Flat tire...
 

Hi! I got a flat tire in the beater Subaru Forester that I rented from Avis this past weekend. I called roadside (no) assistance but after being told the wait time (and after lots of pressure), my husband managed to change the tire ourselves and put the spare on. Well, when I turned in the car, I was required to fill in an accident report. I was a little perplexed, because there was no accident.

Am I likely to be charged for the tire, or what's the deal with this? The car was really falling apart - oil light kept coming on, it reeked of cigarette smoke, the console was missing the cupholder inserts and was sticky and gross. Not a good rental experience overall. I'm still wondering what the benefit of Avis First is...

Thanks.

From the AVIS FAQs:

Country = "USA"
Find a Topic = "Customer Service"
Customer Service, FAQs = "I have vehicle or tire damage, what do I do?"

"You are responsible for any and all loss of or damage to the car resulting from any cause including and not limited to collision, rollover, theft, vandalism, seizure, fire, flood, hail or other acts of Nature. Please call the Avis Emergency Road Service at 800-354-2847 for assistance."

Depending on your insurance and deductible situation, you will probably receive a bill for either repairing or replacing the tire. I have found no benefit to AVIS First; the vehicles are often filthy, poorly maintained, and have 25,000 or more miles on the odometer. I have been renting primarily out of SFO but experienced the same earlier this year at LGA.

Thanks. Had I known that, I probably would have just taken it to the local Firestone and put on the cheapest tire that I could buy. I'm sure they're going to charge me something ridiculous for it, even though all 4 tires on the car were already in extremely poor condition (after the flat, I looked at the others and they were not in good shape).

While you are certainly responsible for any damage while the car is in your possession, whether caused by you or not, mechanical problems are Avis's responsibility. Since tire failure could be caused by either; nail while you have the car=you; tire failure due to under inflation or a slow leak=Avis. The hard part is proving one way or the other. I know I have read threads in the past where renters were not charged for flats or blowouts. If you haven't heard from them in six months you should be fine. If you do hear from them, push back a bit and see where that gets you.

I've had at least a half dozen flat tires in my Avis cars & have never been charged for it. If you took the car to a local place, they will reimburse you for the tire replacement/installation of the spare, etc, so long as you provide a receipt at check-out. You should have told Avis of the smoke/stickiness before leaving the lot. Failing to do that (maybe you didn't notice the sticky console/missing cup holders, oil light before leaving) I would have called Avis immediatly upon noticing that stuff. Without either of those, though, I recommend that you email Avis and tell them of the issues with the car with the comments that you expect to be reimbursed for $x from the rental. I've usually had decent luck with this. If it's not solved to your satisfaction, dispute it with your credit card and/or the better business bureau; that seems to get the best results IMO. Good luck and keep us posted.

I locked the keys in a rental not that long ago and Avis sent a local guy to open the car. I was never charged for the service.

Thanks everyone - I'll let you know how it comes out.

I didn't notice the missing cupholder/stickiness until the next day...I picked up the car on a Friday night, and it was dark. The cupholder thing wasn't noticeable until I tried to put a drink in it the next day! As for the oil light, that started up on Saturday. As to the smokiness, most cars I get from Avis these days are high mileage smoky cars, so I figure there's not much point in complaining.

Thanks again!

Understandable about not noticing the stuff immediately; I know what that's like. Avis also advertises a fully smoke-free fleet and charges up to $250 for cleaning, so if they give you one that smells of smoke, I'd definitely complain and not take the car.

I agree with IAH... There is no point to accepting smokey cars with AVIS's new "smoke-free fleet". Unless I'm in an absolute hurry to make a business meeting, I exchange cars until I find one with no smoke smell.

I completely disagree.

Suppose you rent your car, walk out to get it, put the key in the ignition, and the car doesn't start.

Do you know owe them for "breaking" the car"?

I would say they owe you for having their car fail.

Same with the tire, unless there's obvious evidence of abuse.

I rent a car to get somewhere. If their car fails, they owe me. Tire, or whatever.

Well you can disagree all you want, but its AVIS's contract you're agreeing to when you rent the car. If you don't like their contract, don't rent from them...

In my years as an avis Manager, I have only three times seen a tire charged to a customer that wasn't inlolved in a collison of some sort. Once because it was vandalized (knife in sidewall) in an admitted divorce dispute, once because a customer went off roading and, if you can believe this, a freaking thorn flattened the tire (tough thorn), and a third time when a customer came back with four bald tires. We were a bit perplexed until three weeks later the police came by to inquire about a car involved in a high speed chase.

If someone has had other experiences, I wouldn't be surprised as its often a judgment call. However I never saw the need to charge for a tire for going flat through usage most renters would consider normal. (i.e. your driving it goes flat and you hit nothing on the road).

examples of times where tires were charged almost always involve some other damage to the car.

Rim bent from debris in road/curb.
sudden emergency stop that causes a tire to burst at the bead and impact (I have yet to see an emergency stop that bursts a tire without impact, but that doesnt mean it hasnt happened).

Avis's rental system, last time I was there was called "wizard", has a specific line item location for on the road expenses. This is for lightbulbs, tires, wiper blades, oil, antifreeze, trans fluid, key stuck in ignition, battery. They will reimburse you via check for any item that exceeds the time and mileage cost of the rental and reduce the time and mileage charge of the rental by the receipt amount. As a courtesy before you do this, if its going to cost more than 20 bucks, call avis and explain the situation and tell them what you are going to do. If they insist on a tow, tell them you cannot wait for however long they tell you is the wait and in most cases they will just tell you to keep the receipt and fill out an incident report form explaining reasoning for the purchase (like in a case of a tire. For fluids, don't even bother, just keep receipt and tell them at the time you return the car, bulbs and wiper blades too.)

Heck ive even known cars to get the change oil light go on jiffy lubed by customers while they ate lunch and returned to not only get reimbursed for the jiffy lube for lunch too. Even that is acceptable so long as you make sure avis knows before you do it. (note, the nearest avis/budget location as 400 miles away and after checking records the car had not been properly oil changed in 7,000+ miles on a ford, whose maintenance cycle is 4500 miles. Driving it home was a risk to voiding the turnback criteria, so avis was happy to do it in that instance).

WHATEVER you do, if you get in an accident, do not take the car to a body shop to repair it!!!! get an estimate, yes, if you are inclined to do so. But repairs need to be done by the avis approved process if they are to return the car to the car shop.

Hey ezmonee, I haven't seen you around here for a while. Thanks again for all your wizdom that you provide here! Happy Holidays to you and your family!



That's classic!

sudden emergency stop that causes a tire to burst at the bead and impact (I have yet to see an emergency stop that bursts a tire without impact, but that doesnt mean it hasnt happened)

Airplanes with a sudden emergency and need to abort takeoff can have this problem. They need to apply the brakes fully after just accelerating to several hundred miles an hour and immediately switch to reverse thrust so they don't overshoot the runway. All that heat builds up and can blow the tires. With cars, I don't think such things easily happen.

Reverse thrust would reduce the load on the brakes and thus reduce the heat build up on the wheels.

same to you!

oh, and yes, that got a few chuckles up and down the mgmt gossip train, until we found out a fake ID and stolen CC was used to rent the car. This was in the days before we had DMV access to verify.

I just got a letter charging me (or my insurnce or my credit card, assuming I could convince them to pay) $96ish for a single tire that went flat due to a screw (presumably lodged in a crack in the pavement that I went over, but that's just a guess). This was about 7 weeks after the incident. Note: I had to exchange the car, since Avis couldn't provide me with a replacement tire that day (and I needed a real tire ASAP, given the lmitations on the miniature spare). In this case, the tire went out just as I went onto a bridge with lots of "no stopping on bridge" signs, and by the time I could pull over the tire seemed damaged beyond repair (the screw had torn a sizeable hole).

At least they didn't charge me loss of use or administrative fee.

But the cynic in me wonders whether the amount is $96ish because they know that's likely to be within my insurance deductible?

Its likely the cost of one new tire? I know I just had four new one's put on my Explorer for $500 ($125/each), so it sounds about right.

Update:

Just received a bill for $135. I am being charged $47 for an attempt to repair the tire plus roadside assistance (which I did not use), then an additional $68 for a new tire once they determined that they could not repair the tire, plus a $20 administrative fee.

I'm sorry, but I call BS on this one. How could it possibly cost $47 to attempt to repair a tire? The notes on the claim say "screw in tire too close to sidewall for repair" -- surely that's something that can be figured out before you attempt to repair the tire? I've had screws taken out of tires and tires patched before, and at most it costs $15 (and that's at inflated Los Angeles prices). I also didn't use roadside assistance, so that's BS too!

I called the number on the form and the woman sort of chuckled and said, yeah, they throw all kinds of extra charges on there in the hopes that people will pay. She backed out the administrative fee and the roadside assistance for me.

She also warned me to be very careful to not accept a car with any kind of windshield chip or crack, and to check all tires carefully, because Avis has started charging everyone that had the car with a chip or a screw/nail in the tire, regardless of who had the car when the damage was incurred. She told me that Avis is "really going after people" now in order to make some money.

Lesson learned...

I'm really surprised to see this result and wonder if things have changed.

About two years ago, we had rented an Avis car in Orlando. We were upgraded to a Chrysler 300, fairly new (2,000 miles) and in good condition, from an intermediate reservation.

We didn't have any problems while driving, but once came out to the parking lot of our condo to find the tire flat. We called Roadside Assistance and they were out with a replacement car in about an hour (a brand new Chrysler 300 with only 500 miles). They even told us to go ahead on our way in the replacement car without waiting for them to change the tire, so we weren't further delayed.

We did have to fill out the 'accident' report for them. We never heard another word about it. We are President's Club members if that matters, and we may have had the Avis CDW and LDI on the rental (sometimes we do and sometimes we don't; I don't recall with this one). But it would never occur to me that we'd be charged even if we didn't have the Avis insurance.

Susan

I had a rented car which was brand new (only had 200km on it), and when returning told the agent that my tire went, and I put on the spare from the boot, and put a second hand tire in the oot as a replacement, and he was happy with it.

Interesting thread. Makes Avis sound like a big, angry woman with a rolling pin:D.
Unless they are on their way out of business, the problem Avis has with me is that they are not getting enough of my business. Business is business; but post like this don't really help the business.
Last time I rented from Avis two years ago, they had to upgrade me for free to a Mustang convertible because they had overbooked their coupes. That car had been a beauty in it's beginning with Avis. But, now it had a dent so large, I had to go back into the office. They were trying to run a business and were not happy to see me again. They said just have the exit gate note the damage. He walked around the car smiling and wrote down, "scratches and dents all around.". I had a great weekend roadtrip in that old car. I may well have been it's last rental customer.
I've never been charged for a flat(knock on wood). Once, when I was younger, I brought one back to Alamo missing a hubcap(they said). I told them insurance was covered by the card; if they thought they could get it.
I'm thinking about paying the full rate to go for a drive in a Solstice, before Avis retires them. They been out of production for months now; so how perfect could a rental one on the lot be?
Still, I appreciate the reminder to check the tires, and inspect the windshield. Thanks:).

Save your time/money/disappointment. I was upgraded to a Solstice twice and regretted taking it both times. I think I put up a review of it once. If you can't find it, let me know & I'll search for it.

My observation is that Avis has gotten a lot more strict in recent months checking the cars at return. I rarely saw the return agents walk around the cars the last few years - in the past 6-12 months, they seem to consistenly doing it (at multiple locations).

It also used to be - report any legit problem at the return, they just print a coupon for you. Now, they don't seem to do that any more. (I also have fewer problems with old/bad cars recently.)

The jury is still out on where this company is headed. Some cuts are so stupid but some changes seem to be for the better.

Avis is charging me for flat tire
 

I rented a car the last week of December 2010. On the next to last day I got a flat. It was too late for me to take it to a rental place by the next morning, so I changed the tire. When I dropped it off I wasn't told whether or not I would get charged. The attendant actually tried to print a coupon for me because of my inconvenience but was unable to. That implied to me that I wasn't going to be charged. Now over six weeks later I've gotten a bill from Avis for $143 for replacement of the tire. I will never use Avis again. :td:

From now on when I rent from anyone, I'll be checking the conditions of the tires and whether they're low on air.

Welcome to FT! Hopefully you stick around and enjoy it here. For future reference (for you and others that might be in your situation), as long as you can fill the tire right before pulling onto the Avis lot, you should be 'safe' from charges. Once they check you in, it'd be hard for them to know whether you had a flat before coming in or if you got a flat on their lot :D

We should start asking them to put the cars up on a lift so we can inspect the tires before leaving with the car. You never know when your going to get screwed.. in the tire......

TW