Consumer Rants: Avis Fuel Charge - Take 2

Last year I wrote about Avis's fuel charge (reminder: you pay $10 even if you return the gas tank full, if you drove less than 100 miles). Well, I just talk - some people do.

Today's post is a guest post, written by Andrew Samtoy, an attorney from Cleavland, whose company decided to do something about it. Andrew read my story, and asked me to write a post in my blog about what his company is trying to achieve. So without further ado, here's my first guest post:

By Andrew Samtoy

I work in the class action department at Dworken and Bernstein, L.P.A., in Cleveland, Ohio. We monitor consumer fraud across the country and have seen more and more companies acting in manners we believe to be unlawful. Recently, we have become concerned with “fuel service” charges from rental car companies.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that you are expected to bring back your rental car with a full tank. It also shouldn’t be a surprise that rental car agencies would charge you for fuel for not bringing back a full tank. However, rental car agencies have been charging their customers when the customers return a car with a full tank. The practice usually is usually listed as a “fuel service” charge: if you don’t bring back a receipt with your car, you are charged around $10-20 for the “service” of fueling the car. If you show up having just fueled the car, even across the street, and it says “full,” they still charge you even if the gas gauge shows “full” when returned. If you complain, they say that it was in your contract and there is nothing they can do. They will mark the car as “full” in their database but still charge this “refueling” fee.

We are interested in speaking to people around the country about this practice, and especially people in Ohio, to determine if you should receive a refund of these charges. If this happened to you, please call Andrew Samtoy toll-free at (866) 964-1806 immediately.

Thank you Andrew. I encourage people to call or write Andrew. It's about time those people start paying for their cri... ahem (deleted by my attorney's orders), immoral behavior.

And if anyone in the audience is interested in writing a future guest post, please write to me. I'll gladly receive any material that deals with tech and travel (as long as it's not too self-promoting).