Dear Tripped Up,
Last July my wife and I traveled to Germany to visit Munich and the Bavarian Alps and drink great beer. (I co-own a brewery in Colorado.) We rented a car from Enterprise, which had an agency inside a hotel lobby, and picked up the car at an unattended garage a few blocks away. I photographed the fuel gauge when I picked it up – the car had five eighths of a tank of gas – and again when I dropped it off with three quarters of a tank. But I was charged 94.50 euros plus 20 percent tax, a total of about $131, for 25 liters of “missing” fuel. Also, my original booking said tax was included, but I was charged an additional €65.87 for tax on the final tab. I complained to Enterprise and filed a credit card dispute with American Express to no avail. Can you help? Jack, Broomfield, Colo.
Dear Jack,
Why do car rental companies make the simple act of filling up a gas tank so stressful? Their rates are so punitive – in your case around $16.75 per month. gallons, if my double conversion of liters to gallons and euros to dollars is correct – that we would do anything to avoid them, including risking a missed flight circling back if we miss the last gas station before the airport. (Note that a gallon of gas in Germany in July 2025 cost less than $8 on average.)
You didn’t even rent from an airport, and you actually left the tank with a little more gas than it started with. You took pictures to prove it, and on top of that, you were overcharged in tax – or so we both thought when we looked at your bill.
I contacted Enterprise and they quickly refunded you $131 for the extra gas. But they were right about the taxes: the original tax amount had been removed, and a revised amount, including gas tax, was put on the bottom. I think the German language bill knocked us both out.
“We are committed to resolving any issue promptly and take all customer concerns seriously and investigate each one thoroughly,” wrote Danielle Stuart, a spokeswoman for Enterprise, adding that a third-party vendor that cleans and refuels the company’s vehicles had failed to notice that the car did not have a full tank when you picked it up. That’s why you were mistakenly charged.
It was a blatant injustice and I’m glad I could help. However, after reviewing your documentation again and speaking with an expert, I think you might have solved the problem without me if you hadn’t changed your tactics to a credit card dispute.
How to do it: Your original email complaint to Enterprise, just two sentences long, said only that you believed you had been wrongly taxed. You didn’t bring up the gas tax because (as you later told me) you hadn’t noticed yet. But because the real problem was the gas, not the tax, your complaint was inaccurate and Enterprise rightly rejected it.
Then, when Enterprise didn’t return your money, you went straight to American Express and filed a dispute — also known as a chargeback. Amex rejected your first chargeback request. Then you noticed the gas tax and filed another dispute asking for about $160 back. This time you mentioned both the extra gas tax and the taxes, and again the amount was wrong. It is important that you did not return to the Enterprise between disputes.
You told me in a follow up email that you no longer have the complaints as the process was done on the American Express website and is no longer available to you. Fair enough. Let’s assume you made a solid case and included the time-stamped before-and-after fuel gauge photos, and therefore should have received at least $131 back.
So why might Amex have rejected your second dispute? I’m sure it didn’t help that you asked for $160 instead of the $131 you were entitled to, but I suspect the main reason was that you didn’t bring the issue back to Enterprise before you filed your second chargeback request. It’s important to give the merchant a chance to resolve the issue first, said Todd Ablowitz, who has worked extensively with chargebacks as co-founder of payment technology company Infinicept.
“You have to show that you tried to get a refund and work it out with them,” he told me over the phone. This may include providing the bills with highlighted errors, back and forth emails, or screenshots of online chats and text messages. It may also include contemporaneous notes from phone conversations, with the dates of the calls and, if possible, the name of the agent you spoke with. In cases where travelers claim inaccurate product descriptions – e.g. a resort that advertises a pool but doesn’t have one – can you include a screenshot of the description along with pictures of the hotel grounds.
As a consumer complaint arbitrator, I would add that you should not overwhelm the poor souls adjudicating chargeback requests. Keep your argument simple and don’t muddy the waters with a pile of unnecessary documents. If you’re not confident in your writing skills, consider using generative AI to help make your argument short and crystal clear.
But filing a credit card dispute should be your last move, not your first. There are reports of customers being blacklisted by some companies for what they believe are frivolous or excessive chargebacks. Mr. Ablowitz notes that network rules don’t allow a merchant to charge your credit card after a chargeback, but I’ve heard plenty of stories where a company rebills customers and threatens debt collection if they refuse to pay.
On the other hand, if you do it right, the chargeback can be the most powerful tool available to customers in the United States, with its woeful consumer protections.
So if you hadn’t moved so quickly to contest the charge, would it have come to a reversal situation in your case, Jack? I can’t be sure. Normally, I would question Ms. Stuart’s statement about being “committed to resolving any issues promptly” and taking “all customer concerns seriously.” Based on my experiences with other companies, customer service reps often do the exact opposite.
But in this case, the benefit of the doubt goes to Enterprise, as it never quite got a huge chance to fix your problem quickly.
If you need advice on a best planned itinerary gone wrong, email TrippedUp@Pakinomist.
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