- Avis charged a customer over $6,000 after claiming she rode 23,000 miles in 3 days, per NNO.
- Giovanna Boniface told the Daily Hive it was the equivalent of a South African return trip.
- A spokesperson for Avis told CTV it apologized to Boniface and issued a refund.
Avis charged a customer more than $6,000 after claiming she drove a rental car nearly 23,000 miles in three days, according to reports.
North Shore News reported for the first time that Giovanna Boniface rented a GMC Yukon Denali at Toronto’s Pearson Airport to help her daughter move to college.
Boniface told NSN that she drove between the airport, downtown Toronto and Kitchener, Ont., where she visited her mother-in-law. She estimated that in total she had walked 300 kilometers (186 miles).
While waiting to catch a flight to Paris, France, Boniface, who had prepaid $1,000 to rent the car, checked her credit card statement to verify that it had been okay, by CTV News.
“That’s when I noticed this charge of over C$8,000 ($6,137) from Avis,” she told CTV, after tweet a photo of his receipt.
Boniface told CTV that Avis charged him for 36,482 kilometers (22,668 miles) at a rate of 25 cents per kilometer. She estimated that she would have had to drive 310 miles per hour for 72 straight hours to reach that distance.
“I could have driven to and from South Africa and still had several thousand miles to go,” she told the Daily Hive. “Of course, that’s ridiculous. I don’t even put that many miles on my car in a year, let alone in three days.”
Boniface told CTV that she spent several hours on the phone with Avis representatives and that someone only made contact after the media began reporting her story.
A spokesperson for Avis told CTV and The Daily Hive that it apologized to Boniface and issued a refund.
Avis, as well as competing car rental companies, have made similar mistakes in the past.
In April, Elliot Advocacy reported how a customer was charged over $4,000 after Avis claimed she kept her car for 34 days after dropping it off and then flying to another country.
last november The Guardian reported how a Hertz customer visiting his dying brother was charged double for dropping off his car two days earlier.
Avis did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.