Complaint Review: AVIS

rented a car in Munich, garage was very dark, couldn't see very much, no one around to even talk to. Returned the car to Frankfurt 9 days later. The garage was brighter than my kitchen. The attendant immediately pulled out a damage book we had no idea even existed and almost immediately walked to the back corner of the vehicle and pointed out a scratch that he said wasn't on the list.  He didn't even hardly look at the rest of the car. It took less than 60 seconds to find this. You almost had to get on your hands and knees to spot it. We never even noticed it. I was more worried about the scratches on the roof which we could only see in the sunlight, but they were already on the list thankfully. There was damage all around the car including additional damage (listed in the book) on the bumper they say we damaged. we found all this in the book as I reviewed it with the attendant.

finally they are making it very difficult to even check what they are doing. Everything they send me is in German except for the couple lines that say pay me. I have asked multiple time for the original damage book and documents in English but they will not give me any. The charges are absolutely outrageous especially given they are most likely collecting on multiple damages to the same bumper. I recently had some minor touch up done on a car similar to this that only cost me $300. They are trying to charge me almost $800 on a bumper that was already damaged.

As an international company they should work seamlessly with AVIS in the Us, but AVIS customer service is customer NO service. They just say it is AVIS Germany's issue. While I can sympathize with that a little, I don't have international phone service or translation programs which any company doing international business surely has both. So instead of providing some customer service and helping, they just say, to bad, deal with them yourself. They haven't even bothered to give me a direct email link to a real live individual and the last person who I had a name from has not contacted me back even though I have sent multiple emails to AVIS customer service US and Germany. At least a personal contact via email would bridge the time, language, and phone service gap. VERY POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE AND AN OVERALL SCAM OPERATION IN MY OPINION and given some other similar experiences I have found online.