Several weeks ago a posted my experience returning a dirty car to a rental company at the Houston Airport after a birding trip to the Upper Texas Coast. I was charged an additional $55 cleaning fee. My original message is here. I did not originally mention that an employee of the company in the van on the trip back to the airport stated that the check-in clerks are paid a bonus of $50 for every chargeable defect they can find.
I received many replies and suggestions from BirdChatters, most of which were posted publicly. I am pleased
to report that my complaint has been resolved. Several people wanted to know the name of the rental company.
It was Dollar.
Based partly on advice on BirdChat, I took the following steps.
1. I filed a complaint on the Dollar Rent-A-Car Consumer Services web
site, and followed up with a telephone call. I was advised that my complaint had been assigned a case number
and that I would be hearing from the company eventually but that it could take a while.
2. I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau via their web
site. I also checked out the company on the BBB web
site and found that it had an "unsatisfactory" rating because of the lack of replies to BBB complaints.
3. I filed a written dispute of the charge with the credit card company.
4. After reading the unsatisfactory rating on the BBB web site, I decided to file with the Consumer
Fraud Division of the Attorney General's office in Texas. The link was on the BBB site.
On 1 May, I received an email reply to my original complaint on the Dollar web site apologizing for the inconvenience
and crediting me with the $55 fee, plus tax. Their reply included the following:
Your rental jacket stated, "Except for ordinary wear and tear, you must return
the vehicle in the same condition you received it." Also, "Upon return of the vehicle, you
will pay a reasonable fee for cleaning the interior of the vehicle for excessive stains or
dirt attributable to your use." Upon your return, the Houston location found the vehicle
to be excessively dirty therefore a $55.00 cleaning fee was applied.
A hard copy of the email was also sent to me via the Better Business Bureau. I suspect that the query by the BBB may have resulted in my complaint getting higher priority than it would otherwise.
Many thanks to all who offered helpful and useful advice.
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Joseph Morlan, Pacifica, CA 94044: mailto:jmorlan@ccsf.org California Birding & new rarities: http://fog.ccsf.edu/~jmorlan/ California Bird Records Committee: http://www.californiabirds.org/