MKLT

I would like to share my recent experience with Avis.
Just before Christmas I've got a 500+USD "present" from them.
I've rented at PHX location and was swindled into optional services, which were never mentioned or explained, but sneakily put into the agreement.
We are European tourists and prepaid our rental including full insurance for a 1.8k rental through our travel agent at home, but apparently this was not enough for Avis.
PAI+, PEP, ALO and God knows what else were added by the representative without a single word to us.
I am especially angry, since we have specifically inquired whether everything is covered by our prepaid voucher and the representative expressly stated that "Everything is covered, just sign there there and there and you are all set". Two of our party can attest to that.
I am appalled that Avis targets such sneaky “upsells” to tired, jet-lagged and unfamiliar international travelers, and especially on the Thanksgiving day (we arrived on Nov 26 after 17+ hour flight).

bkafrick

Welcome to Flyertalk, and welcome to America. This is standard procedure at most USA businesses. "May I have a hamburger" = "Would you like fries with that?" and failing to mention that fries cost additional.

Anyway, if you believe you prepaid for "full insurance" with your travel agent, and then paid again at the local AVIS station, I suggest you take this up with your TA. Find out exactly what the full insurance was that they offered? It sounds like they did not sell you AVIS Insurance, but maybe one of their own?

Regardless, read what you sign. If you had a fully prepaid rental, you would have been presented a contract that stated that. I'm guessing that your rental contract did NOT state that it was fully prepaid... and "everything is covered" is pretty ambiguous.

nacho

It's typical - they try to sell everyone things like this at the counter. I have tried that and they can really hard sell - I remembered they said how important to have the PAI (I always say no) plus they will sell you an upgrade without telling you the cost. That's why I learned the lesson and never rent a car through travel agent - I rent direct with the companies and do their "preferred" programme - i.e. see my name on a board and go straight to my car, if I don't like it, go and change to another one.

Happy

FRA is horrible. I read so many complaints on TripAdvisor and decided to return our car at the main train station instead of the airport because of that. Yet, it was still a potential scam location because the parking lot was so full that cars were triple parked everywhere with Avis had the smaller size of spaces and all were full of course. The worst part was, there was NO Avis staff to receive the car. An Europcar employee took pity on us seeing us circling the lot 3 times and told us to just park at Europcar's space but told Avis where the car was parked. We were hesitant then another rental car company employee suggested us to park in front of Avis parked car where there was barely enough space for the Ford SUV we had. No other option so we parked and took pictures/video of the car to make sure at the time car was in good shape.

Went to the Avis office at train station - there was only one agent working and he was on his cell for a good 15 min... Finally we got to talk to him and explained to him the situation. He said he had NO employee available now to check the car, and because of that he could not print an invoice. At that point we told him we had taken video / pictures of the car and we would come back in an hour for the invoice. So he was prewarned not to pull any scam!

When we returned, still no invoice. Finally he called around and got an employee to check out the car then he proceeded to print the invoice. We reminded him we had opted to be billed by Euro (the clause of DCC was removed at Dusseldorf where we picked up the car.). He showed us the screen there was no billing in USD mentioned. He even went further to say that you guys knew if it would be billed in USD there would be a sentence to that effect. So invoice printed, in Euro. Yet, when the charge hit our card, it was still in USD - but the oddest thing is, the USD was the identical amount at reservation, NOT the market value at the time of return (from converted the Euro to USD with padding). I did check the USD value against the Euro value at the time of reservation because of the potential DCC and had discovered that, as annoying as it was that Avis US site only showed the USD quote at the final confirmation screen, the USD was directly converted from whatever the other currency used at the rental location - there was NO PADDING, NO DCC SCAM contrary to the prevailing belief.

On the DCC SCAM

I know it is shocking to believe, but I start to believe that the DCC Scam is not always there as we all thought. These days I always use the local currency when making the reservation and make a screen shot before finalize it - the confirmation shows USD but 100% of the time, it is just market rate conversion from the local currency. We have done so in South Africa and Turkey. No DCC padding. I just made a reservation in Croatia - the HRK quote translates to the USD quote is very close to the current market rate of 7.04 HRK to 1 USD - 2397 HRK turn into 337ish USD. No Padding and actually slightly LOWER in our favor. Shocking.

So for those who so deeply believe you are being scammed by the DCC, do your math again from the Quote - with local currency to your country's currency and see if you are really DCCed or not. At least in our cases, we the past 3 international rentals we were not - what we were billed even when it turned into USD on our cards, remained the same amounts when converted back to local currencies - be it South Africa ZAR or Turkish Lira or Euro, and in the current reservation the Croatia Kuna.

We know there are a lot of areas Avis (and all other rental car companies are the same low life in my book) have tried to grab money from the customers, DCC does not seem one of them in our experiences, very contrary to public belief including our previous belief. You really need to do the math to realize you are not being scammed even though you are billed in your country's currency.

nacho

I have worked my maths out and Avis did DCCed me! I compared the CC rate for the purchase I made on the same day and I generally paid around $3-5 more at Avis being DCCed.

Happy

No idea. In our Germany rental, despite the invoice said Euro, it billed in USD on our CC with the IDENTICAL amount as the quote at reservation. And guess what, it was actually LOWER than it should have been if it was billed in Euro because during the period when reservation was made and the rental actually took place Euro had recovered from very low below 1.2 to almost 1.3 at the time of rental. Should it be billed in Euro, and then converted by Citi to USD, the bill would have been 8% HIGHER. So this "DCC" actually gave us 8% discount instead.

In the example of the Croatian rental I just made last night - the exchange rate used to convert Croatian Kuna to USD, was LOWER than the current market rate. Instead of USD337ish quoted, it would have been $344ih should it be the market rate. This is the 5th time I have seen NO DCC happened when the local currency is converted to USD at the confirmation of rental. Yet there are still many people complain about the Avis US site sleazy DCC renter by converting the local currency to USD... It is simply not true based on our experiences.

At payment I do not know how it actually works because each country works differently. South Africa billed us in ZAR. So as Turkey except in Turkey the rental was 100% charged UPFRONT plus an additional amount. It was not mentioned on Avis website when making reservation but it was very clearly explained, with a formal letter at the rental counter. It is Actual Charge, not authorization. Upon return, the excess amount charged was refunded, again with a formal letter. The only time I have seen this practice actually explained during the reservation process, is Avis New Zealand.
In Germany I already explained how the billing happened.

However in each and every case the past 4 international rentals, we are not DCCed. We will see what will happen in coming rental at Croatia. I have the screen shot that shows the quote in HRK so I can compare it with the final bill (there would be some miscellaneous extra such as FFP fee, border crossing fee though I check the list none would apply but the list may not be up to date and toll sticker for Slovenia if Avis insists we have to buy from them.)

OverTheHorizon

Quick shout out for Avis Stockholm Train Station.

Friendly staff, efficient service and charged to the penny exactly as quoted even with an out of hours key drop return to a different location.

So they're not all bad !

Happy

Agree. We had a great agent at Adana Turkey to help us after the night before we were screwed by his rogue co-worker. The 2 agents were like night and day. My take is, a lot of the sleazy practice stems from the skewed incentive compensation all rental car companies use - there are enough incentives for the agents to up sell everything because that is what their "performance" is measured against. It really puts the agents on the spot to test their personal integrity while trying to improve their ratings.

hoteltraum

Try to avoid London Heatrow! Very unfirnedly and they charge you with damages you have not a fortune. Extremely bad business practices!!!

nacho

That's why you need to buy excess insurance - I believe Avis uses damages to sponsor their low rates. We scratched the bumper - only cosmetic damages - of course we are responsible for it and instead of Avis charging us enough to actually take the car to fix it, they just charged me enough remain under the excess, in other words, money purely out of my pocket. Then they wash the car and sent it on to the next renter with a condition report marked with the previous dings and dents and the bumper dent. The car I had was on 180k on which is almost at the retirement age.

Fortunately I got excess insurance which I bought online which cost me GBP 3/day which means that they paid my almost GBP 400 damage bill.

hoteltraum

I agree, you need the insurance. I have it and so I just could not care, but I just want to fight this bad business practice. They clearly subsidise their low rates with damages from non-insured people which they have not caused and rip them off with damage claims which are insanely high. So be extremely careful or better avoid Avis at London Heathrow!

nacho

It's not just Heathrow, it's Avis UK. As I said I rented it from Manchester and I exThe only way you can fight this is to get in touch with the authorities. I also got a fine including a fee of GBP 35 admin fee - that's crazy. It wasn't even a traffic violation because it was a private parking lot - they just passed on the bill and charged me this fee. Fortunately I disputed it and the parking company removed the fine and Avis refunded me the $.

Of course you should vote with your wallet, but if Avis's fee is still turn out wait cheaper, then you just need to put this salt and pepper into the calculation.