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The great Montgomery Scott is famous for telling Captain Kirk, "Ye canna change the laws of physics." If only he'd been there to tell Avis the same thing when Yuehao Huang returned his rental car from a tour of eastern Canada last month. We may joke that rental cars are the fastest cars in the world, but to put over 18,000 miles on a car in just one week, as City News reports, Huang would've had to violate many laws, from speed limits to physics.
It was a pleasant, if unremarkable trip. Huang flew from his home in Toronto to Montreal, where he picked up a rental car. He spent the next week traveling with his family to Mont Tremblant, Ottawa, and back to Quebec. He'd added about 870 miles to the rental car's odometer when he dropped it off, then returned home.
That was when Huang got surprised by an extra $4,300 charge. He contacted Avis, who claimed he exceeded his prepaid mileage allowance by nearly 18,000 miles. This is, of course, impossible. To cover this distance, Huang would have had to maintain a constant average speed of 107 mph for the entire week. He would have had drive almost the same distance as between New York and Los Angeles every day, at this speed, for a week.
Huang immediately disputed the charge with Avis. He'd tracked his week of travel on his phone, which he submitted as evidence of his actual mileage. Avis initially agreed to investigate, but that request appeared to go to the great bit bucket in the sky.
An impossible drive
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When Huang followed up weeks later after no contact and no refund, he was told to submit his dispute again, which he did. There was still no action, so he disputed the charge through American Express, the credit card he had used to pay for the rental car.
"Avis basically told them 'charges are valid,'" Huang told City News, which was when he reached out to the media for help. Just one day after City News contacted Avis on Huang's behalf, they received the following reply:
"Following a thorough review, we confirmed that a data entry error resulted in the customer being incorrectly charged for excess mileage," Avis said. "We sincerely apologize to the customer for the frustration and delay in resolving the matter. We are processing a refund for the mileage charges. We are also reinforcing our procedures with our teams to help prevent similar issues in the future."
This isn't the first, or the worst, time Avis has made a mistake like this. A few years ago, another customer was charged an extra $6,000 for allegedly driving an extra 23,000 miles in three days. That would have required an average speed of 333 mph, which not even "Knight Rider's" KITT in Super Pursuit Mode could achieve. I wonder if Avis's procedures include actually looking at the odometers to confirm the mileage is accurate, or maybe asking themselves whether the absurdly high mileage is even possible in the first place? At least, not without Scotty imploding the warp drive.