David_Doyle

I have to write with my own account of unexpected car hire charges by Avis, namely Avisba.com.

I made 2 bookings on Avisba.com earlier this year for Melbourne and Adelaide respectively. When booking through Avisba.com you get the free additional driver and the interface is quite basic - anyway the booking were made and off I went to Australia with my Avisba booking vouchers.

On picking up the first car at Melbourne airport I noted that 'Excess Reduction' had already been applied and I asked to have it removed. It wasn't booked on Avisba.com and I have insurance4carhire annual insurance anyway. The agent said "Well it's already included in your booking. I can take it off but it won't save you any money" so I left it as is. On returning the vehicle I asked for a receipt, put it away and didn't think anymore of it.

In Adelaide I again noted the Excess Reduction and was again told it was included in the voucher price, so thought nothing more of it. Again at the end of rental I asked for a receipt.

It was only when checking credit card statements on return did I note that excess reduction had been charged for. I queried this and lodged a customer service issue. They came back and said that in case of query they revert to the signed agreement document and this showed that I had accepted the excess reduction.

I was pretty fuming.

I thought something was really wrong here so did a booking on the Avis Australia website and note that Excess Reduction is a selectable option. I did a dummy booking on Avisba.com and then checked the booked details on the Avis Australia site..... surprise surprise it shows Excess Reduction as having been selected even though there is no option on Avisba.com to select/unselect this.

I did a booking on Avisba.com and recorded the screen for the booking actions, then called Avis Australia by phone and queried what the excess was. In all cases the agent statements were along the line of "Let me check that for you.... oh.... you've already selected the excess reduction in your booking"

Bingo.

Something in Avisba.com bookings does, at least for my Australia bookings, include excess reduction. Customer then turns up to counter, signs up and if they query the excess reduction are told (probably rightly by the agent) that it's already included in the booking. Poor customer only notes when they return the car. As it's already been agreed to the receipt is just printed out as normal and the credit card is charged.

I had a take it to small claims court to get Avis to refund the charges, however they still deny there's any problem. It's currently under investigation by Trading Standards.

Hopefully the above might help others in a similar situation in future.