My husband’s car is in the body shop, getting fixed after our third hit-and-run on the street. He brought it to them on the day they told him to in mid-December (and told him he would have a courtesy loaner from them). The loaner was not available when he showed up, since they had given it to someone else, but he got a rental car from them instead - through a third-party rental company. His insurance picked up the tab for the rental.
The rental is not being paid for any more, because the insurance money for it ran out on January 12. His car is still not ready as of today (January 24), because the body shop only started working on it on January 9th. He had a car rental on the insurance company tab for three weeks while his car sat in the body shop, not being worked on. His car was driveable all that time - it was simply a crumpled rear corner that’s being fixed. So far, he has had about $400 put through on his VISA card from the car rental company - understandable, since it isn’t their fault that the body shop company is incompetent, but I would like to dispute these VISA charges, because the people who should be paying them are the auto body shop who held our car for three weeks without working on it while our insurance-paid car rental ran out.
What do all y’all think? Do we have a leg to stand on, disputing these charges? We have tried to talk to the auto body company, but nobody knows what is going on there, and they mostly just don’t return our calls. I figure they might pay a little more attention to VISA than they have to us.
Speaking as a credit card professional (snerk) I’d say no. You agreed to pay the charges for the rental car and the rental agency is providing you with the goods and/or services you requested. They’ve done their part.
Your gripe is with the repair shop and were I you I’d demand that they reduce the overall bill by the amount of the rental that you had to pay while they sat, especially if they agreed to provide a loaner car and did not.
This isn’t something you dispute charges on. This is something you take up against the auto body shop.
If you dispute the charges, you’re fucking over the rent-a-car company (*), not the auto-body shop. Do you think they’re going to dun the auto body shop for the money because you think they should?
(*) And yes, it does fuck you over when someone disputes charges made to you. It’s paper work, possible fees, etc.
That’s what I was afraid of - the rental car company will be made a pawn in the three-way war between us and the auto body shop (CALGARY COACHWORKS, by the way, for all Alberta Dopers) and the insurance company. I’ve worked as an Accounts Payable professional for quite a while, and one thing I know - it’s a helluva lot easier to dispute a charge and not pay it than it is to pay it and get your money back from someone. If we pay this bill and try to get the money back from CALGARY COACHWORKS, or Jim’s insurance company, they will really not return our calls then (we don’t owe CALGARY COACHWORKS anything - our insurance is paying for the repair). Our insurance company has also stopped returning our calls. I guess what really needs to happen is our insurance company needs to pay our car rental bill, and they need to take it off the repair bill they will be paying to** CALGARY COACHWORKS.** What a freaking mess.
I’ve disputed charges, but only in a case where the service/goods were not provided. I ordered a wedding gift for someone; the business charged me for it… then declared bankruptcy a week later. I used the bank’s webpage to file a dispute, and it was removed no questions asked.
A few years earlier, I saw a purchase on my bill that was from a store I shop at - but for a date I had not been there, and in an amount far higher than I’d ever spent there. I filed a dispute. They investigated, found that there was no signature on file for the purchase (or perhaps that it did not match mine), and removed the charge (turns out to have been a fraud committed by someone at my allergist’s office).
featherlou, the situation you describe does not sound appropriate for a chargeback. You contracted (however involuntarily) with the rental shop for a car rental - which they delivered. Since this was caused by the repair shop’s negligence, your beef is with the repair shop. Insist they discount your bill by the rental car cost. Or take them to small claims court.
Pretty much my story too. I placed a classified ad in a Sydney newspaper, and specified I only wanted it run once. I don’t know if it was run the following week, but when I got my credit card statement, it seems it had.
I rang the bank and told them. They said they’d call the newspaper and ask them to provide evidence that I’d ordered the second week of advertising, and if the paper couldn’t, I’d be refunded. At this point I knew I was going to win (I’d placed the ad over the phone).
Sure enough, there was a credit to my account on the following statement. Too easy.
I’ve disputed charges. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.
But once I got mad at a mechanic and reported him to the state agency.
Boy he was mad. Called and wanted me to withdraw the complaint. I just said no, it was a valid complaint. He had failed to redeem a $10 off coupon. It never even occurred to him to offer me the $10 in return for withdrawing, the jerk. Worst $10 he ever scammed.
So maybe the question really should be who do we take to small claims court, the auto body shop or our insurance agency? Maybe a registered letter from a lawyer (and we happen to know one quite well) would prompt them to return a goddamned phone call. I’m confused about this now; the shop was recommended by the insurance agency (that’s why we went there); the repair should only cost us the $500 deductible, which we will pay with no quibbles. The extra out-of-pocket costs should theoretically be covered by insurance (why else do we pay them $2000 a year per car?).
I can see the insurance company arguing that the cost of a rental car is not included in the cost of a car repair though, and we should have returned the rental car as soon as the period covered by insurance was up. The people who ultimately need to pay for this is the autobody shop, but I’m not sure at this point how to get them to pay for their own mistakes.
Mastercard, not Visa, but the principle’s the same.
I’ve had incorrect charges on my account several times. I’ve just rung the bank and complained and each time an equivalent credit has appeared on the next month’s statement.
Perhaps you should go back and read the OP for detail. The insurance company DID pay for a rental car. I am willing to bet that they paid up to the limits of the policy. Do you really expect them to pay for an unlimited amount of time, just because they have money? :dubious:
featherlou your beef is not with the insurance company, the credit card company or the rental agency.
Pull out your insurance policy and read the section on rental car reinbursement. It will explain in detail how much and how long they are contractually obligated to pay for a rental car. It is not their fault that the body shop is a bunch of assholes.
The rental car agency supplied you a car, and you signed a contract with them. They have done nothing wrong. You could dispute the chrage, and maybe get it removed. That would be a very assholeish thing to do IMHO. You get fucked by the body shop, so you are going to fuck the rental car agency? :rolleyes: How would this make you any better than the body shop?
The credit card agency is just doing what you authorized.
If you have a lawyer, I suggest you have them write a letter to the body shop, they are the ones that are at fault here. If there is a department of consumer affairs, or some government agency that oversees auto body repair, file a complaint.
Reading your account, I don’t think the body shop owes you anything either. Did they even KNOW that you were renting a car (and expecting someone to be paying for it)? It seems to me that the reasonable thing for the OP to have done was to contact the body shop before the rental car money ran out and try to arrange for a loaner again, or some other amiable arrangement.
If 2 weeks later, you came to pick up your car and out of the blue said “Oh, by the way, we needed a car so we rented one for two weeks, without your knowledge but with the assumption that you’re footing the bill. You owe me $400.”, I don’t think the boys at the body shop are going to be very co-operative.
There’s a big difference between “the charge is incorrect” as in it’s not yours and “the charge is correct but I don’t like it” which is pretty much what’s going on in the OP.
Dependent on what conversations were had with the body shop I agree with the above. A loaner should have been provided by the body shop before the rental car ran out and the car should have been worked on sooner. If the body shop knew all about the rental car costs and still took their sweet time in starting the work I think you have a legitimate beef with them. I certainly see no responsibility by the insurance company or Visa.
That’s exactly what happened. The body shop promised us a loaner car; when we dropped our car off at the appointed time, there was no loaner available for us. They gave us a rental car instead (all arranged by them - next time we do this, we put the rental car on the body shop’s VISA, instead of ours). They then proceeded to leave our car in their shop for three weeks without working on it, while our rental car allowance from our insurance company ran out. What I’m saying is we tooled around in a rental car for three weeks while we could have been driving our own car because the body shop took our car and didn’t work on it (or tell us they weren’t working on it). They started working on it days before the insurance money for the rental car was used up. We are about $600 into the rental car company now, and we still haven’t heard from the body shop if our car is done or not. They have dicked us around about every way possible at this point, and we’re desperately loooking for a way to make them eat the cost for their gross incompetence.
Did I mention that all of this grief was from yet another stupid hit-and-run? We will have paid $1100 from it, if we get the car back today, and we are not wealthy people. I’m trying to let my anger at the unfairness of this situation go, but it’s very, very hard.
The body shop probably has an agreement with the Insurance Co to charge a lower fee in exchange for recommending them to clients. The body shop then turns around and sets you up with a rental car because their loaner is “temporarily” unavailable. They then sit on your repair for weeks, while the rental agency just happens to be raking in check after check from the Ins. Co. I wonder if they have any sort of arrangement with the rental agency?
Ins Co should be pissed off that they paid out hundreds of dollars in rental fees because the Body Shop they recommended sat on the repair.
Ultimately, your beef is with the Body Shop, discuss it with them, and see if you can come to an arrangement. If not, I’d go with small claims court and make sure Ins Co gets an earful about how this company screwed both them AND you on this repair.
You can only dispute your Visa charge if the company charging you didn’t provide you with the goods or services you paid for. This is not the case, so no, you can’t dispute this through your bank.
Unfortunately this sort of thing is happening more and more right now. I was reading in the Herald a week or two back about how more and more people are having trouble getting vehicles repaired in a reasonable time because there are so many more people on the roads, and more accidents combined with not enough people who are willing to work (the brunt of the article was about how people are leaving because they can make more money elsewhere with less education).
So I doubt that sitting on the repair for weeks is just so the rental company can make money, since a lot of places in Calgary are feeling similar pinches.