Car rental companies have earned a reputation for ripping off customers, skimping on luxuries, and finding new and unscrupulous ways to charge for add-ons.
But a Canadian woman says she was charged thousands of miles in extra miles after a rental company claimed she drove a distance nearly the circumference of the Earth over a three-day period.
Earlier this month, Giovanna Boniface flew from Vancouver to Toronto, where she rented an SUV at the airport to help her daughter settle into college.
In addition to running errands through the streets of downtown, he also made trips to visit his mother-in-law in the city of Kitchener, just over 100 km away.
In total, Boniface estimates that he drove close to 300 km in that period.
After dropping off the car at the airport and preparing to board a flight to Europe, she checked her credit card statement to make sure the check-in had gone smoothly.
“That’s when I noticed this over $8,000 charge from Avis,” Boniface told CTV News.
She panicked and for a moment considered going back to the rental counter to make her case, but doing so would force her to miss her flight.
All of his calls to the Avis counter at the Toronto airport went unanswered.
Her call with a general office manager left her feeling that the company “didn’t seem to really understand what [the] the problem was” and the rate was maintained.
Your rent receipt, posted on Twittershows that the company imposed a charge of 25 cents per kilometer, for an additional 36,000 kilometers.
Even if he had traveled from Mexico City to Skagway, Alaska, over the three days, driving non-stop, he would still be nearly 30,000 km short of what the company claimed he had traveled, enough to traverse the entire continent of America. from the North three times more. .
Visa, your credit card company, said it couldn’t stop a pending transaction.
Just nine days later, after his story was picked up by local media, Boniface receives a response from Avisthat he acknowledged the error and advised that the additional charges would be refunded.
In a statement, the company cited an “error” on the receipt, but did not clarify how the error was made.
Last month, the company’s US operations came under scrutiny after a customer in Georgia claimed he had been overbilled thousands of dollars. The company finally admitted his mistake, refunded the full amount and apologized.
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