A Canadian rental car customer was taken aback when she was billed $8,000 after allegedly driving over 20,000 miles in just three days.
That’s quite an extensive journey; you’d certainly need plenty of provisions.
Vancouver resident Giovanna Boniface would likely have prepared accordingly if she had actually intended to cover 22,668 miles in that time frame. However, that’s not the real story.
Boniface rented a GMC Yukon Denali from Avis for a three-day period in August 2022. Her itinerary included trips between downtown Toronto, the airport, and Kitchener, where she visited her mother-in-law.
In total, she drove about 300km (186 miles). She returned the car to the airport before catching a flight to Paris.
Having prepaid $1,000 for the rental, Boniface was shocked to discover a much larger charge when she checked her online banking at the airport.
“That’s when I notice this charge for over $8,000 from Avis,” she shared with CTV News Toronto.
Boniface was billed as if she had travelled more than 100 times her actual distance, which is nearly three times the Earth’s circumference.
The receipt showed she was charged for driving 36,482 kilometres at 25 cents per kilometre.
To give some perspective, Boniface calculated that she would have needed to drive continuously for 72 hours at approximately 500 km/h (300mph) to cover such a distance.
Clearly, this was an error.
Despite the obvious mistake, Boniface found Avis’s response to be ‘frustrating’.
“The first thing I wanted to do was actually go back through security and just walk to the counter,” she explained. “But I wouldn’t have had time to do that because the security lines were really long.”
Instead, she tried calling the Avis location at the airport.
“It was just ringing and ringing and no one was answering,” she recounted. “It was really frustrating just trying to get to somebody.”
Boniface eventually got through using the general number but was disconnected twice while attempting to talk to a manager. She had to board her flight with the $8,000 still unaccounted for.
“They didn’t seem to really get what my issue was and I really needed them to remove this $8,000 charge,” she stated.
Upon arriving in France, she sought help from Visa, but the company couldn’t assist as the charge was still pending.
Two days later, Boniface received a call from Avis confirming that her money would be refunded.
A representative for Avis informed CTV News Toronto that an apology and a refund had been issued. However, the company did not disclose the reason for the mistake.