The car rental industry saw a boom in 2021, with a reported 21 percent increase since 2020, when the industry faced a decline. Now, the industry is even facing shortages of cars, thanks to increased demand and production halts on cars during the pandemic.
Giovanna Boniface from Vancouver rented a car from car rental company Avis at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this month when she arrived in the city to help her daughter move to college.
She told CTV News that she used the car to drive between the airport, downtown Toronto, to Kitchener and back, about 186 miles (300 kilometers) by the time she returned the car.
Boniface was set to fly to Europe when she returned the car at the airport but was lumped with added stress when she checked her credit card statement while waiting to board.
Boniface told CTV News that she had already prepaid around $1,000 to rent the car and so was left startled to see an $8,000 charge from the company on her card.
She said she checked her statement to ensure that the prepayment had been processed correctly. “That’s when I noticed this charge for over $8,000 from Avis,” Boniface told CTV News.
After investigating the receipt, Boniface saw that she had been charged a rate of 25 cents per kilometer, for a 36,482 kilometer (22,668 miles) journey.
That’s the equivalent of driving for three days straight at a speed of 310 mph non-stop. It’s almost the entire circumference of the earth, or just over the journey from Canada to Australia and back—if such a straight line existed.
The geostationary orbit of the earth is at around 36,000 kilometers, meaning if Boniface drove her claimed distance vertically, she’d likely bump into some geostationary satellites.
Needless to say, Boniface said she did not drive this distance. The mom claimed she initially tried to contact the specific rental location but had no luck getting through. After contacting the company’s general line, she said she was left just as stuck with the charges.
“They didn’t seem to really get what my issue was and I really needed them to remove this $8,000 charge,” she told CTV News.
Visa was also unable to dispute the charge just yet, as it was still pending. Days later, after the charge had fully gone through, Boniface was contacted by Avis—though not until she had contacted Canadian media first, claimed Boniface.
Avis eventually told Boniface that her erroneous charges would be refunded.
In a statement to Newsweek, a spokesperson for Avis said: “Avis has apologized to Ms. Boniface for the error in odometer reading and issued a refund. This should never have happened and we have taken preventative steps to avoid this from occurring in the future.”
Update 08/30/22, 3:15 a.m. ET: This article was updated with a statement from Avis.
