Avis & friends have this great racket going. $19.95/day and you get a nice fully loaded car. Fully loaded with extra costs, as it turns out. And if you are an “Avis Preferred” customer – you get to skip the lines – and not notice the extra charges.
Todays scam has been reported by a conscientious employee of a large Israeli company (whose Name I Don’t Say). Its pretty simple (below is his receipt from a rental in New York):
If you use an International Israel Visa you get to choose – bill me in (a) Dollars or in (b) Shekels. The answer has no effect on your accounting with the bank – in any case its a foreign transaction and show up in dollars. The right answer is (a) Dollars. If you choose Shekels they convert at a bad rate (about 3% worse). In the example above – they calculated the charge at 3.7111 NIS/$ when the rate was around 3.58. Again – its not a matter of paying in $ or NIS, in which case a conversion premium might be justified. It is just a trick in the calculation – one way our Avis Preferred customer pays $290, the other way $300.
More scam:
1. The default is Shekels. You have to explicitly ask at the counter for Dollars. Only problem is that Avis Preferred customers don’t go to the counter.
2. When you discover it when returning your car there is nothing they can do. You can write a letter. Or argue, miss your flight and then write a letter.
See other posts about Renting cars with priceline, Using Zipcar, Car Rental Refueling Charges, Car Rental Dropoff charges and general scams.
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Filed under: Car Rentals, Perks and Tips | Tagged: 20th Century Map, Airline Corporate, Best Seats, Big Island Hawaii, Big Sales, Car Hire Usa, Codeshare, Extraodinary People, Flight Schedules, frequent flier, humorous blogs, Internet People, Kosher Restaurants, Life Flow, luggage charge, my theories and ideas, The Absurd Chronicals
Actually, it’s worse than you wrote. The first time it happened without me realizing. The second time I stopped at the counter when I picked up the car even though I didn’t have to in order to make sure I would be billed in dollars. They assured me the default WAS dollars and unless I asked to be billed in Shekel I would always be billed in dollars.
When I returned the car and saw the mistake I went straight to the counter where the manager told me there was nothing he could do and I would have to call customer service. Customer service told me they could not rebill once the transaction was placed.
[...] Renting cars with priceline, Car Rental Refueling Charges, Car Rental Dropoff charges and general Car Rental Scams. Related [...]
Believe it or not, I finally found a solution to the Avis “Charge you in Shekel” scam. Apparently you have to call the Avis credit card department (+1 866 842 5552) and ask to have your credit card number put onto the “currency exemption” list. Yes there’s actually a list for this. I can’t explain it but it worked.
[...] other posts about Renting cars with priceline, Using Zipcar, Car Rental Dropoff charges and general Car Rental Scams. Related [...]
[...] Car Rental Blog Post [...]
The whole company is a scam and they dont care about their employees or the customers
Avis Budget retire!