Pregnant Women Drove 3 Hours to Avoid $1,000 Penalty After Avis Got the Drop-off Location Wrong
A rental car is often particularly stressful. Now imagine that you find yourself having to drive three hours in the middle of the night to return your rental car to an unexpected location before the 8 a.m. deadline that will leave you facing a $1,000 fine. Now add that you’re pregnant, and you have the situation that a Tennessee woman recently found herself facing thanks to Avis.
Avis is a famous car rental company
Avis is a car rental company operating in the United States. Together with Budget, it forms part of the Avis Budget Group. In recent years, Avis has reported at least several times about incidents related to customer complaints.
without apparent reason. Campbell was only able to get an apology and an offer of credit from the car rental company after he took his status to Twitter. On another occasion, Avis charged a customer $6000 for the assumed travel.
Avis misplaces the couple’s delivery location, which leads to dire consequences
According to Avis’ latest customer service game, a Tennessee woman and her husband have just returned from a cruise. They drove their rental car 11 hours from Florida back to Tennessee, and arrived at.
They intended to drop off the car in Knoxville, where they live. When they arrived at the drop-off site in Knoxville, they were informed that Avis had listed their hometown as Nashville. The woman and her husband failed to notice Avis’ mistake in the paperwork when they rented the car.
The situation was worse because the woman was early in her first pregnancy, and the couple were given almost no time to move the car to Nashville. Nor were they given flexibility with the landing site. They had until 8:00 the next morning to drive the three-hour drive to Nashville. Otherwise, they will face a fine of $1,000. When the couple protested, an Avis agent reportedly told them they should “learn to read” and note the error when signing the contract.
Avis finally made the situation right
The woman attempted to address the situation with Avis directly via social media and by emailing customer service. Unfortunately, these methods did not get her far. It was only when the media started calling Avis that the company had other ideas about how it would handle the whole thing.
In the end, Avis offered the woman a full refund and a credit for future service. Whether she would be interested in doing business with them again is another question. An Avis spokesperson also issued an apology saying: “We deeply regret this situation and have apologized directly to [the couple] for bad customer experience. Unfortunately, due to a misunderstanding, their landing site was recorded as Nashville, Tenn, which they only discovered at the Knoxville site after a long flight. We wish they were offered a better solution there and then, rather than having them drive three extra hours to get the car back the next morning.”
