Man Charged $900 For Returning Rental Car to Wrong Terminal in Minnesota
Talk about Minnesota...NOT nice! A recent traveler was charged a $900 fee for returning his rental car to the wrong location.
I've rented a LOT of cars when traveling, and while the prices have varied depending on the location and time of year we're renting, I've never seen a fee that's as high as this guy's fee-- and it happened right here in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.
Christopher Elliot writes a column for the Seattle Times called the 'Travel Troubleshooter.' And he recently answered a letter from Matt Soyum of Little Canada here in Minnesota (north of St. Paul, about an hour and twenty minutes north of Rochester on I-35).
And Matt definitely had some trouble while traveling recently: He was charged a $932 fee for returning the car he had rented out in California to the wrong terminal at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport in Bloomington.
As Matt said in the column, he mistakenly returned his rental car to Terminal 1 (the main terminal) at MSP when, in the fine print, the rental agreement apparently specified he'd need to return it to the Terminal 2 location-- which was a whopping 3.8 miles away.
And the charge for returning it to the wrong location was $932. Yikes.
Luckily for Matt, as the Travel Troubleshooter found out, after pleading his case to executives at Thrifty (which the Travel Troubleshooter provided), the fees were refunded. (You can read more about what Matt went through HERE.)
The column didn't say WHY such a ridiculously high fee was charged in the first place, but at least calmer heads prevailed and Matt got his money back. In every instance where I've rented a car, I've only needed to return it to the same location from which I rented it, so, fortunately, I've never been in that situation.
But I will be reading ALL the fine print the next time I rent a car-- and I bet Matt will too! Speaking of fees, if you have an extra $2 million laying around (and who doesn't?) in addition to several car rentals, keep scrolling to see what it can buy you here in Rochester!
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