September 2017 – illegaly charged administration fee

October 17, 2017

A consumer from Lithuania concluded a car rental agreement with a service provider in Italy. The rented car was returned in time and the representative of the service provider signed that the car was returned without damages. After more than half a year the consumer checked her bank account and noticed that the car rental company charged her 42,70 EUR. The consumer did not receive any notifications about this charge. The consumer turned to the service provider in Italy, who explained that it is administration fee for the transmission of data to the police for committing road traffic offense. The car rental company sent the consumer only an invoice with a place and time when the road traffic offense was recorded. The consumer asked the car rental company to provide evidence that police required information as the consumer had doubts that she was at that time in that place where the offense was recorded. The service provider did not provide her any documents. The consumer turned to European Consumer Centre in Lithuania in order to recover illegally charged administration fee. The complaint was shared with the European Consumer Centre in Italy, which contacted the car rental company. The company could not provide any proof about gained request from the police and agreed to refund the consumer administration fee. Thanks to the cooperation of both centres, the car rental company refunded the administration fee to the consumer.