Complaint Review: Dollar Thrifty Group (Rent-A-Car) - Fort Lauderdale Florida

I rented a car from Dollar Rent-A-Car at the Fort LauderdaleAirport.  I used the car  and returned it with just 64 miles driven sustaining absolutely no damages during my rental period (I drove from the airport to my brother's driveway, and then my brother's driveway to the airport.   Dollar made a claim against me for damages incurred which has no merit at all.  I believe the claim is a hoax and is perhaps insurance fraud for the following reasons:  

1.  When I picked up the car, it had damages and I filled out documentation to that effect. 

2.  The damage incident report says the "customer say he pick up the car with the damage."  Aside from being a poorly worded sentence, I wonder why Dollar Rent A Car didn't check out the check out slip from the date I picked up the car to either CONFIRM OR DISCONFIRM if, in fact, the damages were sustained before I rented the car.  More importantly,  I never said anything to the person I was returning the car to except perhaps "thank you."  I absolutely said nothing about the damage when I returned the car.  I returned it and figured that the documentation that I filled out before leaving the Dollar lot the first moment makes the scratches a moot issue.  I said nothing to the attendant of that sort, so the statement that I said anything about damage is a lie, even though in fact, I did pick up the car with the damage.

3.  The mileage on the auto repair estimate Dollar sent me is over 325 miles higher than the milage on the car when I turned it back in.  Somewhere between the 10th, when I rented the car, and the 11th, when the damage was assessed, someone drove the car well over 300 miles.  Yahoo maps puts the address written on the damage assessment only 2.8 miles from the FLL airport where I rented the car.  Why does the car have approximately 6 hours of driving on it from the time I returned it, to the time it went to the damage assessment unit, the very next day? Suspicious.  

4.  One of the calls I got from the claims office to my phone asked for someone else, so I got to thinking.  They are calling someone else, but with my telephone number.  Perhaps a mistake, but perhaps they are calling multiple people for the same claim.    What are the chances of two claims, two different people, and the same car?  I suspect the company is submitting claims for the same damages, on the same car, to different people and never repairing the damage.  

5.  I have the paperwork I filled out when I picked up the car that shows the mileage, the damages clearly documented, etc.  The company conveniently did not include this in its letter asking me for money -- over $500.

6.  The claims office is totally unresponsive and they insist only on returning my calls on the number that was on the original paperwork.  I have left several messages with Dollar saying that this is no longer my telephone number.  My experience has shown that lack of professionalism and unresponsiveness go hand-in-hand with poor business ethics.  I have called them 8 to 9 times per day and they never pick up and I have left many messages and they have yet to return my call.  

I did get through with them once and got in touch with Christine McCorkle, who had written me the letters.  The moment I got on, I got another call and I apologized and told her to hold on a moment and I'll get the other call off the line.  About 10 seconds into the call I switched into, I heard her hang up.  I got off the phone with the caller and I called back less than a minute later.  No answer.  I called Christine back about 4 times that hour, no answer.  I have left numerous messages and no one has returned my calls; although, I noticed that they called back on my old telephone number from the contract.  

I see that Christine McCorkle may have moved to Enterprise and she's up to no good there too.  I believe this person is hired to do the repair scams.  Or I wonder if there really is a Christine McCorkle or if that's just one of the aliases used when doing this scam.  

I avoid the Dollar Thrifty Group no matter how good the price is.  If you get a letter or call from a Christine McCorkle, you're probably being scammed.