An online rental-car runaround

Question: I booked a weekend car rental one Friday in June through http://www.expedia.com . I received what I thought was a "rental agreement" from Expedia guaranteeing my reservation and a $9.99-a-day rate with Enterprise Rent-A-Car.

When I called the rental location to confirm that the car was ready for pickup, I was told that none was available. When I asked about getting another car at that rate and about who's responsible for fulfilling the rental contract, I got the runaround — and still no car. My weekend trip never got off the ground.

Who's to blame? It seems Expedia's website misleads customers by making a reservation and issuing a confirmation number without advising that cars may not be available.

Paul Lerro

Visalia, Calif.



Answer: Enterprise — not Expedia — was the culprit. It accepted too many reservations for a busy weekend. Lerro was one of the unlucky few who got turned away, or "walked," even though he held a confirmed reservation.

Apparently many people in Visalia had the same idea as our reader: Grab the rock-bottom rate and get out of town. By the time Enterprise accepted Lerro's reservation on Friday, the day of his departure, that Visalia location had run out of cars.

To compensate for its error, Enterprise should have rented a car for Lerro from another company. Had he incurred expenses (such as taxi fares or lost hotel deposits) because of the inconvenience, Enterprise should have reimbursed him for that too.

Instead, Lerro said, the company simply promised to call when a car was located — and never did. This was a breach of Enterprise's contract with Lerro, according to travel attorney Al Anolik.

"The company had a legal obligation to mitigate damages," Anolik said. "But Enterprise ignored [Lerro]. And that type of conduct isn't mitigating."

We also wondered why Expedia let the reservation go through in the first place. By doing so, did the website also breach its agreement with the customer?

No, Anolik said.

"Expedia was merely a conduit to retrieve information from Enterprise's inventory," he said.

The website's not-so-easy-to-find legal disclaimer backs up that position. It states that Expedia has "no liability and will make no refund" in the event of overbooking or "other causes" beyond its "direct control."

Lerro contended the online agency could have at least disclosed during the reservation process that his booking was based on availability. Expedia, however, said availability was not supposed to be an issue. The system is designed to block a booking if the rental company runs out of cars, said product manager David Dennis.

"If a car's available, a confirmation number is issued," he said. "That's a guaranteed reservation."

Dennis also cited Expedia's agreements with preferred vendors such as Enterprise.

"Our contracts say you cannot 'walk' a customer," he said. "You're obligated to find them another car."