CAR RENTAL MISTAKES

Many of the readers who contact Consumer Rescue asking for help have made expensive mistakes during a car rental. These travelers need our assistance in correcting the issue. In some of these cases, we’ve uncovered the mistakes actually lie with the car rental agency. These columns tell those tales and our efforts to resolve the errors in a fair and even-handed way.

Red Mustang convertible rental car.

I returned my rental car to the wrong airport. Can Dollar charge me $2,081 extra?

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Dollar Car Rental customer Kuno Zurkinden recently discovered how a surprisingly common mistake can end in a giant financial headache. At the end of an adventurous road trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles, he made a navigational error: He returned the rental car to the wrong airport.

As a result of that miscalculation, Dollar voided the original contract Zurkinden had through a third-party provider. On the spot, the rental car company created a new contract with new charges – astronomically high charges.

Now, Zurkinden is asking Consumer Rescue for assistance. He wants to know if his “little” geographic mistake really allows the car rental company to charge him $2,081 extra.

Something tells me he isn’t going to like the answer.

This rental car went missing after it was towed. Now what?

My rental car was towed after an accident — now it’s missing!

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Traveling through the mountains of Colorado at dusk during a snowstorm, Annoris Perez suddenly lost control of her rental car. She was shaken but unharmed. The vehicle? Not so lucky. The rental car was towed from the accident scene, and she assumed she was no longer responsible for it.

She was wrong.

Weeks later, when the rental company called asking for its missing vehicle, Annoris found out just how wrong. Now, she needs our team’s help to determine what happened to her rental car after the driver towed it away.

This Thrifty car rental customer returned the vehicle to the wrong agency. Will this car rental mistake cost her $2,000?!

What happens when you return your rental car to the wrong company?

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If you’re a regular reader of this site, you know travelers can make all types of expensive car rental mistakes. But Rose Hidalgo’s $2,000 error was the first of its kind for our advocacy team. She recently dropped a Thrifty rental car off, as scheduled, at the Oakland International Airport location. 

The problem? She returned the rental car to the wrong agency.