With my business platinum card, I rented a car from Avis. I did this for two reasons: one, the discounted rate and two, that I would qualify for gold status at Avis and they would upgrade me for free. While this perk sounds nice in theory, I have been less impressed with its actual implementation.
For four days the total rental was to come to something around $200. With fees and tax it came to about $240. Avis pre-charged my card for the full amount, and I have a text alert that shows the card was used and for how much. I reserved an "intermediate" car, but was upgraded to a "standard SUV".
On the fourth day, I went to return it and there was a pile up on the freeway. I was an hour late getting it back to Avis. I profusely apologized and figured it was only an hour, they could definitely overlook that someone that was part of their gold program. Nope. They went ahead and charged me not only $74 for the one hour (it had previously been $50 for an entire day), but then went back and changed my daily rate from the $50/day that was my reservation to $140/day for the SUV that I was given as part of my upgrade. The grand total came to something in the $600 range, much more than I had planned on spending.
I figured this was an outrageous bait and switch. I could find nowhere on any document or paper that I was given that I would forfeit my AmEx benefit if I was late returning the car. I reached out to AmEx platinum customer service and they suggested I contest the charge. I clearly had evidence that showed what I was quoted and what it was changed to and if nothing else it might make its way to someone over at Avis that could make this right.
Five months later, I get a letter back ffrom Amex saying that it has validated the charge, and is siding with Avis on the contested charges. They never asked for my side of the story other than the 500 characters I was given to file a dispute, nor did they take my evidence (screen shots and pictures). And when I called customer service back to express my concern, I was met with less than stellar CSRs who just thought i was being obstinant.
