What damage?
Question: I returned a rental car Feb. 2 to San Francisco airport in the same condition as it was in when I picked it up. (I’m a Budget Fastbreak member, so there is no person who goes over the car with me.) Yet two weeks later (it took that long to “discover” this?), I received a letter stating that I had returned it with “excessive soilage which will require special detailing,” and my credit card was charged an additional $127.24 for “the interior damage to the vehicle.” This is not true. I was a single driver visiting my elderly aunts in their retirement homes. I have no way of proving my claim nor, I might add, does the rental facility at SFO, yet they emerge victorious because they had access to my card number. I contacted Budget, but so far, nothing. What should I do?
Linda Kline
Corona del Mar
Answer: You should do a victory dance.
Budget ultimately agreed to refund Kline’s $127.24, and as much as I’d like to believe it’s because this is the right thing to do, it may have more to do with her getting us involved. Am I being cynical or overestimating the power of the press? You be the judge: When she first contacted Budget, the representative agreed to refund just $27.24.
Regardless of why Budget refunded the money, there are lessons to be learned.
Kline used the Fastbreak service, which saves you time but, in this case, not heartache. She should have inspected the car carefully before she drove it away. “In general, if a vehicle is not to the customer’s satisfaction at the time of pickup [interior is dirty etc.], we recommend that the renter advise a customer service agent before leaving the rental location,” Alice Pereira, manager of public relations for Avis Budget, said in an e-mail.
As an extra measure of protection, especially since you might be asked to prove a negative, take pictures of the vehicle in its pristine state and then again when it’s returned.
And if that doesn’t do the trick, you can dispute the charge on your credit card.
Credit card companies get my hackles up with some of the sneaky stuff they do, but they win points for the help they give consumers who have a problem charge.
Mitch Calderwood, chief executive of RateSurfer.com, which helps people manage their credit cards, says the consumer “needs to . . . contact the credit card company by telephone, dispute the charge and follow up with a letter.”
But even that may not turn the tide.
Ben Woolsey, director of marketing and consumer research for Creditcards.com, a card information and comparison website, thinks a consumer’s chances are about 50-50. The rental car company has the contract on its side, with your signature, and you have . . . squat.
Woolsey had his own run-in with at least one rental car company and didn’t win. “I sometimes think they are making money off the same ding 40 or 50 times.” But he adds, “Exercise personal responsibility and make sure you’re not inheriting somebody else’s ding.”
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