Of all the recurring complaints I get from readers, the one they find by far most vexing has nothing to do with excessive fees, surprise surcharges or surly employees. It’s about traffic tickets. In Italy.
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car rental
This is Kathyria Padilla’s rental car. When she returned it to Avis last April, she took a few snapshots of the vehicle, just in case. Good thing she did.
If you’ve ever been hit with a surprise fee when you rented a car or booked an airline ticket and found yourself saying, “There ought to be a law,” I have some good news for you: There is. Or at least, there could be.
Car rental companies are known to unleash collection agencies on their customers, often for no good reason. Don’t believe me? Just pick up a car rental trade magazine to see the full-page ads by companies that handle damage claims, which are just a step removed from a collection agency. Or visit my office, and I’ll share the “collection agency” case file with you. Or read this. Don’t get me wrong: I think these companies have a place in this world. But not in Dorothy Rice-Lara’s world.
Travelers are discovering that it pays to cast a wide net when they’re looking for affordable wheels.
Here’s a problem travelers are running into more frequently: Months after a trip, they get a bill from their rental company charging them for an unknown traffic violation, plus a handling fee. Often, there’s little recourse.
When you return your rental car, your liability for the vehicle ends, right? Wrong.
Jessica Siegel brought her sedan back to Avis in London recently. A few weeks later, she got a bill for triple the amount she’d expected.
What happened? She’d dropped off the car after hours, and during the night, someone broke a window on [...]
Like most travelers, Bette Waterstreet doesn’t expect much when she rents a car. A clean, running vehicle that’s in the same car class she ordered will do just fine. But that’s not what she got when she rented from Thrifty in Ontario, Calif., recently.
Pretend, for a minute, that car rental companies are high school students. The average class grade on a recet test is 73 percent, which is a C- and, truth be told, just a point away from a D.
When Steven Price returned his rental minivan to Fox Rent A Car in San Jose, Calif., recently, an agent claimed he “put a scratch on the bumper” and the company eventually demanded he pay $520.
“I’m a long-time agent with Alamo,” the email began. “I’d rather remain anonymous, if you don’t mind.”
He had seen a recent complaint on this site about a company location changing its car classifications to save money, and had some disturbing news: Alamo was overhauling its categories company-wide.
Apparently, less is more.
Sarah Steffen thought she was making a routine call to Dollar to add a child seat to her confirmed car rental. But the company had some bad news for her: it didn’t have a seat for her — or a car.
Recent news that Hertz would begin photographing its rentals got me wondering: What about the “ding” scams that have made the car rental industry millions of dollars over the last few years?
After a double-billing error on his car rental bill, Priceline promises Larry Lundeen a prompt refund. It never comes, despite the online travel agency’s insistence to the contrary. What can you do when your credit card records don’t match up with those of your travel company?
Matthew Darrah is a senior vice president at Enterprise, where he oversees North American operations for Enterprise Rent-A-Car, National Car Rental and Alamo Rent A Car. I asked him about the summer’s skyrocketing car rental prices and what travelers should do about some of the new fees they’ve seen on their rental bills.
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