Eileen Hennessy received a one-day complimentary Enterprise Rent-A-Car while her Subaru Legacy was serviced. She was told it would be be free. More than a month later she got billed for almost $3,000.
When Eileen took her Subaru Legacy in for warranty work at Subaru of Schaumburg, she was provided a complimentary coupon for a one-day rental on an Enterprise Rent-A-Car, an excellent part of the service if you ask us. After Subaru dropped Ms. Hennessy at the rental office she secured the car with her credit card, which she was told would not be charged, and picked up a car then went about her business. At the end of the day she went to return the car and found the Enterprise office closed and phoned the Subaru dealer for advice. The dealer recommended she bring the car to their lot, leave the cars with them and they would take car of everything in the morning. She did just that, left the car with them and went home with her Legacy, no doubt feeling quite self-assured with the excellent dealer experience. That's when things started going downhill.
A month later, Eileen received a call from Enterprise inquiring as to the whereabouts of their car. Confused, she called the dealer, who said they'd returned it without incident. The hunt was on and days later Enterprise found it at a tow yard, where it had racked up 37 days of storage and a total bill of $2,871, which Enterprise charged to Eileen's credit card. Then to add insult to injury, a few months later Enterprise charged her an additional $30 because the dealer hadn't paid for the initial rental.
Let's just say she wasn't terribly amused by all of this. She contacted Subaru North America and they denied any wrongdoing at any level due to the separation between auto companies and their dealerships (dealers are independent companies). Thankfully for Eileen, a retired school teacher and senior citizen, Enterprise relented and reversed charges on her credit card, absolving her of responsibility for the situation, stating
"We are not holding her responsible for this, the bottom line is we're going to take [Hennessy] out of that and figure out where the responsibility lies."
Enterprise and Subaru North America are now determining how to settle on who pays for this debacle. We're just glad the customer, eventually, didn't get screwed here. [Chicago Tribune]