Shamoura Welch-Robinson, manager at an Avis rent a car in NYC, refused to accept an Israeli drivers license as an ID so customer Dov Bergwerk could rent a car.
Could this be grounds for a lawsuit?
Well, anyone can be sued for anything.
If you’re asking whether it would be a successful lawsuit, I’m not sure what the argument would be. I’ll leave that discussion to the legal minds.
It sounds like a single branch just has an incompetent front-desk employee and manager. I suppose they could sue Avis itself for it but I am not sure what the point would be or how it would turn out. Avis as a whole clearly doesn’t have any anti-Israel policies at the corporate level. However, this type of thing can happen to almost anyone including Americans in the U.S. People from New Mexico, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands have plenty of stories about being treated as foreigners by ignorant service and security staff.
The proper response from Avis corporate is to reprimand or fire the employees involved, institute remedial training for that location to prevent it from happening again and give the customer in question a generous number of free rentals or upgrades to make up for their inconvenience and embarrassment.
The ironic thing is that I would have guessed this would be more likely to happen in some small branch in Idaho where they never see many non-Canadian foreign documents at all and not New York.
I would imagine it depends on the New York state laws about discrimination in services, whatever they may be. We’ll have to wait for a NY law-talking doper to wander by.
“I’m not going to rent you a car because you argued about me not letting you rent a car.”
OK, that works. I guess.
Yeah, remedial training seems called for.
What’s atypical here is the corporate bozos doubling down on the situation by refusing to acknowledge stupid and/or discriminatory behavior by the local employees (who disregarded an Avis customer service rep who told them the rental was OK).
Maybe Avis should hire the Whataburger employee involved in this incident.
I agree. This doesn’t sound like a corporate policy by Avis. It sounds like two Avis employees making up their own rules.
I’m guessing there’s going to be a couple of job openings at Avis’ Upper West Side office before the end of the month.
Reading more closely, it appears the article is mostly based on what the Bergwerks said. The only other information is the Avis statement.
So it’s certainly a possibility that the Bergwerks aren’t telling the whole story. Perhaps they were denied the rental for some legitimate reason and they’ve just made up the license issue.
I would think a NYC office would have a lot of experience with renting cars to people with foreign drivers licenses. If they were new, there should be someone around or a policy book/computer file. A new person could want to err on the side of caution.
I was looking at one website about luxury car drives in Europe. They said a regular U.S. drivers license is good in Germany but for countries like Austria or Switzerland, an international drivers license is needed. Those are available at AAA for a “small fee”.
If you read the article, it implies that the Israeli driver’s license in question was not in English and did not have the International Driving Permit with it that translates it. If true, I could understand a clerk’s reluctance.
Also, is an Israeli driver’s license valid in New York? In both Mexico and Grand Cayman, my U.S. license was not sufficient.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 disallows discrimination on the basis of, among other things, “national origin.” Does that include discriminating against foreign visitors on the basis of where they came from?
American laws apply to American citizens. There are plenty of things foreign nationals are not allowed to do here that Americans are. Civil Rights Act doesn’t apply.
Not necessarily. If it’s near (or in) an airport or the docks or wherever the train comes in from Montreal, then sure, but I’m not certain that W. 76th and Broadway would normally see international driver’s licenses. They might be more used to New Yorkers who don’t own a car renting one to drive to Vermont.
Depends what you mean by “valid.”
If your question is, “Can you, as a visitor, drive in New York using an Israeli license?”, the answer is yes.
If you move to New York to live, the rules change. You have to get a New York license if you actually live in the state. Most states have similar rules.
I’ve rented cars in a bunch of foreign countries, first with an Australian license, and then later on with my California license. Never had any problems.
Are you sure? Courts in the United States have consistently found that, in many areas of the law, foreign nationals enjoy substantially similar rights to American citizens. There are, of course, certain things they often cannot do, and there are also, in some cases, specific limitations on them, but it is a considerable exaggeration to suggest that American laws apply only to American citizens.
As David Cole from Georgetown Law School argued just over a decade ago:
Now i don’t know if the specifics of the Civil Rights Act would apply in a case like this, but your suggestion that foreign nationals do not enjoy the protections of American laws while in the US seems rather problematic, at best.
Probably. But it’s not clear that was the reason here.
I thought he/she was saying the opposite.
This has all the earmarks of neither side telling the complete story. Here’s my question. This is in the heart of Manhattan. It’s not the middle of the Sahara. There are, at the very minimum, three Hertz locations, one Enterprise, and one Thrifty right nearby, and probably others. Instead of fuming about his whole evening being ruined, why didn’t he walk or hop in a cab and rent a car at one of those places?
The funny thing is, in Googling this just now, every one of them is still open right now except the Avis office, which is closed for the night – which just confirms my experience that Avis has always been the one with the worst customer service. As a matter of fact when Avis pissed me off once about a reservation I was supposed to have, I just walked across the street and got a car from Hertz without a reservation – and without the attitude.
As for whether they can be sued, Jesus H. Christ, rent a car somewhere else and move on. No wonder America has so many freaking lawyers!
Given that the exact circumstances of the case are still unclear, let’s move this to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
We don’t have *taxes *in Cayman. We have fees, duties, and any other euphemism they can think of. Requiring tourists to purchase a local temporary driver’s permit is just a [del]tax[/del] fee. It is lieu of many of the [del]taxes[/del] fees you might more typically see on a car rental contract in a tourist destination.
NY law reads very similar to NJ law in this regard and it is probably similar throughout the country. I don’t know the exact way the law is applied in NY so I will mention how it is in NJ. Here you can drive on a valid license from any country as long as you are a tourist. “Tourist” with regards to licensing is anyone in the country less than a year who is not employed in the US. When presented another county’s DL I would always ask “Where do you work?” and “How long have you been here?” to determine if they were unlicensed. If you come on a work or student visa you can get a license which expires when your visa expires. Of course there is no way to know if your license from another country is suspended or revoked. We have to take it at face value. International driving permits are not issued by a governmental agency and are not valid for driving. They are only translations of your license issued by your country.