No car despite reservation. Bogus charges after car returned
Complaint
Stew
Country: United States
Lazy, unhelpful, sarcastic, and shiftless staff at Pearson Int'l Airport in Toronto Canada. I reserved a full size car three weeks in advance for a 5 day business trip during the week & weekend before Christmas - I've been a loyal customer, renting 5-6 times a year at that location alone for the last 9 years, not to mention all the other cars I've rented throughout N. America over the same 9 years. Emerald Aisle member at an additional annual cost to boot. When I arrived to pickup my car - on time - I was told they had none. No notification, no warning whatsoever. I told them I had made a reservation and had a confirmation # - apparently that means nothing to them and is a worthless effort. I was told "making a reservation does not guarantee you get a car" ... WHAT? It seems they can penalize you for a no-show, but when they let you down, the rules are different. Why bother even making a reservation? After some persistence and desperate appeals to the acting manager I was offered a small Toyota sub-compact that was the one car they had: that was simply not possible for myself (6'4") and the 3 passengers of similar stature. I was told it was Christmas and all the cars had been rented out + it was a bad time to rent a car (??? I made a reservation 3 weeks beforehand!!!???) - every time they opened their mouths the statements that came out were increasingly ludicrous and it became obvious they simply wished I would just go away. I was told - by the manager - "good luck finding a car: everyone else is out of cars as well" ... nice. Great way to speak to a valued (sic) customer. I walked 10 ft to the Avis counter and they had a new Chrysler 300 ready to go for LESS $$$$. I was out of there in under 5 minutes after the hour wasted at the National counter with no resolution --- thank you Avis. Last June - same airport - I got dinged - 3 months after returning a car - with a $389 charge to my credit card for a "broken windshield" ... I called to protest that I knew nothing about this and they explained I had waited too long to refute or challenge their claim against me. Duh! I guess if you keep it a secret till well after the fact, you have me over a barrel with the small print! Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice ... I guess the latest incident is my own fault for giving National a second chance. I will never rent another vehicle from these clowns again. Last check showed I rented a total of 18 times from them in 2009. I guess that means they've seen enough of me and that I should move on. I hope someone at National sees or hears about this. What are the chances they'd try to contact me or rectify / help? ZERO % . Careless and unhelpful do not fully describe this company's policies toward any loyal customers. Goodbye National, hello Avis.
Comments
A charge 3 months later still gives you 60 days from the credit card statement date to dispute charges appearing on that statement through your credit card company, based on FCBA. That 60 day period is from when the second suspect charge appeared, not from when you returned the car, and not from when the original charge appeared.
The car rental company's "policies" have nothing to do with federal law on disputing through your credit card company.
Although maybe there was some damage, either correctly or incorrectly attributed to when the car was under your control, their response also hints at the possibility that this is a con. It also matches several similar complaints tied to car rentals to U.S. customers at Canadian airports, across several rental companies, which may indicate it is a known scam among Canadian car rental operators.
Their statement that "you waited too long" is deceptive B.S., aimed at getting you to give up on disputing, and not consistent with U.S. credit card law. That make it an indication they may be cramming a bogus fabricated charge on your account, deliberately setting you up by their own delay to use a well crafted excuse that sounds almost like the FCBA dispute period, but is in fact not. That implies they have experience with pulling this type of con.
You have no independent verification there is any "windshield damage", nor did they find and notify you of it at the time you returned the car, but for $400 they know you can't do much about something they can convince you would cost more than that to disprove.
Fraud is based on deception. Effective deception is based on denial, denial of access to information that might refute the deception. Frauds are crafted of elements aimed at getting control of the money, and then using deception to make sure they can keep it. This scenario has those elements. Deception is intended to look "normal", or close enough to "normal", enough so that they can get it past you even though you might be suspicious.
Although appearing suspicious, they have enough "plausible deniability" to pull it off with little risk, as long as they don't repeatedly con the same person, or their victims can't compare notes. You may have rented from that site 5 or 6 times a year, but unless they tried the same scam on you more than once, it's still "plausibly deniable", and they would expect to get away with it.
If neither you nor your friends noticed any windshield damage at the time you returned the car, it is likely that there was none.
File a fraud complaint with Canadian authorities, since if they pull this type of scam once, they are likely to be pulling it on a frequent basis out of that site.
If there is a pattern of complaints sufficient to interest the authorities, a check of their records may find that either the repair records for the alleged damage will not exist, or the repair records and the rental records on the car will not be consistent with their claim that you caused the damage, for example if the car was rented out again after you returned it, and the inspections of the car for other renters indicated no damage.
What they don't realize is that the very elements they choose to employ to succeed in a con shows that the con is an intentional, constructed sequence of events, based on planning and practice, and not something that "just happened".
The unexpected charge, that is late, but somehow already "too late" to dispute, is the tip-off.
Normally, you would want documentation on any alleged damage (repair invoice, for example) so you could submit a claim to your insurance company, or file a claim with your credit card linked car rental policy. It would therefore be normal for a rental agency to be able to provide such documentation if they were claiming damage.
Instead, they attempted to block your dispute of an irregular charge, and they did it with a lie.
When people lie, they do it for a reason.
Why would they lie when faced with a dispute, when they could instead just substantiate their claim?
I returned the car to them and the customer rep and attendant who took the car from me were made aware of the damage, I confirmed with them that the damage was before I rented the car, that they had the report and I was not going to be charged anything extra.
Two months later now I get a letter from them asking for $936 worth of damages. I am currently disputing the charge, but the claims adjuster says that I probably won't be successful as I have to provide proof the car was damaged before I rented it, because their history shows there is no damage to the car even though no inspection was made of the car when I took it.