Comments

1. Crappy organizations like Avis (and definitely Hertz) are why we need stronger consumer protections.

2. The AA free bag policy has been a sore point with me for years. I never understood the limitation. What does it matter if I’m flying TPA to LAX or MIA to SJO, it isn’t like it costs more. The same policy applies to status holders. The only way to get free international bags is have at least one leg as business/first.

3. You really need to read the fine print .

   First checked bag free
   For benefit to apply, the Citi® / AAdvantage® account must be open 7 days prior to air travel, and reservation must include the primary credit cardmember’s American Airlines AAdvantage® number 7 days prior to air travel. If your credit card account is closed for any reason, these benefits will be cancelled.

   Eligible Citi® / AAdvantage® primary credit cardmembers may check one bag free of charge when traveling on domestic itineraries marketed and operated by American Airlines, or on domestic itineraries marketed by American Airlines and operated as American Eagle® flights by Envoy Air Inc., Republic Airways Inc., SkyWest Airlines, Inc., Air Wisconsin Airlines​, PSA Airlines, Inc., or Piedmont Airlines, Inc. All flights on the itinerary must be domestic flights marketed by American Airlines and operated by American Airlines or American Eagle. This benefit will not be available for travel on codeshare flights booked with an American Airlines flight number but operated by another airline. For the Citi® / AAdvantage® card, up to eight (8) companions traveling with the eligible primary credit cardmember will also get their first checked bag free of charge if they are listed in the same reservation. Waiver does not apply to overweight or oversized bags. This benefit cannot be combined with any existing AAdvantage® program benefits, or with First or Business class benefits, including any waiver of baggage charges. Please see aa.com/baggage » for baggage weight and size restrictions. Applicable terms and conditions are subject to change without notice.

4. First checked bag free

   on domestic American Airlines itineraries for the primary cardmember and up to 4 companions traveling with you on the same reservation.2

   2 Conditions and limitations apply. Please refer to the Introductory Bonus Offer section within the Terms and Conditions for additional information about this introductory offer. Please refer to the Reward Rules within the Terms and Conditions for additional information about the rewards program. Annual Companion Certificate may not be achievable based on the assigned credit line and ability to maintain that credit line.

5. It literally says “TERMS APPLY” on the AA napkin. Ben Edelman is a notorious prick who didn’t get tenure at Harvard because he complained about being charged $4 from a chinese takeout restaurant and then tried to bilk said restaurant treble damages (lol $12) for this. This loser deserves to lose!

6. Where does it say you can bring a free bag on a trip to SYD from DFW in Economy for you and your 16 kids?

   Love it when people do not read the contact and terms and then say they got Screwed over.

7. Sounds like they are using AI billing (there is not intelligence in AI)

8. The stain story is about being careful with your passport so the airline doesn’t reject it. I think that the airline had sufficient cause to reject it. If the passenger continues to fly with that passport, they may run into trouble again.

   The car rental story has incorrect conversions from kilometers to miles although the distances are still impossible to achieve in a road vehicle. It should also be noted that the charges are in CAD not USD since the airport is YYZ. I have rented cars at YYZ several times and drive them across the border.

   Corruption is common with politicians. Some politicians are more adept at it than others. Few politicians are willing to put in rules that would lead to the prosecution of their most corrupt colleagues.

9. That Avis Reciept is from August 13 2022 to August 16 2022 . TWO years ago. Is this a Fox news joke? The Odometer was

   Out 77,224
   In 48,170

   A Key punch error for sure. This is why you ALWAYS get a receipt when you drop the car off.

10. The rental car customer should ask Avis to pay them $8,000 since:

    “The receipt Avis gave Giovanna Boniface reads, “Odometer Out: 77224 Odometer In: 48170”

11. I have the.occasional AVIS multi-thousand or multi-ten-thousand errors. Never an issue with the unlimited miles rate.

    30 years ago I had 1800 miles in two weeks on a Budget car – small city desk. Only time I ever got a negative reaction when checking in. Maybe the policies/rules.were.different then and a franchisee took a hit or something.

12. Ahh….. So Adams’ mistake was thinking the Federal corruption perks apply to state officials. Live and learn.

13. @tomri- if the bag is only free for domestic marketed and operated flights, then why market it in the sales path of the international ticket purchases (and also the codeshare flights, which is how I got caught)? Also, note the marketing is pretty clear – “Get your first bag free”- no asterisks or disclosures, other than terms apply.

    To me, that’s a very clear bait and switch- if they aren’t offering a free bag with the card on this purchase, they shouldn’t put it in the purchase path and claim they are offering a free bag.

14. Thing 1- actually, I think the Adams crime was not disclosing the perk- looks like it’s legal to take bribes, as long as people know you are taking them, or you wash it through a 3rd party company, like Kushner.

15. I say the person shouldn’t pay AVIS’s shady extortion and they should give AVIS the middle finger and tell them *Not Happening*

16. Am I missing something? Was Ben Edelman charged for his first checked bag on an international AA flight?

    Or is he just complaining that he didn’t need the credit card to have his first bag checked free, because AA allows that to almost all passengers on international flights anyway?

17. Please disregard my previous comment, as it contains errors.

18. I did note that 48,170 miles is 77,522 km. If the car had 77,224 km out (though out and in are reversed), the driver did 298 km, a reasonable 3 day count.

19. Oops sorry. If it is miles for one and km for the other, in and out now make sense if you make both km.

20. I called and made a complaint with Avis recently over arguments I had with their Avis staff at Tampa Airport over their receipt policy. Stories like this just emphasize why I “insist” on getting a receipt “before” I leave with the car and also when I return it. At TPA, the staff at the Avis Preferred booth wouldn’t give me a receipt when I asked. They just lazily passed the buck and told me to get it from the guy at the gate booth on the way out. We were the only customers at the Preferred booth, no one behind us, and they still wouldn’t make the minimal effort to print one. When I get there, the guy at the gate booth rudely said he couldn’t give me a receipt. He also wouldn’t give me one of those those receipts they have for some damage I pointed out was on the car, he just told me to take a photo. After arguing with that rude jerk at the gate booth, I end up driving back to the Preferred booth. This time, miraculously, the guy who wouldn’t give me a receipt before when I asked first time I was there, now all of a sudden prints one in 2 seconds after I told him the jerk at the gate booth wouldn’t print one for me. I complained to their manager about all this and about their attitude and also to the Avis customer care. Never heard back with any follow up. Avis has really bottom of the barrel customer service,, especially at major Airports. I am not surprised at all by this story at all.

21. Passports are meant to take abuse.
    For a time (three years) I was traveling so hard that passport was usually in my back pocket, bent and worn, with additional pages added by the local embassy.
    The reality: The agents in the story were just being dicks. Unnecessarily so, but dicks nonetheless.
    Now WHY would they be dicks?
    Likely the worked for a company that are critically insane rule followers… who are terrified not to follow the rules because if they don’t follow them exactly, they will get fired.
    You see this in Mexico, you see this in China, you see this in outsourced service provider companies.
    (Example: Chinese hotels that won’t take US currency if the have a crease in them… because they have been told not to accept “worn or old” currency.)
    It creates imaginary bureaucratic requirements that creates roadblocks.
    Fight the power.

22. Since when is Bali a country?

    They’ve traveled to over countries, including Bali.

    I’m guessing the author of that piece has never traveled to Bali or Indonesia. Blatant errors like this make me discount the intelligence of the author

23. I had a similar issue with Avis a couple of years ago. I rented a car at SEA but did most of my driving in Canada, so I switched the car settings from miles to km. Forgot to reset it upon returning car and was told I drove something like 12,000 miles. Quick flip of settings back to miles and voila, all was good.

24. 29000 miles in 3 days or 72 hours would mean constant nonstop speed of 400+ mph, the worlds fastest drag racing car can barely go over 300mph. So would need a special research to develop cars that can match jet speeds as well as enough range to go the full distance without refueling essentially driving the equivalent of circling the globe each day!

25. I haven’t rented much since COVID but since my company pays for Hertz Gold I usually just go with them. My last three experiences have been such that I’m considering not even bothering anymore. My last rental in TPA I get there and deal with some other issues that I thought had been dealt with ‘Expired DL’ they send me to the Gold lot and I pick a car. At the exit they tell me the car I picked is an upgrade and the first couple rows in Gold are upgradable cars. So I go back, swap out, because my CDP apparently doesn’t allow upgrades or something.. shrug. I get the car, they have to redo paperwork, they mark the car out at 1,700ish miles. I get in the car and it has 77k. I go in and they tell me ‘oh don’t worry about that you have unlimited’ but took a walkaround in the lot including documenting the mileage and what they had me out as. Because I wouldn’t have been surprised if they tried to pull that crap on me too.

26. The Avis receipt reads:
    Odometer Out 77,224
    Odometer In 48,170

    Did Giovanna Boniface switched the car settings from km to miles? If so, the odometer in would be 48,170 miles or 77,505 km. That means she drove 281 km, or 175 miles – in line with her claim of driving 185 miles.

27. I wonder if the AvIS computer systematically makes many such errors some of which are not caught or contested? And given the tendency of rental car companies to have you arrested or claiming you damaged their car it’s best to use Uber/Lyft/Waymo so no tail liabilities are incurred.

28. @Thing 1: Accepting free travel is allowed. Offering official benefits in exchange for free travel is not.

29. The Avis receipt was in kilometers, not miles. YYZ = Toronto, Canada. The quotes in the linked article mention miles, so I’m wondering whether any of it is true, was the article AI generated.

30. Ben here, author of the DOT complaint about AA offering a domestic-only bag benefit, but calling it “first checked bag free” (with no mention of the domestic restriction anywhere in the marketing copy).

    Tomri, you remark “you really need to read the fine print.” Respectfully, that’s kind of the whole point of the complaint! Yes, AA adds this restriction in the fine print. But is it permissible, under DOT unfair/deceptive authority, for AA to add such a restriction in the fine print? To me, the large-print offer is literally false — the fine print doesn’t just clarify or explain the offer, but materially changes it. My claim is that this is not permitted under DOT unfair/deceptive authority, or the FTC principles that DOT follows when interpreting these terms.

    X XY: You rely on “terms apply.” Same broad response as what I wrote to Tomri. I claim it is not permitted, under DOT authority and FTC caselaw, to add such a restriction only in fine print.

    Joshua: I wasn’t personally charged a fee due to the problem I complained about. In other proceedings, AA has argued that my DOT complaints should be rejected because I wasn’t personally harmed. DOT rejected that argument, saying a diligent member of the public is welcome to bring matters to their attention. Might seem like a strange hobby, and surely it’s not for everyone. But if this is something I like to do with my free time, it’s still a valid complaint to be considered on its merits.

31. The same thing happened to me with Avis in August 2023 and the entire process took nearly seven months to resolve. As well, I was almost banned from renting cars with the Avis Group due to an issue that extended from this debacle. I had a one-way rental on a corporate rate contract (not worth nothing, I was a President’s Club member too) between Rochester and Buffalo, New York, and had the vehicle for roughly 13 hours.

    My OUT mileage was 25,186 and my IN mileage was 38,573 for a total of 13,351 miles driven in 13 hours (meaning an average speed of over 1000 MPH, slightly less than twice as fast as a modern commercial jet engine flies) and for a grand total of $7053.79 (incl. of fees/taxes/surcharges) on what was originally a $62 all-in rental with 250 miles included (additional $0.40 per mile, before taxes/fees). Despite it not being an after hours return, there were no agents present or on duty for check-in procedures and I was instructed to simply leave keys and that I would receive an E-receipt.

    Upon receipt later that day, I reported this instantly to American Express who suspended the charge immediately, however, Avis did not actually adjust the charge in its system until early 2024, and, after resolving it, still kept me on the hook for some ~$4 adjustment charge (perhaps taxes changed from 2023 to 2024 when this was resolved, and no longer fully covered by my 2023 base fare? Truly unsure) and sent me a firm letter in the mail (despite renting from Avis several times since that incident) indicating I defrauded them and was delinquent and owed them this $4 fee or I would no longer be able to rent cars from the Avis family. I disputed it with Avis Corporate but eventually paid it for simplicity’s sake on my end (Avis is who I am required to use through my company), and in April 2024 this was finally all put to rest. The process was painful and time-consuming, and an all-around negative experience, but I was stupefied by how long the issue took to be resolved, and how an issue like this would be allowed to happen on Avis’s system in the first place. Certainly there should be some logic in its billing / statements system? In any case, Avis won — I am still a customer when I need to be, albeit not for personal travel any longer.