Glenn Roberts gets a surprise bill for $1,357 two months after he returns his car to National. What is it for — and why can’t he get the car rental company to refund it?
Q: I recently rented a car in Austin through National for 40 days. Since it was for a long period, National split the reservation into two.
National charged me correctly for these—$1,212 and $423 —and I returned the car without incident.
Two months later, the company charged me another $1,357. I contacted Enterprise, which owns National, and they agreed that I was overcharged. However, the local branch in Austin has been completely unresponsive and unhelpful in resolving this.
I have been an executive member for over 10 years and never had this happen. Please help me get a refund. — Glenn Roberts, Copperas Cove, Texas
A: National shouldn’t have charged your credit card two months after you returned your car. Instead, it should have contacted you to inform you that you had an outstanding balance and asked permission to charge your credit card.
These types of late charges are relatively common in the travel industry. The credit card companies allow them, as long as you’ve given the business your credit card number and authorised it to charge. The most common late charges involve incidental expenses at hotels discovered after you check out, like a minibar charge or a broken TV. But car rental companies also do it often — and in your case, they did.
You did an excellent job keeping a paper trail of your correspondence with National. It’s always tempting to call the company to get things sorted out. But then, there’s no evidence that you tried to resolve this or that the company was trying to help. And that can complicate things.
In your situation, you had written evidence from Enterprise that the Austin location had charged you an incorrect rate. But Enterprise deferred to the area to resolve the billing error, and it appears that after several attempts, the Austin location refunded you a little more than half the amount.
I recommend applying gentle but steady pressure on the company to resolve this. A brief, polite email to one of the National customer service executives I list on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org, might have given them the nudge they needed.
Could you have prevented this from happening? No, but National could have. It split the reservation into two because the system doesn’t accept reservations longer than 30 days on its site.
If I were a bettin’ man, I’d say that National had a system that reconnected both of your reservations and recalculated your rate as if you’d made two separate reservations. So the extra charge might have been a price differential. But that’s my assumption, based on my conversations with National and you and your paper trail. (Airlines do this kind of thing routinely when customers book “illegal” itineraries called hidden city tickets — but that’s a story for another time.)
Next time, maybe insist on having just one reservation. That keeps things simple and avoids a possible extra charge.
I contacted Enterprise on your behalf. The company reviewed your file and refunded the balance of your $1,357.
By Christopher Elliott
BIO:
Christopher Elliott is the founder of Elliott Advocacy, a nonprofit organisation that helps consumers solve their problems. You can email him at [email protected] or contact him on his site.
© 2025 Christopher Elliott.
