’s easy not to notice that when you are exiting the deck, you have to drive through a mini-tunnel of orange lights where you pause and let an automated camera “scan” your vehicle before you wind your way out of the parking deck. And when you return the vehicle, you go through a second vividly orange mini-tunnel that scans your car again. (Note: this is foreshadowing. It will be relevant to our story later on.)

The branding distracts you from what the check-in robot is really up to. By the time you pull up to the drop-off line, hand the keys to the human attendant and rush off to an even worse customer service experience with your airline or TSA, you completely forget about the automated scanning and photography.

Everything went just fine on my trip to Florida this year. No one had smoked in my car, some sort of small Mazda SUV named with a combination of letters and numbers. I felt particularly magnanimous about the surprisingly good customer service I had received, so I spent 10 minutes filling out the survey they sent me the day after my rental. Nothing to see here. All good. Great experience.

So imagine my surprise when three days later I received a damage report on the vehicle from Sixt in an email. Without any due process, I was “automatically” accused of causing a “Aluminium rim front (Tyres) Passenger side scratch > 10 cm (down to primer).” This was not called to my attention when I turned in the car. I even pointed out to the human attendant that the front license plate (my rental car had Texas plates, so they were on the front and back) was bent up all crazy. He said, “Oh, yeah, don’t worry about that. Our car wash does that to the front license plates for some reason.”

I am such an honest guy, I pointed out the damage I had noticed. No one had noticed – not me nor the human attendant – the greater than 10 centimeter scratch down to the primer on the “aluminium” rim on the front “tyre.” But right there with the email was a photo from my “return scan” showing the offending scar. (Remember the tunnel and the orange lights?)

I responded to the email that this was an error. There had not been any damage to the car while I was in possession of it. Radio silence from Sixt. Two weeks later I received a bill from Sixt with a damage report and insurance adjustor’s estimate, complete with photos of the offending scratch.

The email conveniently included a link where I could go to settle my bill of $566 by Oct. 1, 2025. This time, the email included the before photo of the wheel as well as the after photo. The after photo had the scratch called out in an orange (of course!) box superimposed on the image. The before photo, which I guess to their AI analyzer robot did not appear to have a scratch, had no such box superimposed to show a scratch. So by Sixt’s logic, there was no scratch before I rented it. There was one after, and these photos proved it. You, valued customer, must pay us $566.

However, the “before” photo DID clearly show the visible scratch. The tire was, of course, rotated differently in this photo than in the “after” photo, which is why the super intelligent robot scanner missed it. I helpfully superimposed an orange box around the scratch in the before photo and sent them back an email showing what I thought was self-evident. Again, no response.

The last straw came in the form of an email on Oct. 7 informing me my case was being handed over to collections since I had not paid for the damage by Oct. 1. Clearly, my supporting evidence sent to the email address they had provided for responding to “claims management” had been ignored.

That’s when I went to the Sixt website, which also glows orange and gives you a tan, found a customer service phone number and began the herculean task of navigating the automation to get a real, live human person. When I gave him my case number, he called it up in the system. All of my communication was right there, including my helpful box on their “before” photo showing the scratch.

He put me on hold for about five minutes while he sorted it out. The overly loud, weirdly translated marketing messages about Sixt in a male, unidentifiable European accent drove me to madness. When he came back on, he was super friendly and told me everything was resolved. He said he was closing the damage claim and that was that.

The confirmation mail arrived in my inbox a few minutes later, absolving me of the 10 centimeter scratch. I LOLed and couldn’t help but think how dumb this whole thing had been. Sixt ruined a good customer experience with their technology-driven system. Two days later, I received another automated survey email which I took the opportunity to inform them of their customer service failure:

“Every human I interacted with through the rental process was phenomenal. Your automated damage claims process is terrible… You are alienating loyal customers with this automated system which is inaccurate and impersonal. It is costing you business.”

I was suddenly curious about Sixt. What I knew about them could be summed up in a word: Orange. I did a quick internet search, a step I wished I had taken before engaging with them at all. Guess what: Sixt had settled a lawsuit for $11 million for systematically charging customers for vehicle damage and other fees without proper justification. They even  in some instances, reported these charges to credit agencies without sufficient investigation, ruining people’s credit.

Turns out my experience was not unusual. Their system was costing them customers, and in the end, a lot of money in a lawsuit settlement.

The class action suit had a deadline of August 25, 2025 for anyone to come forward and seek a claim from the settlement. I rented from Sixt on August 29, 2025. Even after settling a huge lawsuit for their handling of damage claims, they were still doing the same thing that landed them in court.

I am not afraid of technology. I have embraced as much of it as I can, and I do appreciate the convenience of self-service with a touch of an app on a screen at my fingertips. But in the rush to cut costs and save on personnel expenses, some of the companies I have had the displeasure of interacting with lately have cut their own throat. By eliminating humans from the process, they set themselves up for trouble.

I have deleted the Sixt app and will not be renting a vehicle from them ever again. You know what they say: fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on your artificial intelligence.

The real, timeless lesson in all of this? Caveat emptor.