My experiences with car rental "rip-offs" or "scams"

Experience with Thrifty in Australia

1. For this car rental, I booked with FastCarHire.
2. At the Thrifty car rental counter pick-up, I was shown a different amount, slightly higher than the one on my booking voucher.
3. The staff looked confused but said anyway that she would honour mine. I can't remember if I paid cash or credit card, for the amount shown on my booking voucher. But I signed the car agreement for the amount stipulated on my voucher. Anyway, we didn't think much about it and we went off on our holidays.
4. After our return, there was a charge by Thrifty for the extra amount of AUD399 that we didn't pay. There begins our dispute with Thrifty.
5. I reported to UOB credit card that I would dispute this amount. The staff wasn't helpful. They said that it's was alright for the car rental to charge me since it's indicated on any car rental agreement that the final sum could vary, due to damages or other possibilities. I told them that it wasn't so in my case and therefore I had to insist on disputing this claim. Since it's considered a "fraudulent" transaction, I was then asked to cancel this credit card and that they would issue me a new card replacement.
6. I was then asked to explain my dispute, which was as in (2) and (3) above and I submitted my Fastcarhire booking voucher to UOB.
7. Subsequently, UOB came back with a response from Thrifty. I was asked to settle the amount if I did not dispute the response, which claimed that I was supposed to pay the rest of the rental of AUD399 upon returning my car at the Thrifty counter.
8. My subsequent response to the dispute was : (a) the agreement I signed for was for AUD648. (b) if the car rental company did not agree with my car rental voucher booking, they would have issued another car agreement stipulating the amount they want to charge. (c) Even if they had wanted to charge me a higher amount, I would have disagreed to take up the car rental, and gone to another car rental agency. There are 4 more agencies at the airport. (d) No customer in his right mind, would sign any car rental agreement, only to know that the car rental agency would charge them higher, at whatever price they want later, afterwards, saying that the car hire charges are different.
9. Thrifty didn't want to back down from their claim, so I was asked by UOB to reconsider settling paying. Otherwise, this dispute would be taken to the Visa Worldwide Arbitration Committee, whereby it would be settled, and whichever party lost, they would have to pay an admin fee of 500USD.
10. Well, finally, Thrifty lost and I gained a lot of useful experience from this episode.

NB : 

• From then onwards, I will no longer use FastCarHire, as I wrote to them about my dispute, but I did not receive any response from them.
• I have been using drivenow.com.au for all the rest of my car rental needs. They are reliable and they respond to your queries.

Experience with Buchbinder/Global Drive in Frankfurt in Germany

1. I booked with Rentalcars.com. I had negotiated for unlimited mileage, automatic, compact(size) car, and full protection for my excess with rentalcars.com at the time of booking.
2. Upon arrival at Global Drive counter at 1200 hrs, I was informed my car wasn't ready(my collection time at 1300hrs). However, they would let me have a bigger car by paying an extra 10€ a day. My rental was for a month, so I'd have to fork out an extra 300€. No way, so we waited.
3. Rentalcars has already deducted the money from my credit card, so at Global Drive, they swiped my credit card for a deposit, as I did not buy the excess insurance from them but from Rentalcars. I also had to pay a cross-border fee plus some taxes together with the deposit. My phone SMS showed me that the amount deducted was as charged.
4. At the car park below the airport terminal, we then saw our huge rental car, a Ford Explorer type, hi-tech, GPS, sensor all-round, instead of a Ford Focus compact car. We would realise later that Global Drive was not gracious nor kind enough to give us this car rightaway, and wanted us to pay for it.
5. The in-car GPS unit was not as intuitive as our Garmin, so we discarded it almost immediately.
6. We regretted not using our Garmin to save our position at the car rental, as upon our return, the Frankfurt airport signage for car rental is really bad. Their in-car GPS unit also did not have the car rental car park as its home position.
7. Upon our return, our car was checked, I got a copy of the agreement and so we returned home happily.
8. Unfortunately, Buchbinder did not refund us the full deposit. They deducted for extra mileage incurred, and my cross-border fee a 2nd time.
9. So I had to write to their email hotline, stating my case, and also enclosing my rental voucher with rentalcars.com. Rentalcars has a very comprehensive detailed voucher, stating what's there, your requested car, with the deposit of 1100€ and unlimited mileage clearly stated at the top right.
10. I waited 1 week, no response. So I had to email them again for an update. In my email, I did not vent my frustration nor anger. I simply stated my case in the first email and in the 2nd, I asked for an update.
11. I got my correct refund a few days later.

Lesson learnt

• So was it a scam or rip-off ? Hard to say, as I have read other bad reviews of Buchbinder whereby they did not get their refund or claim.
• All I can say is that do the car hire checklist as mentioned in the other post "How to minimise car rental scams or rip-offs", and it could protect you from all these monetary nuisances.