A woman from Vancouver was recently charged a sum of $3,000 by a car rental company. The reason for this- the company claimed that the woman had driven almost the entire distance of the Earth’s circumference in three days. Such a bizarre claim definitely rattled Giovanna Boniface- after she had simply gone to Toronto for her daughter. The woman stated that she had rented one of the cars from Avis for just three days. This took place after she had gone to Toronto Pearson just this month so that she could settle her daughter at her university. The woman further stated that she had driven the GMC Yukon Denali between just a few places. She moved between the airport, Kitchener, and downtown Toronto- where she had also visited her MIL.
For anyone wondering, the total distance that she traveled couldn’t be more than 300 kilometers. After that, she returned her car and checked in for a flight to Europe. The woman mentioned that she had already prepaid around $1,000 when she rented the car. The mess took place when she checked her credit card statement online. Speaking to CTV News Toronto, Boniface stated, “That’s when I notice this charge for over $8,000 from Avis.” A close inspection of the receipt highlighted that she had apparently driven the car for 36,482 kilometers. The woman ridiculed this amount and said that this was quite an impossible task. She would have to drive for 3 days at a speed of around 500 km/h for this to be possible. [1]
A Rental Drive Like No Other
The distance that the car company charged her with was also the same distance as driving all the way from Toronto to South Africa thrice. She also mentioned, “The first thing I wanted to do was actually go back through security and just walk to the counter. But I wouldn’t have had time to do that because the security lines were really long.” Calling the car company at the airport also didn’t do the trick. She said, “It was just ringing and ringing and no one was answering. It was really frustrating just trying to get to somebody.” Even when she got through to the company, they didn’t understand what the problem was. Boniface mentioned, “They didn’t seem to really get what my issue was and I really needed them to remove this $8,000 charge.”
When the woman arrived in Paris, she went on to call Visa to dispute this transaction. But as it turns out, the company could do nothing since the charge was still pending. Soon the media got involved and after hearing the entire story, she finally got the situation cleared. Avis called her personally to notify her that the extra charges had been refunded. While Boniface agrees that mistakes do happen, and it was a good thing that the company did to clear it out, the hassle wasn’t worth it. She also didn’t like the way how she had to go to the media to get this problem solved. In her interview, she stated, “Overall, it was not good customer service. The most frustrating thing was not getting through to customer service in any kind of timely way.”
Sources
- “Woman charged $8,000 after rental car company claims she drove 36,000 kilometres in three days.” Toronto CTV News. Sean Davidson. August 26, 2022.