I feel very happy because I just $100 back from Enterprise, even though I am a lazy-puss and had it sitting on my list to dispute the charge since the end of August. Here’s how what I did.

I rented a car from them back in August and I ended up getting charged $100 more than I expected. Finally this week I called. At first they kind of hemmed and hawed because the guy who rented it to me wasn’t there anymore. We went over the charges together and compared my reservation confirmation with their record.

I was suppose to have a one-way drop fee of $100, but she said in their records they had it as a one-way fee for $100, and a drop fee for $100. I pointed out a few times how my reservation just had one fee. After a few rounds of her saying “this is what we have,” and me going “this is what I have” in different permutations, she went to go talk to her manager and said they would have to investigate it and call me back. Less than an hour later I got a call back and it turned out they had charged me the one-way drop fee twice and would be refunding one of them. Score.

I think being polite and persistent helped here. I made sure to adopt a conversational, “hey I can’t figure this out can you explain it to me” tone.

It also helped that I had a text file with all the reservation info, including the confirmation number and a line-by-line breakdown of the charges, and the direct number for the Enterprise I rented from already looked up, saved on my computer in an easily accessible area. If I didn’t, I might have gone oh gee, you’re right, I guess that’s what the fee was for, and acquiesced to her mighty line-item reading skills.

So in the end it came down to our classic tried and true common sense customer service advice: Have the necessary case data on hand when you call. State what you want in no more than 2 sentences. Be friendly but firm. And just make the call. You lose 100% of the battles you never show up to, right?

Sometimes we, even us pro consumer bloggers or maybe pro consumer bloggers are even more prone to it, build up billing conflicts in our brains like they’re going to be an epic showdown. But once you just make yourself pick up the phone and make the call, it could very easily turn out to be no big deal. Especially if you come prepared!

(Photo: Ben Popken)

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