BY CHRISTOPHER ELLIOTT
The Enterprise e-toll charge that won’t go away!
Alex Martin blows through an e-toll booth in Ireland and gets a charge on his Enterprise bill. But his credit card rejects the charge, leading to a misadventure and $82 in expenses. Is there a way to get this resolved?
Q: We flew to Dublin last year and rented a car at the airport. While crossing the country we caught an e-toll of less than 10 euro. We missed the notification and failed to pay the toll, which caused Enterprise to email us a notice about a month later.
The problem came when they tried to bill our credit card. Our card had been flagged for fraudulent charges during our trip, so the bill was declined. Thus began a saga. We spent months going back and forth via email, social media, and phone with different departments, trying to update our card info or find an alternative way to pay without flying back to Dublin.
Enterprise UK doesn’t offer online payments, so we ended up spending a very long time on hold with their UK offices, only to have the payment request messed up each time. They repeatedly attempted to charge the old, deactivated-due-to-fraud credit card number during this time.
In August, we finally got a call and email from a citations supervisor for Enterprise UK, letting us know that the agent we’d been assigned to had quit unexpectedly and left our account a mess. So he was going to clear our balance as a goodwill gesture and mail us a check to cover the $60 in international calling charges we’d racked up.
Whew! We said thanks and sent receipts for the call charges, but the check never came. The supervisor never followed up after his confirmation email, but the charge attempts stopped so we assumed it had been cleared up.
Until today. That’s when we saw a $10 charge from Enterprise. I’ve already emailed the supervisor but I’m worried this is the charge that just won’t die! I know that just disputing this through our bank could result in Enterprise blacklisting us, and I don’t want to risk that before we’ve exhausted every other possible option. We’d like to go back to the UK in the future and don’t want our rental options limited.
Ultimately, our goal is just to clear our name, be more vigilant about tolls when traveling, and never have to talk to an Enterprise citation office ever, ever again. Enterprise owes us $82 in expenses. Can you help? — Alex Martin, Simpsonville, S.C.
A: You ran a toll booth in Ireland and tried to pay the fee. You did the right thing, trying to settle your debt with Enterprise. Good job!
Enterprise should have charged the correct credit card. And if it couldn’t, it should have contacted you and asked for the right card number. But it looks as if the company had some staffing issues and let the matter drop. That prolonged your case by months. I think you deserved a faster resolution.
When you fail to pay a toll, it becomes the car rental company’s responsibility. The company sometimes will add a surcharge for handling the complaint, but it looks like in your case, it didn’t. Good job, Enterprise!
It looks like you did everything right. You kept meticulous records. You were polite and patient. You might have appealed your case to someone higher up at Enterprise (I list their names, numbers and email addresses <a href=”https://www.elliott.org/company-contacts/enterprise/“>on my consumer advocacy site</a>).
An Enterprise supervisor could have ensured that the correct credit card was charged and that your phone expenses were covered. Covering your costs was a nice gesture from Enterprise, but it would have been even nicer if they’d reimbursed you for your phone bill as promised.
I contacted Enterprise on your behalf. The company cut you a check for the full amount of your phone bill, as agreed. It also canceled the $10 e-toll charge.
Next time, remember to make arrangements to pay your toll when you rent the car. You may want to return to the UK, but I don’t think you want a repeat of this.
Christopher Elliott’s latest book is “How To Be The World’s Smartest Traveler” (National Geographic). Get help by contacting him at http://www.elliott.org/help
© 2020 Christopher Elliott.
