After renting a Toyota Sienna in July I received a notice 85 days later that I had damaged the vehicle. Damage was not incurred during our (my friends and I) possession of the rental vehicle. Since there was no pre-inspection completed in our presence, by the Alamo staff at the San Francisco airport, we assumed that the vehicle had been inspected prior to our leaving the lot. (I know - stupid of us to assume!). We noticed that the bumper had a dent in it when we arrived at our hotel, about an hour after leaving the airport rental lot and we discussed the issue with an Alamo representative at the counter upon return of the vehicle on July 20 to insure that they check previous records to locate the appropriate people that damaged the bumper.
After receiving a letter from the Alamo Damage Recovery Unit in Atlanta, Georgia, which stated that we owed $617.20, we contacted the "Damage Recovery Specialist" - AKA "Damage Ripoff Specialist", she said that the burden of proof was on us and we had to pay or she would turn the matter over to collections. I'm sure it is on it's way to "COLLECTIONS" as I write.
She than added, (this is where I believe the "scam" comes into play)... That our VISA card company would pay for the loss and gave us the number to call VISA Enhancement Services. VISA, in fact, likely will pay for the damage, but the fact of the matter is that we all pay for these kind of rip offs, it comes out of all of our pockets! Not to mention the principal of it - we did not do the damage and the companies employee negligence would prove this had they actually been checking vehicles prior to them leaving the airport lot.
This seems to me, to be a clever, albeit obvious, tactic employed by Alamo to get additional money from renters through their credit card companies.
As a side note, we are all lucky to be alive after traveling the Pacific Coast Highway from San Francisco to Pismo Beach, with a tire going flat on the Alamo vehicle! I can't imagine a more dangerous road to be travelling on with a bad tire, not to mention the time we had to take out of our vacation to have the tire fixed.
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