This month’s travel tip is about car rental returns.
My husband who is part of a major rental company’s affinity program enjoys benefits like quick check-in and check-out and paperless transactions where they send him an invoice by email. This is convenient and saves some time, but as he recently found out it does not always work as smoothly as it should.
Coming back to the airport, he pulled into the lot and the friendly attendant simply said, ‘leave the keys on the dash, we will email you the receipt’. He’s done that many times before and the receipt usually arrives before that shuttle gets him to the gate.
This time however, a day went by, and another day and then messages started coming in saying ‘your rental is overdue please return your rental car. Oh-oh. A phone call to the customer service said, oh it might take 48 hours. The next call to customer service said, oh it might take 72 hours! And 96 hours later with ongoing messages coming to return the car (and more security holds on the credit card) we were starting to worry.
Googling brought up articles about people that actually had to hire lawyers to undo exorbitant charges and others that actually had criminal proceedings started against them or ended up in jail! This was getting very worrisome indeed.
Returning your rental car
We had previously provided a tip to check the car carefully before driving off but now we will also add that regardless of what the smiling man says at the return lot, always make sure that your rental car has been properly checked in. Better yet, take a few extra minutes to go to the counter to get a receipt for the return if the man with the portable printer is not there to give you one right on the lot.
On top of that, it’s also a good idea to take a photo (and video) of the car in the lot upon returning it too (get the license plate, if there is one! see below)!
Conclusion
We got lucky that after 5 days (after opening a ticket and making many calls) the agent was able to see that the missing car had been rented out again to someone else and was obviously in their possession. We’ve now received our official ‘car has been checked in’ message and a receipt that reflects the expected duration of the rental and accurate charges.
Going forward, we will definitely insist on a receipt or at the very least take photos if no one is there!