nacho

That’s my thought, basically the ’only’ thing you could do to avoid this is to pay cash, as I was told at LAX Avis. Who on earth on FT will pay cash? Don’t use them if you don’t like to, or don’t give them your preferred profile when you book your car outside the US. To me it’s a price to pay to be able to swap a better car (for US rentals).

It’s annoying and there is no way to avoid it as preferred.

percysmith

Is it possible to lock in an Amex card in Preferred profile?

bkafrick

I have my Amex card as my preferred card, yes.

nacho

I think Avis knows about this too. Here’s how they force DCC on you as a Preferred:

1. You signed up Preferred in your country of residence;
2. You attached your cc with your Preferred profile;
3. When you rent a car, Avis makes sure that the Avis in where you live send you a bill. Since in your case is Avis US and my case Avis Sweden, they will bill you in our home currency.

Basically you either don’t rent from them or accept that they will DCC you.

sosafan

I do the same thing (with a "view account") and here is what it looks like for me.

nacho

That's awesome that Avis US can let you choose. I disputed with Avis Sweden and they said that by signing up Preferred I agreed that they can DCC me whenever they can.

rcspeirs

That account option screengrab (sosafan post) is interesting. I don't see any of those options from the "my account" part of the UK web site.
It might explain why Avis keeps trying to opt me into windscreen insurance when I have never ever seen an option to opt in/out of this....

bkafrick

Yeah - I dont have that anymore.


I *used* to have it.

AVIS is def playing games here.

moondog

Is it because you selected amex by any chance?

sosafan

It is probably unrelated but I also notice that you have "Avis on location"
and I do not.

bkafrick

Amex has been my only credit card on AVIS.com ever.

True - though all it is is links to the mobile apps (android, windows 7, blackberry, iphone).

nacho

If Avis decides to bill people in their country of residence, it means that AE against DCC protection is bypassed. AE will never know that the transaction was taken place in another country and using another currency.

When I rented the car in Toulouse, Avis billed us in SEK, while we were using Mr. Nacho's DKK CC, which means we got robbed twice. The most annoying thing about this was that I had a hard copy of my contract and I checked that I'd like to be billed in EUR. Avis ignored that despited I complained to their CS.

I also got the BS bill print out at LAX and SFO Avis saying that I was given a choice and I chose to be billed in SEK vs USD. I had never given that choice and I'm not sure this is legal.

percysmith

If you have Amex in the profile, and present a Amex at check-in (or no card at all), charge goes into the Amex with no DCC possible (Avis France cannot make Avis Sweden collect the charge in SEK - you can dispute wrong merchant then).

If you have Amex in the profile and present a Visa at check-in then it is possible they can interpret you have not un-selected DCC and can do as they please.

If you have Visa in the profile then you should have the DCC opt-out option?

nacho

Opt-out? Avis wrote to me that when I sign up for Preferred I will be robbed by DCC, no option to opt out and yet even more annoying - I can't find it in their T&C and they kept quoting something that makes no sense.

I wrote to Visa Europe and they didn't bother helping - they tell me to go to my stupid bank They don't bother to help. This is how my stupid bank dealed with my charge back:

1. I filed a charge back against the amount of SEK 35 due to DCC;
2. My stupid bank re-credited me the whole amount and then take it away again;
3.Their reason was - you bought the service, you used it and of course you have to pay for it, since you are in Sweden and you received a bill from Avis Sweden, what's the problem - at that point we gave up.

The bill is issued by Avis Sweden, despite the fact that I booked it through avis.com (via cash back site to get cash back to pay for the DCC). I have never agreed to pay anything than the USD amount quoted and throughout the rental I have never seen any amount that is NOT USD.

Even if I have a Swedish AMEX, I won't escape their DCC scam if I use Mr. Preferred profile because the bill is written out by Swedish Avis - of course you can try to dispute with AMEX in Sweden but again you are dealing with the very same people that see things the same way (European). Of course you might get a chance to get something back but it will be a long battle because when they question Avis they will say - since you signe up for Preferred you are agreed to be robbed.

The only way to avoid this is to pay cash when you return the car - which might be worthwhile if their DCC rate is 4%.

percysmith

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 7_0_6 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/537.51.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.0 Mobile/11B651 Safari/9537.53)

Nacho: are you sure you will be billed in sek in France? I would go to ae and try a chargeback for wrong biller (Avis se vs Avis fr) and wrong currency (sek vs eur, use the rental documents as supporting)