What are your chances of having someone else’s toll fees added to your rental car bill?
The answer is that’s impossible to know for sure, because it seems to me that much of that misbilling goes undetected.
I say that based on Andrew Fraser’s recent experience in an Avis rental car, supplied to him by his insurer while his was being repaired.
“I had the car for around two weeks, but didn’t need to use it much: I only drove 97km, and 25km of that was driving it to the drop-off point.
If you rent a vehicle from Avis, please make sure you check that the e-tolls they bill you for are actually correct and not fraudulent.
— Andrew Fraser’s advice
“So imagine my surprise to see that my card had been debited for R850 worth of e-tolls, all of them for tolls on the N17 between Gosforth Park and Leandra.
“I haven’t been near the N17 in over a year – the only tolls that I was expecting were some on the N1 on the day I returned the car.”
Now pay attention to the maths of this situation: “The distance between the toll gates that I was billed for is around 87km. There are 16 separate trips, in both directions, so a minimum of 1,392km. But Avis thought it possible that I had managed to do this and still only put 97km on the odometer.
“When I complained, I was informed that they’d need five working days to investigate. Five days!
“I duly got a note that they’ll credit my card ‘within seven days’ – after taking four working days to investigate – but no apology and no indication of how this kind of fraud could happen.”
His advice to the Twitterverse: “If you rent a vehicle from Avis, please make sure you check that the e-tolls they bill you for are actually correct and not fraudulent.”
Fraser told me his issue was that the car rental company’s systems had failed to pick up the mismatch between the relatively few kilometres he travelled and the very high e-toll charges.
“Plus, when the error was pointed out, they didn’t have the decency to apologise, but rather treated me as though I was a chancer.”
I found his experience pretty alarming and appalling from a customer service perspective, so I sent Avis a media query.
How did that happen and how common is it? I asked.
Avis’s response went like this: “After thorough investigations conducted with our e-tolls department, it was confirmed that Mr Fraser was indeed incorrectly billed. The e-tolls billed to him were for a different vehicle.”
Now that was intriguing, given that Sandile Ntseoane, general manager of Savrala – the Southern African Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association – had told me car rental systems were fully interfaced with Sanral’s, with very limited to no human intervention.
So how did another car’s toll fees end up on Fraser’s Avis bill?
Was it a different Avis vehicle, I asked, or a different vehicle altogether?
A month later I got a response, which didn’t answer that key question at all.
Like Fraser, I got nothing.
Yes, the e-tolls billing is done automatically from the Sanral system, I was told, so there is no manual intervention from Avis on the charges received.
“We perceive the charges to be correct, therefore we do not go into each and every rental to verify the e-toll charges.
“Only if our customer queries this do we lodge an investigation, and if there any discrepancies we will process the necessary credits to the customer.”
What happened to Fraser was “exceptionally uncommon”, according to Avis.
“Nonetheless, we will highlight the issue of the systems for kilometres and high e-tolls charged to the relevant teams to look into. Hope the above is in order.”
Well, no, it isn’t.
“I can’t see how they can claim that they are rare occurrences if the process is completely automated,” Fraser said.
“It just so happened that my case was an outlier in that I didn’t use the vehicle much and thus was easy to identify.
“If the kilometre reading in my case didn’t show that the e-toll charges were impossible, would they have refunded me?
“And how many claims do they dismiss based on Sanral information?
“The customer is at an extreme disadvantage in this: how can they prove they didn’t incur the charges if the kilometres covered were plausibly consistent with the e-toll charges?”
Excellent point.
Final word from Avis on that: “We handle any query received individually. When a query is received, the e-tolls department does a manual investigation with Sanral to check if the charges are correct. When they get a confirmation that there was an error we process the necessary credits to the customer immediately.”
Right, so there’s a great incentive to pay attention when beeping through a toll and then interrogate the toll charges on your car hire statement.
We shouldn’t have to, of course, but if we don’t want to pay another driver’s toll fees when driving a hired car, apparently we do.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.