Originally Posted by
jackal
It's also generally a good idea to travel with a printed copy of your rental car reservation that you obtained directly from the rental company's website. That way, you can show the reservation to the sales agent if there are any discrepancies, and the reservation printed from the rental company's website will both be the most believable copy to the rental agent and also show the most specific breakdown of charges, taxes, and fees.
One point I'd make: wait at least a week before initiating a chargeback with your credit card company, though. Dollar corporate has to process the request and send an inquiry to the rental location, which then has 72 hours to respond to HQ's inquiry. Allowing for processing on the customer care department's side, even a week might be a bit tight. IME, for simple complaints like in the case mentioned in this thread (where it's pretty obvious that there shouldn't be a difference from the reserved quote), Dollar's customer care department does a pretty good job of fixing them up with a minimum of hassle, and chargebacks are usually not needed. Where people run into problems is when it gets into "he said, she said" territory--an insurance product or upgrade that was added on to the rental, dispute over damage, etc.
Thanks for the insight. Very interesting info. It helps to know how the company processes work so that we don't have unnecessary cross-purposes.
I can't be alone in finding car rentals a significantly more stressful experience than the flying that invariably precedes and follows them.
Whether it's the insurance scamcharges levied against foreigners by various rental operations at LHR, the "bundled" fees at SFO, the brutal non-included taxes at BRU, or worrying about nicks/dents will be charged as damage at return in spite of employee #1's assurance that they are "below the quarter threshold," whatever, it is hard work.
I always worry about being ripped off until all the charges have posted and even then...