Sneaky car rental fees can drive you crazy
TODAY I’m going to help car rental companies steal more of your money.
Why would I do such a thing? Because I don’t think the companies are being creative enough with the existing charges they sneak into the fine print of their contracts. And also because I’ve been traveling a little lately and have become aware of deficiencies in the companies’ duplicity.
Let me explain. I recently got a letter from a reader who had the audacity to look at the fine, smudged print on his Avis contract. Then he made me read it.
“The $21-a-day rate for three days — $63 before sales tax — becomes $83.03 before sales tax. Note the security fee, the energy recovery fee and finally the battery fee,” the reader wrote to me.
Ah, but even those pesky fees didn’t bring the renter anywhere close to the net cost of the threeday trip.
There was also the fee that was listed as “Veh License Recoup 0.80/ DY” — which turned out to be an 80-cent-a-day fee to help Avis pay for the car’s paperwork — and the more mysterious fee just listed as “FTP SR$ 1.00/DY.” What, I asked, could that be? Well it turns out that Avis — and probably other companies, too — add a surcharge (SR) of $1 a day to pay for its Frequent Traveler Program (FTP). Who knew?!
After I inquired and Avis sent me some more fine print, I learned that the company “will assess a frequent flyer surcharge equivalent to 75 cents a day” (except when it’s $1 a day).
“The amount assessed is collected by Avis to offset a portion of Avis’ annual cost of participation in frequent flyer programs.”
Really, don’t you think this is brilliant? Customers are charged for frequent traveler points even if they never use them.
Neil Abrams of Abrams Consulting, who tracks the car rental industry, said he’s heard of the surcharge for frequent traveler programs but nobody has asked about it for a long time. Abrams said there are a lot of fees that are “legally permissible” and some that are even mandated by states that have become a public relations problem for the car rental companies.
“The rental industry,” Abrams told me, “has an issue with all these below-the-line charges.” At Newark Airport, for instance, Abrams says there’s a hidden charge to maintain the monorail that shuttles people to the parking lots. And travelers pay the Port Authority, which runs the airport, even if they aren’t using the darned thing.
Other states impose fees on car renters so they can build new football stadiums.
There are also “concession fees” that nobody can really explain and “facilities charges” that help companies like Avis maintain the building in which they operate — or something like that.
You get the point. Car rental companies are pretty good at coming up with nonsense charges that other businesses wouldn’t even dream of passing along to customers.
What would you think if, say, you went to a local burger joint and there was a charge on your bill for SRF .10/ P— a spatula refurbishing fee of 10 cents a patty. Or if your hairstylist added SSC .50/H — a scissor sharpening charge of 50 cents a haircut.
How about your dentist adding SSU 0.3/PS — a 3 cent charge for spit sink usage per spit. A proctologist could include RGR 0.10 PAP — a dime charge for the rubber glove replacement each time he had to go where the sun don’t shine (because we all know those gloves aren’t ever going to be used again).
And anyone who does business from a facility for which it has to pay rent could take its cue from Avis by charging the hidden fee that would be listed as LSCPOR $2.00/ DY — which stands for Let Stupid Customers Pay Our Rent.
I’m still scratching my head when I buy a ticket to a sporting event or concert and I am charged a “convenience fee” for printing the ticket at home.
That seems like more of a convenience for the seller than the buyer. Maybe it should be paying me for not making it mail the ticket or hold it at the box office.
But let me get back to my point, which is my desire to give car rental companies other creative ways to bilk their customers.
Avis forgot the TWC 0.3/ML — a tire wear charge of 3 cents a mile; the MAGTRT 0.10/DY, which is a Mufflers Aren’t Going to Replace Themselves fee of 10 cents a day, and, of course, the OYWOITE charge of .50/DY. That’s an Oh, You Wanted Oil In The Engine surcharge of 50 cents a day.
If car rental companies add any more fees, customers may come up with a code of their own, like FUAVIS, which stands for — well, you already know. Last Tuesday I wrote a column about how some executives who were working at the Census Bureau as consultants also had jobs at companies that got contracts from Census. I nailed it with the timeline of these execs’ employment. But Census and I had a misunderstanding when it came to the bureau’s response. Census didn’t admit to anything, it said. A note I got back from a Census spokesman had, curiously, restated my questions. And I mistakenly took that restatement as a reply. My point was (and is): Someone needs to look at how and where Census is spending all its money.