Is This Enough Compensation?

Did the company offer enough compensation? That is the question.

My rental stopped running and now they want me to pay $6,523!

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Ep Photo/Shutterstock
Ep Photo/Shutterstock
Everything seemed fine with the Jeep Wrangler Unlimited that Vitor Soares rented from an independent rental company called Super Car Rentals in Aruba. But it wasn’t.

On the second afternoon of his two-day rental, the vehicle broke down.

“We tried to engage the reverse gear to get back to the correct path; the car simply stopped moving,” he remembers. “After that we immediately called Super Car Rentals, and they sent us a third-party towing truck to take care of the car.”

That’s when the trouble really started. The tow truck driver handed him a bill for $400, which he refused to pay, since he hadn’t dispatched the truck, and he considered it to be the car rental company’s responsibility.

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Is mandatory car rental insurance a “bait and switch” scheme?

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Studioartz/Shutterstock
Studioartz/Shutterstock
When Michael Kestan rented a car in Israel through Expedia, he went through all the steps necessary to ensure he was insured. That included buying travel insurance through Expedia, which, he was assured, would cover him.

It didn’t.

“When I arrived in Israel I was advised that Hertz had a mandatory insurance,” he says. “The insurance was $29 per day — twice as much as the car rental. At no time did Expedia advise me of these charges and at no time was I given an opportunity to shop around.”

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Did United offer me compensation for a rough night in the ballroom?

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united tailAmanda Ellis says she was “very upset” after her United Airlines flight from Honolulu to the Marshall Islands was canceled because of a sick crewmember.

It wasn’t the one-day delay. Ellis, her husband and seven-year-old son were flying to the islands to adopt their daughter. It wasn’t even the fact that they spent the night under less than desirable circumstances.

It was the way in which the airline tried to compensate the family for the inconvenience, she says.

The Ellises had done everything by the book — or at least, they thought they had.

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An uncomfortable night at the Comfort Suites

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1-hospital bedHow do you say “I’m sorry” for a really bad hotel stay?

That probably depends on how bad “bad” is, right? Well, here’s what happened when Tracy Hart checked into a Comfort Inn in Fairfield, NJ, recently.

Before I get to her story, I should probably say that she’s one of the hotel chain’s better customers. She carries a Choice Privileges credit card and “often” stays in its hotels when traveling on business or driving from Pennsylvania to Florida, where she has a vacation home. In other words, she knows this hotel chain really well.

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The car rental industry’s day of reckoning may be close

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Ilya Alkishin/Shutterstock
The car rental industry is in trouble. And this time, it can’t be fixed by quietly settling out of court with its customers or lobbying a few state lawmakers.

Maybe you’ve seen the recent TV report about the allegedly bogus damage claims filed by Budget against its customers in Canada. You’ve probably said to yourself, “A-ha! I knew they were doing that!

So are a lot of other people.

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