I rented a Hyundai Elantra for a wedding. I only needed it one day but I was told minimum rental was 2 days for the weekend. I only drove the car to the wedding an back. When I went to return the car the guy checking it in said the car smelled like smoke and needed to be cleaned. I'm not a smoker and the only other two people in the car were my 13 yr old niece and 7 yr old nephew. I was told his "friend" could remove the smoke smell for $50 or Avis could clean it for $250. I wasn't going to have his "friend" clean it so my credit card was charged $250. I also have a friend who had the same situation with the same company. I will he contacting the better business bureau and the Avis corporate office

REF:AVIS RA#U126128225, U126128273, U126128170
as president club, i rented 3 full size cars with double upgrade free same day pick up and same date drop for 15 days, insurance included and american covers automatically when rented with amex. i got billed 3 differents amounts, eventhough i had original reservation rate.i disputed several times, amex finally recredit me the difference.i reserve for yesterday trip.arrived to avis lax airport with my conf voucher.they told me i was blacklisted by avis collection dept.plz help me.sending you the last e-mail of jan 7, 2010.i want to be retablish with avis

To: "ShaneAtkins" <[email protected]>
dear mr.atkins,

i received ur warning e-mail, eventhough u deducted 500$ for the insurance which i am not responsible, i sent you 3 different reservations with the rates i got for aug 3, 2006, confirmation number:30888093LB5, Confirmation Number:33499823LB0, and 32524062LB4, including full insurance, eventhough i am protected with amex, you don't seem to understand the situation, i wrote to avis head office explaining the situation by registered mail.i keep on getting threats from you of sending to collection agency.i am sorry that you don't want to understand my situation.you will be hold responsible for any actions against me
sincerely
ZOUHAIR ATTOUE

I filled car before returning to airport and they charged me $13.99 fuel charge after I got home because I didn't drive enough miles and provide proof of fuel! After the surprise charge on my amex, I called and they say they require a gas receipt for anything under 75 miles because maybe you didn't even fill the car...I had to take the time to fax them my credit card statement to show the lousy $4.21 it took to fill the car! And it took three phone calls to find out what this charge was even for.

Also, when I dropped the car early in the morning, there wasn't even an agent there. All other companies had agents then.

Avis customer support has exhausted my patience, so I'm considering this the final chapter. If Avis is your cheapest rate when you go to rent a car, take a second to think about the risk you might run of having to deal with customer service. I am not going to be a loyal Avis customer anytime soon.

I used Travelocity.com to book the cheapest car I could find for Kallie and I to use on our flight to California over Thanksgiving. Avis was the cheapest, but not by much. We picked up the Pontiac G5 at Sacramento airport on Nov 25th on our arrival. It was the smallest rental car I've ever been in, which put me more in a contemplative mindset as I wondered why I've never had such a small car even though I've always rented the cheapest before.

The car worked fine until Friday evening in San Francisco. While sightseeing, I parallel parked but was not able to turn the key to power off the car. It was if it was locked in the on position. We couldn't leave the car running and unlocked to sightsee. We tried all the obvious things, then called the 800 number listed with the rental docs, and they had us try the obvious stuff again, then we told them we'd just go to the nearest Avis center and return it. We were near empty on gas, but there was an Avis location in town, not far away. We got to the location shortly after 5, and it closed at 5pm. That meant that we would have to drive ~30 minutes to the San Francisco airport. We got there, with less than a gallon of gas left, I'm sure.

Upon our arrival, I had the 2 employees and a manager sanity check me and they could not turn the car off either. They said to go inside and talk to customer service to get a replacement car. They initially said they would have to charge me for returning the car with an empty tank, but since I couldn't turn off the car, it wasn't safe for me to fill it up before returning it and they let that charge go. The desk representative also volunteered a $25 voucher for our inconvenience, and asked her manager to bring the voucher to the desk for us over the walkie talkie. ~20 minutes go by, the very nice desk rep pages her manager again. We use the rest room, talk about the car, wait around, until the desk rep then physically goes to the manager's office to find the manager had left for the day and locked the office with the voucher inside. When the desk rep came back to us, she said that she would leave notes in their system for our reservation so that when we returned the car in Sacramento, they would give us a voucher for "more than $25" since we had so much trouble and had to wait. We got a replacement Ford Focus, and went about our lives.

...until Sunday, when we realize we may have left Kallie's Macbook under the passenger seat with our only copies of wedding photos on DVD. We called the San Francisco airport location, and they said they don't see any notes on a laptop, but the car is at their repair facility off site, and no one would be able to look for it until Monday, but they would have someone call me back once they were able to look. By 4pm Monday, I hadn't heard anything back, so I called them again, and they asked me where to look for it, so I said, "in the car", and they wanted me to be specific, so I said to try under the passenger seat or in the trunk. They called back after a few minutes and said they were not able to find it there.

Fast forward to Tuesday, Dec 1st at 4:00am. We drop off the car at the rental location to catch our 6:00am flight. The receiving employee only has a hand scanner that prints our return receipts and she has no access to a computer or vouchers. She said that we would have to wait until the desk representatives come in at 7:00am. So I decide I'll have to pick this back up once we get home.

I give a phone call to the customer support number. I explain the voucher situation to them, and they say they'll send it in the mail to me right away. Seemed easy enough. I also called the SF location again to have the search the whole car, thinking it might have moved or we put it somewhere else. They said they will leave an open case in the lost and found if it ever turns up, but it's not in the car.

A week or so later, I receive a letter from Avis with a voucher attached to the bottom for $25. The letter is your basic canned apology letter, but the voucher, at least, had something identifying on it...an expiration date of 12/31/09. They had given me less than a month to use the voucher. That's pretty much insulting, and I said that in my letter to them. I used the contact form on their site to send it to them. I could repost it here, but it's basically the same as this post and carries the same tone.

We rented a car from Avis from 3/29/2008 to 4/14/08. The agreeable rental total was $531.00.

Unfortunately, when we received the credit statement, we were billed for $696.55. We were very frustrated and immediately went through the a seris of events of contacting the local place, the fleet/district manager and the Corporate Office.

The AVIS TEAM took side of one another and quickly turned our case now. They said that the extra charges were for clearning but when we returned the car, we were told that everything ws OK.

The recent rental experience with Avis was very terrible and unacceptable. When we brought the car, we returned it to the branch manager's husband. Upon inspecting the car, he informed us that everything was fine and we were free to go. We asked him twice to give me some form of paper indicating the car was OK. Twice, he said it was OK and we could leave. We both left after the second verbal OK. This means this is the termination of our contract between us and Avis. At that point, we are no longer held responsible or liable with the car.

If there were issues, we should have been informed back then. A claim should have been filed at the moment when we returned the car. We brought the car back four hours before it was due and we even cleaned it beforehand. If the condition was not acceptable, we could have done something to work it out. The extra cleaning fee charged on the credit card is excessive. A car cleaning usually costs from $15.00 - $50.00 at the max. The price charged appears to be synonymous to a detailing fee.

Teresa (the manager) and her husband do not run the rental car agency in a professional manner. They are very dishonest, unethical and irresponsible in this matter. Teresa was out of the country when we returned the car so she had no idea of the car‘s condition. When a car is discharged, this should be the end of the rental. Adding extra fees after the car is signed off leads to bogus charges which I have no way of verifying. The car is no longer in my possession. There is no way for me to dispute the claim. False claims can be fabricated.