Woman charged $8,000 after company claimed she drove nearly the distance of the Earth's circumference in three days
A rental car customer in Canada was left stunned when she received a bill of $8,000 after being accused of driving more than 20,000 miles in three days.
That's one big road trip - you'd certainly need a lot of snacks.
I'm sure Vancouver resident Giovanna Boniface would have stocked up if she actually did plan to travel 22,668 miles in three days, but you probably don't need me to tell you that's not actually what happened.
This story begins when Boniface rented a GMC Yukon Denali from Avis for three days in August 2022, with plans to drive between downtown Toronto, the airport, and Kitchener, where she visited her mother-in-law.
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She covered a total of about 300km (186 miles) during her journey, then returned the vehicle to the airport and checked in for a flight to Paris.
Boniface had already prepaid $1,000 for the car, so she was stunned to see a charge for thousands more when she checked her online banking while waiting to board.
"That's when I notice this charge for over $8,000 from Avis," she told CTV News Toronto.
Boniface realized she'd been charged as though she'd travelled more than 100 times as far as she actually did - nearly three times the distance of the Earth's circumference.
The receipt indicated that she'd been billed for driving 36,482 kilometres at a rate of 25 cents per kilometre.
To put that in context, Boniface calculated that she would have had to drive for 72 hours straight at approximately 500 km/h (300mph) for this to be possible.
So needless to say, it wasn't very likely.
But in spite of the glaring error, Boniface claimed the response from Avis was 'frustrating'.
"The first thing I wanted to do was actually go back through security and just walk to the counter," she said.
"But I wouldn’t have had time to do that because the security lines were really long."
Instead, she opted to call the Avis at the airport.
"It was just ringing and ringing and no one was answering," she recalled. "It was really frustrating just trying to get to somebody."
She eventually managed to get through via the general number, but said she was cut off twice, while trying to speak to a manager, and ultimately had to board her flight with the $8,000 still missing from her account.
"They didn't seem to really get what my issue was and I really needed them to remove this $8,000 charge," she said.
After touching down in France, Boniface tried to get Visa to sort the issue, but the company was unable to assist as the charge was still pending.
It wasn't until two days later that Boniface got a call from Avis, assuring her the money would be refunded.
A spokesperson for Avis told CTV News Toronto that an apology and a refund had been issued, but the company didn't confirm the cause of the error.
Emily Brown