One of the complaints, from early June, involved a call to a company purporting to be Budget. The consumer paid $280 on a prepaid Visa card. When he couldn’t reach the number again — the line was repeatedly busy — he found and called the actual Budget number and was told that no reservation had been booked and that he should report the fraud to the authorities.
Another complaint, in late May, said a company that the consumer believed to be Alamo had “pretended to rent me a car only to take my money and stop answering the phone.”
“The bottom line is that, always, the car doesn’t exist,” said Claire Rosenzweig, chief executive of the Better Business Bureau serving metropolitan New York.
Enterprise Holdings, which includes the Enterprise, Alamo and National brands, doesn’t consider these cases to be “prevalent” but has had recent reports of “some gift card-related issues,” a spokeswoman for the company, Lisa Martini, said in an email. Enterprise alerted customers about the gift-card scheme in March.
Enterprise accepts prepaid cards as payment only at the end of a rental and will not ask for payment information or card numbers over the phone, Ms. Martini said. Prepaying for a reservation may be an option but is never mandatory.
“A website that requires payment or asks for the purchase of a gift card, and to provide the card number and PIN, should cause alarm,” she said.
Similarly, Hertz “will never ask you for prepaid card details over the phone as these cards are ONLY accepted at time of return,” its website says.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/18/your-money/fake-rental-car-sites.html
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