On May 31, 2025, I booked a rental car through Booking.com to be picked up from Avis at Charleroi Airport at 5:30 PM local time. However, due to a flight delay—which is verifiable through flight records—we arrived at the rental office at 5:50 PM, only to find it closed.
At no point during the booking process were we informed of the office closing time. There was no warning in the confirmation, no clear hours listed, and no mention of what to do in case of delays. When I contacted Booking.com customer service, they told me to cancel the reservation and make a new one online—but how can I do that if the office is already closed?
We refused to cancel the booking ourselves because we wanted a record that the vehicle was not picked up due to their failure to provide access, not because we canceled it voluntarily. Since we were on a tight schedule to travel to the Netherlands, we had no choice but to rent another vehicle from a different company, which came at a higher cost due to the last-minute nature of the booking.
Flight delays are a common and foreseeable occurrence in air travel, and Avis and Booking.com should have accounted for this by clearly communicating closing times or offering delayed pickup instructions. Their failure to do so directly caused us both financial loss and serious inconvenience.
I am formally requesting a refund for the price difference we paid to the alternative rental company, as this loss was entirely caused by the lack of transparency from Avis and Booking.com. Under consumer protection regulations, I believe this reimbursement is fully justified. I expect a prompt resolution and compensation.
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