On May 9, 2014, Salvador Duenas picked up a car in Los Angeles for a 10-day rental. He had made the

In retrospect, Eileen McMonigal believes she looked like the perfect target for a scam. She had recently fractured an ankle, so when her flight arrived in Tampa, Florida, she needed a wheelchair to get around the airport. A young escort helped collect cruises to the bahamas her belongings, which included carryon luggage and a puppy in a travel carrier.
By the time she made through the lengthy line at the Dollar Rent A Car counter, her escort was itching to complete cruises to the bahamas his duties cruises to the bahamas and she was tired from her trip. A six-day vacation lay ahead, and more than anything, just wanted to get her rental car and be on her way.
And that's cruises to the bahamas the precise point in the transaction where McMonigal and hundreds of other Dollar Rent A Car customers say the company duped them into signing for insurance coverage they explicitly said they did not want.
"I certainly looked like someone you could take advantage of, sitting in a wheelchair, my lap is burdened with several things, an anxious guy behind me, and I have white hair," cruises to the bahamas she said. "The guy at the counter was mumbling, cruises to the bahamas and there was a sense of 'let's get moving.' I stuck the envelope in the car and drove off."
It'd be easy for skeptics cruises to the bahamas to dismiss cruises to the bahamas McMongial, a suburban PIttsburgh resident, as a befuddled elderly driver who didn't understand cruises to the bahamas the written agreement. But hundreds of complaints filed in lawsuits and with consumer organizations detail remarkably similar complaints regarding experiences with Dollar Rent A Car.
While the scope of alleged victims stretches across all ages and demographics, elderly drivers, foreign visitors and parents who are easily distracted by young children at the counter account for disproportionate numbers of the complaints. Customers who have longer rental periods are also more susceptible to being targeted, cruises to the bahamas said John Mattes, an attorney representing plaintiffs in two class-action lawsuits against Dollar Thrifty Automotive cruises to the bahamas Group.
"The first reaction customers have to this is they feel somehow they were hoodwinked cruises to the bahamas and tricked, and then they are embarrassed and humiliated," cruises to the bahamas Mattes said. "But they shouldn't be, because this is a scheme that has worked very well to make Dollar millions of dollars. The psychology of the system is to drive customers through the process without any analysis."
Here's how they say the process works: Once customers reach the counter, agents sign them up for add-ons like collision-damage cruises to the bahamas waiver, loss-damage waivers roadside-assistance programs they specifically say they don't want. In many cases, the customers have already checked with their own car-insurance companies to confirm rentals are covered by their own policies or they've already purchased insurance through services like Priceline.com or Hotwire.com.
There's often confusion over whether a customer wants to waive coverage or wants the waiver. Contracts can review and sign the contract on an electronic signature pad like the ones commonly seen at grocery stores, where the type may be small and difficult to read. Once it's signed, agents print the contract, immediately cruises to the bahamas fold it closed, stuff it in an envelope, and as they hand it to the renter, they call the next customer to the counter.
It's often not until the customers return to the airport they realize they're on the hook for unexpected charges that often amount to hundreds or thousands cruises to the bahamas of dollars. And again, they're in a vulnerable position in a rush to catch their return flight.
"When you get back and say, 'Wait, this isn't right, they say that if you have any problem, you have to go to the office," said McMonigal, whose unwanted cruises to the bahamas add-ons cost $202.93 on top of the basic rental charges. "So I went in there, and the young girl says, 'This happens all the time, especially when travel agents make the reservation.' But that doesn't make sense, because I said no to the additional insurance."
cruises to the bahamas She's not alone. The Florida Attorney General's Office says it is investigating Dollar's business practices after receiving a high number of complaints, particularly from travelers using the Tampa and Orlando airports. A spokesperson from the agency would not provide details of the investigation to Autoblog , and would only say that it is ongoing.
Mattes said travelers cruises to the bahamas flying into the Denver cruises to the bahamas International Airport have also logged a high number of complaints. But it's not isolated to those three airports: cruises to the bahamas A lawsuit filed in Colorado's US District Courts alleges travelers at 44 different US airports have been scammed. cruises to the bahamas Affected airports include big cities like Los Angeles, New York and Tampa to smaller ones in Spokane, Tucson and Little Rock.
Last month, a woman flew from China to watch her son graduate from the University of Iowa. She made her reservation on Priceline.com and prepaid for insurance there. Despite a language barrier, Caixia Lai tells an Iowa television station her intent was clear that she did not want extra insurance when asked at the Des Moines airport rental location. Her total price was supposed to be $1,177.30. But Dollar cruises to the bahamas charged her more than $3,528 overall, maxing out her credit card. If not for an undercover investigation conducted by WHOT-TV , she doubts she would have received a refund and worries she would have been stranded in the United States.
On May 9, 2014, Salvador Duenas picked up a car in Los Angeles for a 10-day rental. He had made the arrangements via a travel agent in Mexico who already included cruises to the bahamas charges for the insurance. "The counter agent did not explain what he was doing," Duenas wrote in his complaint. "I give him the reservation I had, but it looks like a new one. He asked me to sign on the electronic tablet, and that's it."
Michael Nellis, one of the two named plaintiffs in the Colorado class-action, says he declined all insurance and prepaid gas offers at the airport in Fort Myers, Florida, letting the clerk know the full coverage on his own policy covered rental cars. "The print was small and the room was darkened," he wrote. "I trusted her to charge me as I was instructed. ... I believe I was scammed and cheated intentionally."
He was charged $482.51 when he believed the charges would be $223.29. Nellis writes cruises to the bahamas that he knows better than most how the system should work, because he's a retired cruises to the bahamas insurance adjuster and used to handle claims for Enterprise Rent-A-Car. "I know better than anyone that to purchase your insurance would have been a waste of money and totally unnecessary," he wrote.
Jamal Powell, cruises to the bahamas a former Dollar employee, told San Diego's ABC-10 last year such practices are enticing for employees, because they receive commission for selling add-on services. "It's a really big deal," cruises to the bahamas he said, "because as a rental agent, 95 percent of that money that you make is from the commission."
In a written statement, Anna Bootenhoff, a spokesperson for Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, tells Autoblog that, "Dollar prides cruises to the bahamas itself on complying with all laws. We deny allegations that the company sells customers products they don't want, and we intend to defend the cases referenced vigorously."
What angers Mattes and customers who say they were defrauded is what they see as the brazen actions of the company. The complaints have been ongoing for roughly four years and they're not much of a secret. The New York Times examined the allegations in an article published on April 5, 2013 , and Autoblog sister site AOL Autos followed on April 8, 2013.
Auto Rental News , a trade publication cruises to the bahamas that writes about the rental-car business, detailed the California class-action lawsuit against cruises to the bahamas Dollar in a November article that discussed the best practices of the industry in using electronic signature pads. It noted the judge in the California class-action suit allowed the case to proceed, writing in his opinion that Dollar's "conduct is more than mere endemic dishonesty."
Despite the attention, the complaints continue to arrive. The Better Business Bureau says it has closed 852 complaints regarding Dollar over the past three years , including 357 in the past 12 months. On ConsumerAffairs.com, the latest complaint arrived Thursday morning from a woman who rented a car in Louisville, Kentucky.
"I am in my 60s and this is NOT by any stretch my first car rental," she wrote. I traveled for the company I worked for (Procter and Gamble) for over 25 years ... this is the FIRST time I have ever had a problem.
"When the paperwork was ready BEFORE I signed it, I said again, "Now, I do not need nor want the insurance. She said, "I know, all you need to do is sign.'" When she returned the car, she had an additional charge for $194 in unwanted insurance.
Mattes says there's a simple solution that would eliminate cruises to the bahamas ambiguity in the rental process. At the end of the checkout process, the agent could tell a customer the expected total payment at the end of the rental period. Asked if such a process could be implemented, or if Dollar had considered cruises to the bahamas adopting a similar approach across its channels, a Dollar spokesperson did not respond.
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It's not just dollar. In particular, Thrifty also has their schemes which I saw when I flew into Las Vegas a few weeks ago. For one thing, they are tricky with their words. They'll say, Do you want standard insurance or deluxe insurance. The question gives you a choice of two plans, when you should respond, No insurance. Then the salesman cruises to the bahamas acts bewildered and lists a bunch of facts that simply are not true to scare you into getting far overpriced insurance. Another thing that Thrifty did was to downgrade own car. When we reserved, the third party site (orbitz, Travelocity, cruises to the bahamas etc) had classes for economy, compact, midsize, etc. We reserved a compact, advertised as Ford Focus or similar, which was a little bit more money than economy (Chevy Spark or similar). When I got