Help the Police Seized My Rental Car and Avis Won’t Refund Me

When I was a new immigrant, I rented a Hertz car with a corporate card. Prepaid rental.

Got to their office and they wanted to run some form of ID verification / something... said that I "failed" that check because my SSN didn't match my DOB, etc. (Well, no kidding, because it wasn't issued til I moved to the US).

"We cannot rent to you."

Me, already arranging a ride to Enterprise, "Sure, whatever, just issue a refund."

"Sorry, prepaid rentals are non-refundable."

The fuck they're not. "Oh, we decided not to rent to you, but we're holding the full cost of the rental" might sound like a nice little racket... was resolved, but it took a few calls to corporate (I didn't even bother arguing at the rental location), which is a few more calls than it should.

If you ever fly to Alaska, try taking an Uber a couple of miles away from the immediate airport vicinity, and rates will be a lot cheaper. You may still run into bullshit like attempts to pull "we need to contact your insurance ourselves and verify policy details and coverage limits before we let you waive our insurance coverage" but the daily rate will be substantially cheaper.

It's downright amazing to see how thoroughly the author challenged the statements by Avis's PR department - nearly everything they said was a lie.

I'm incredibly frustrated by how often the US press seem to cover something about a company being shitty by describing what they did, and then verbatim printing whatever a PR droid says, and not attempting to verify the statement or ask for proof.

I just expect bad service from any company these days.

Enterprise tried to claim I damaged two tyres on my rental car. They the tyres changed and tried to charge me, and because of the way the rental was organised by my car dealership this would have gone through my own insurance impacting my no claims discount.

They sent me pictures of the damage as proof, but when awfully quiet when I sent back stills from the video I took before even touching the car showing the exact same damage. They didn’t seem interested in clarifying if they had sent me out with illegal tyres since the same damage apparently warranted changing the tyres on return.

Last December I rented a car from Avis for 30 days. I had to return the car 5 days earlier, so I called them up and asked them about it, they said they would just charge an extra fee (because I was returning it at a different location). Sounded reasonable enough

I dropped it off. Then two days later I get hit by a charge double the amount I was originally quoted

They explained that when I returned the car earlier, the 30-day rate didn’t apply anymore, and the price I was charged was due to the corrected rate - none of this stuff was explained to me when I rented, nor when I called, nor when I dropped the car off, nor was it in the signed contract

I had to raise a fuss in social media about it and then talk to a few people on the phone, to finally get the original rate

I know that rates are different and usually cheaper the longer you rent. But it doesn’t make sense that if I return early, and pay the full amount for the period I rented for, they would still charge me more (given they get the full amount originally agreed upon, and can re-rent the car again)

Sometimes the whole travel industry feels very scammy, like when hotels hit you with extra “resort fees” that weren’t in the quote when making the reservation, or the whole ideal with miles and dark patterns that airlines are doing now