Last month, my family and I had the privilege of visiting Paris and London for about 9 days. It was a "let's go see some European soccer" kind of trip, but that's definitely not why you're reading this now.
No, the reason I'm engaging your eyes right now is that we rented a car for the first time (in my lifetime) in the UK and I drove us from London to Wrexham (that's just over the English border into Wales), back to Brighton (England), to Stonehenge, and then back to London over the course of 3-4 days. Now, I've never driven in the UK before, and the "wrong side of the street" situation was nerve-racking, to be sure.
Then came a charge on my credit card that popped up on my phone a couple of days ago. It was from SixT UK (the company I rented the car from), and it was for about $158. Not knowing why they'd charged (several weeks after returning to the United States), I opened my email to discover this:
Ok...90 GBP penalty and 40 GBP for the "admin fee". Bollocks.
What is a congestion charge (as it relates to London)? A bit of Googling brought me to this site. Apparently, there is a zone in London that charges you a daily amount for driving inside it during a certain period of time during certain days of the week. It's to prevent pollution. I get it. It's harsh, but I understand it. L.A. should look into this, just saying.
Anyway, not being from London (or the UK), I didn't automatically know this. How would I? (I'm a dumb American, right?) So, I contacted SixT and asked them why I wasn't made aware of this congestion charge when I picked up the car. Not being made aware of it, I asked that they refund the 130 GPB (roughly the $158 I was charged). In no uncertain terms, they called me a uniformed American (at least they didn't use "dumb"?) and told me I could go pound the nearest sand I could find.
This made me angry.
Now, I can understand the plight of the company. They don't control local laws where they operate. They have to abide by them, and function (hopefully, profitably) inside parameters not controlled by them. I get all of that, I really do. I work for a Home Depot service provider. We have to operate within limits and regulations, and sometimes that is a true pain.
What's even more guiding is that they knew this was a potential issue. In London. Study the line item detail of the charges below, and you will see that they charged me (the customer) the 15 GPB for the FIRST day of my rental. 
So this leads me to my main question for this post…
What happened to customer service?
When I contacted SixT, instead of coming back with what they said, they could have offered me several different options instead of the "piss off" answer I got. I'll run through some of them here:
1) Offer me (the customer) sincere apologies for the inconvenience and charges, point me to the rules and regulations they have set forth, and (even if untrue) recognize the need to prompt future travelers (especially ones coming from outside the UK, much less London itself) that there are specific penalties regarding X, Y, or Z.
2) #1 above and offer to refund the 40 GBP "admin fee" for the recognition that the local associate probably should have made me aware of the potential penalties.
3) #1 above and offered to refund me 115 GPB (130 - 15 "normal" daily fee), recognizing that IF they had offered to charge me the 15 GBP at the time of rental for the return of the car, I would have taken it (knowing the potential 130 GBP penalty fee).
4) #1 above and offered me a (one-time) full refund with apologies for not providing the simple service of letting me know of the local regulations and the potential local charges and/or fees associated with violating them.
But they didn't do any of that. They simply sneered at me and wrote me off. Preferring to lose me as a customer than try and either explain (with empathy) and/or make it “right”.
Having done neither of those, they succeeded in writing off my future business.
