Flashback: The Rental Car Saga

One achievement from yesterday requires me to tell you a saga in the form of another flashback. In this case, we return under three months to the beginning of July.

Chrissi and I were going on a holiday to both America, and as we were heading in that direction, we wanted to go to my cousin Mark's wedding in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Now, flights in that direction are expensive - so much so that when analysing the cost, it turned out to be about £500 cheaper between us to fly into Minneapolis, rent a car and drive up to Winnipeg. We could drive back again, drop the car off, no issue whatsoever - and would be considerably better off, with the inconvenience of an 8 hour drive the only downside.

When looking more closely, we realised that it was only flying in to Winnipeg that was the problem. Flying on from Winnipeg meant only another £15 compared to the flight from Minneapolis, and saved an 8 hour car journey. A quick check that there were rental car companies that would allow drop off in Canada from a hire in the US - there were - and we booked the trip.

So far, so good, you might imagine, and so it was. However, when we arrived in Minneapolis on the 4th July we reached the rental car desk - after having already been travelling for 16 hours at this point - we were greeted with the news that contrary to the information on Expedia, there would be a $650 drop-off charge for returning it in Canada. This took us slightly by surprise.

Several phonecalls with Expedia later - who despite the cock up, I have to praise for their superb help in actually getting us sorted and keeping us sane - and a trip to the Delta desk to see if flying up cheaply was an option (at $750 per person it wasn't). After discussing for about an hour and a half, several phonecalls back and forth, we worked out the problem was on Expedia's end. They said that as this was their mistake and we had a proof of booking that had no fee, we should pay the fee (and associated taxes) and they would reimburse us. Once we had written confirmation of this, we got the car and off we went.

Skip forward three weeks and we've gotten in touch with Expedia to reclaim our money. We go through one round of explaining, and a second round later - after many emails trying to explain exactly what we're reclaiming (there were $205 of various fees and taxes on top as well, plus some things we'd included that we weren't claiming for) - we thought we had it sorted. By mid-August they were reimbursing the money into our account in full, including both the drop-off charge and the associated taxes.

Except they didn't. They only reimbursed the money for the drop-off charge, and didn't mention this. At the beginning we probably would have taken this, but while getting the $650 back was huge, we weren't going to give up on the other $205 that was only paid because of their mistake. So back to the phones! We got back in touch with the customer service desk, who explained that they couldn't reimburse the taxes and fees as they could only handle the reimbursement of the drop-off charge itself. While ludicrous as this was, the saga was then passed on to their complaints department to handle the rest.

At this point I was fairly confident of a positive resolution - as they had already accepted it was their fault that had caused the charges, and the fees and taxes were the sole result of the charges, it would've been very difficult for them to argue against this. To their credit they didn't, it just took ages to get it sorted. The 28 days for normal resolution had expired when I sent a prompting email on Friday enquiring what would happen.

So the phone rang on Saturday from an American number, and Chrissi answered it, was surprised it was for me - and passed it over to me with the information that it was Brandie from Expedia Head Office calling. Brandie kindly informed me that the money had been reimbursed two weeks ago, and they hadn't bothered to tell us.

So after a quick scout around the accounts to confirm it had gone back in where they said it had, it was over. They'd even given us an extra cent, rounding up the $205.69 we had claimed for reimbursement to an even $205.70.

While the saga has a happy ending and is mainly a long complaint about Expedia, I must actually say that while they made a mistake, they were honest about it, they dealt with it properly and correctly, and every single person I spoke to was helpful and exactly what you wanted to deal with. They come out of this with flying colours, despite the mistake, and I'm more impressed with them as a result of this.