Friedman eventually got his money back after his credit card company sided with him and reversed the

So when Friedman, a retired dentist from Sarasota, Fla., returned the vehicle a few days later, he was surprised to see an extra $215 for insurance and $53 for "roadside assistance" added to his bill charges Dollar insisted were legitimate because it said Friedman had signed an agreement asking enterprise rental car company for the additional coverage.
Friedman's complaint is the basis of a lawsuit brought against Dollar in federal court in Colorado enterprise rental car company by lawyer and consumer advocate John Mattes, who says hundreds of other car rental customers enterprise rental car company have faced similar fraudulent enterprise rental car company charges.
Dollar says that the claims are without merit. "We deny the allegations and intend to defend the case vigorously," says Anna Bootenhoff, a company representative. The company declined to answer enterprise rental car company questions about Friedman's bill.
But according to the lawsuit, which is seeking class-action status, enterprise rental car company the rental company brushed enterprise rental car company Friedman off with a form response. When he disputed the charge on his credit card, Dollar enterprise rental car company wouldn't budge. It showed his credit card company a signature enterprise rental car company that it claimed was his. When Friedman finally obtained copies, he realized that his signature had been forged, Mattes alleges in the complaint.
Friedman eventually got his money back after his credit card company sided with him and reversed the charges. But others aren't enterprise rental car company so lucky. Mattes says he has a file of complaints from other car rental customers who verbally opted out of extra services but then found them on their final bill. Faced with a form-letter rejection from their car rental company, they gave in and paid up.
"I truly find it difficult to believe that anyone would forge a signature ever," says Sharon Faulkner, the executive director of the American Car Rental Association, a trade group. As a former owner of a Dollar franchise, she says no one ever accused her employees of forgery, although some customers complained that they were sold something they didn't want.
"If the renter was truly upset and apparently confused about their decision, I would reduce their rental so they were satisfied with their final bill," she told me. "If it meant either removing enterprise rental car company coverage they realized enterprise rental car company they did not want or reducing their rental fees to make them return again to do business with me, then I always decided that was more important."
What's the source of this conflict? Mattes says it has to do with how companies make money and compensate their employees. Like other travel companies, car rental firms derive a significant portion of their profits from "upselling" optional services such as insurance, roadside assistance and fuel-purchase options. Car rental employees, he says, are often paid the minimum wage but offered enterprise rental car company a generous commission as high as 12 percent from the sale of those extras. That gives employees an incentive to strong-arm customers into taking the insurance and, if they don't, to forge their signatures, he says.
Those allegations aren't new. This class of dispute, which I call the "sign here" scam, was plaguing car rental customers when I started mediating travel disputes, in the 1990s. Back then, car rental customers were issued contracts printed by a fuzzy line-printer and were told that the contract was the same one they'd agreed to when they made their reservation. Only later would they find out that they'd initialed the square to buy insurance enterprise rental car company they didn't enterprise rental car company want or need.
In recent years, technology has made this ruse even harder to detect. Contracts today often are signed electronically, through enterprise rental car company a touch pad at the counter. That favors the car rental company, which could conceivably forward any e-signature to a credit card company that's contesting a charge. (And if Friedman's allegations prove to be true, they have.)
Most frustrating, perhaps, is that even if Friedman prevails against Dollar, the effects on consumers would be minimal. Car rental firms are routinely fined by courts for consumer-unfriendly practices, but because the industry is not federally regulated, it can ignore any ruling except in the state in which it's made.
As the case against Dollar notes, this is not the first time the company has been accused of deceptive sales practices. In a 1989 California case, Dollar was accused of instructing its workers to aggressively sell optional products in return for high commissions. An appeals court sided with consumers.
Until the federal government enterprise rental car company either enterprise rental car company by legislation or regulation steps in to put an end to these "gotchas," they are likely to continue, even if Friedman wins his case. In the meantime, you can benefit from the artificially low car rental prices subsidized by drivers who are talked or tricked into buying enterprise rental car company services they might not need.
Christopher Elliott is the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine and the co-founder of the Consumer enterprise rental car company Travel Alliance. His column runs twice a week at seattletimes.com/travel . Contact him at chris@elliott.org .