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Fiascos and Fixes
Consumer Rescue often receives requests for help from our readers who have found themselves fighting a car rental agency over expensive problems or mistakes encountered during their rentals. These stories are their experiences and our advocacy team’s attempts to fix their problem.
Eileen Wendorf says a Budget mistake caused her to pay twice for the same car rental. She wants her money back. But there’s a big problem with her discovery — it occurred nearly seven months after she returned the vehicle.
Now she’s asking our advocacy team to convince Budget of its expensive billing mistake and retrieve her $426. Can we do it?
Shannon Mikus says Hertz made a big mistake during her recent car rental. She says the company charged her nearly $750 extra, and she can prove it. So why won’t anyone at Hertz acknowledge this outrageous error and refund her cash?
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.
Hertz customer Aaron Baird made a costly mistake during his last car rental. Because he returned the vehicle to the wrong location, the car rental giant slapped him with a $780 upcharge. Ultimately, in the spirit of positive customer relations, Hertz offered Aaron a goodwill gesture and erased the debt.
Lesson learned, and all was well – or so Aaron thought.
A few weeks after Hertz offered the goodwill gesture, a different department within the company resurrected the invoice. That Hertz team sent Aaron’s account to collections and put him on the Do Not Rent (DNR) list.
Marvin Payne believes he’s uncovered the most expensive car rental pricing mistake ever, and I think you might agree. Several weeks after returning his most recent vehicle, he got the shock of his life — a $6,000 overcharge.
Just days into Joe Vandetta’s recent Florida family vacation, a drunk driver crashed head-on into his rental car. Luckily, the hit-and-run accident didn’t cause serious injuries, and the Vandettas — bruised but otherwise unharmed — completed their trip as planned.
But the shock of getting smashed by an intoxicated motorist was nothing compared to the jolt Joe received a month later. That’s when Budget Rental Car sent a $22,158 bill — the cost of the vehicle damaged by the drunk driver.
Regular readers of Consumer Rescue know that our advocacy team tackles many fiascos involving car rentals. From surprise damage charges to accusations of grand theft auto, we’ve seen it all. A significant proportion of these problems could have been avoided had the traveler taken a few precautionary steps – before driving away with the vehicle.
In an effort to make sure you don’t end up in our case files, here’s everything you need to know about renting a car.
Maureen Heller recently received a shocking message from Budget Security about a missing rental car. The letter accused Maureen of failing to return a Nissan Sentra that she had left at the Detroit airport weeks earlier.
But with no receipt to prove she returned it, will Maureen be on the hook for this missing rental car?
Last fall, Russell Wayne’s rental car inexplicably crashed into the ocean in a picturesque seaside town in Spain. Unfortunately, the strange accident totaled the Europcar-owned Audi and plunged Russell into an insurance nightmare with Chase Eclaims.
Now Russell is asking our advocacy team for help in getting his $27,825 insurance claim paid.
Can we do it?
Andrew Dupuy made a “little” mistake when he returned his recent car rental in Seattle. He says an innocent oversight caused him to drop the vehicle off at the wrong place. Only after it was too late to fix the problem did he see the shocking price tag of his error.
Now Andrew is asking if he’s really stuck with the $951 penalty the car rental company charged for this mistake.
Can we help?
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© 2024 Consumer Rescue / Michelle Couch-Friedman
