ArcaMax

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, Texas, through National for 40 days. Since it was for a long period, National split it into two reservations. It 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 it agrees that I was overcharged. But 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 let you know that you had an outstanding balance and asked for permission to charge your credit card.

These types of late charges are fairly common in the travel industry. The credit card companies allow them as long as you've given the business your credit card number and authorized it to make a charge. The most common late charges involve incidental expenses at hotels that were 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 of keeping a paper trail of the correspondence between you and 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 even that the company was trying to help, which can really 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 location 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 get this resolved. 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, apparently because the system doesn't accept reservations for longer than 30 days on its site.

If I were a bettin' man, I'd say National had a system that reconnected both of your reservations, then recalculated your rate as if you'd made two separate reservations. So, the extra charge might have been a price differential. But this is my assumption based on my conversations with National and you, in addition to your paper trail. (Airlines routinely do this kind of thing when customers book "illegal" itineraries called hidden city tickets, but this is a story for another time.)

Next time, maybe insist on having just one reservation to keep things simple and avoid a possible extra charge. I contacted Enterprise on your behalf. The company reviewed your file and refunded the balance of $1,357.

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Christopher Elliott is the founder of Elliott Advocacy (elliottadvocacy.org), a nonprofit organization that helps consumers solve their problems. Email him at chris@elliott.org or get help by contacting him at elliottadvocacy.org/help/.

(c) 2025 Christopher Elliott

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