Zipcar will charge your credit card for no reason

[kag0]

Zipcar will charge your credit card for no reason and would rather have you dispute with the credit card company than refund you.

I encountered this and thought it was interesting. If my company had charged someone and found there was no trace of it in our system, I would be very concerned. But at Zipcar they seem to play it off as not a big deal. I wonder how much revenue they make from randomly charging people who don't notice.

https://imgur.com/a/ET3ckK9

[donmcronald]

> If my company had charged someone and found there was no trace of it in our system, I would be very concerned.

I saw this happen to a business once and they never got any answers when they tried to engage their payment provider. It was a franchise, so they didn't have a direct enough relationship to really push the issue.

What would happen is a customer debit card would fail a transaction, so they'd redo it and it would succeed. Later that day the customer would be back to show them how they were double charged, but the merchant account only showed the successful transaction.

That was 5 years ago and as far as I know that money just "disappeared". It happened infrequently enough the business always ended up eating it.

To this day, I still want to know what happened.

In the case of the OP, I can imagine something similar. If ZipCar doesn't have any record of the transactions, why not get the customer to do a charge back? That way whoever ended up with the money loses it.

[actually_a_dog]

Although most of the other comments seem to want to blame ZipCar for doing something unethical here, I have to say this kind of "random glitch" scenario makes the most sense to me. No sane company would want to rack up disputes with their payment processor for such little potential gain.

[schainks]

Ugh, Zipcar. The company whose management demanded a new CRM integration go live on a Friday before a holiday weekend, and didn’t coordinate with support team.

Naturally, something messed up because the project was rushed out the door, stranding my partner and I when our car wouldn’t unlock.

Support team was backed up because they never knew to staff up, so we were stuck on hold for an hour. In that time, I secured another car, started driving and then they told me they can’t see my current rental because the CRM changeover migrated half the fleet data before getting stuck. This was nationwide.

Due to this snafu we had to deal with multiple calls, all with awful wait times. One of the lower level support people _thanked me for not yelling at them_. That’s how badly they execute.

This company is full on Blockbuster for cars. They take as much money as they can while managing as piss poor an experience as possible. They’ll refund you to your account (not your credit card!) for their mistakes as long as you chase them, then eventually take the money back anyway because their refunds have expiry dates.

[p49k]

Zipcar transitioned everyone who was on a free plan to a paid plan without their consent and started charging their card on file. Unethical and almost certainly illegal. I’m not surprised.

[toomuchtodo]

https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/

File a complaint with the FTC and your state’s attorney general.

[spookybones]

They just did this to me, doubling the price without informing me. However, the card I have on file has expired. They are threatening to send it to a collection agency if I don't pay it.

[somenewaccount1]

Next time your on the phone trying to get it resolved, ask them for their "corporate address for legal correspondence" in order to file your small claims suit.

They will resist giving it to you, likely by telling you "it's online on their website". or they will send you to a "contact us" page on their website that doesn't display their corporate address. This is when you know you are winning.

They may still not resolve it on the spot, but when someone sees that notes that you requested the necessary information in order to sue, they will likely fix it in short order.

It's worked for me a few times when it was very obvious the company had policy of telling customers to go screw themselves, even when the customer is right.

There is something about actually knowing how to file a lawsuit for real that seems to motivate them.

[sebastien_b]

I’ve done something similar before (asking for “your company legal counsel’s contact info”), to which I also indicated that any further time of mine taken up by this matter (resolving their fuck ups) would be charged to the company at a rate of $75/hr with a 5 hr minimum, calculated by the minute.

[pcthrowaway]

Do you need to be a contractor with an hourly rate to get away with charging companies for time wasted of yours?

[sebastien_b]

Not in my jurisdiction - but it should be a simple matter of registering a numbered company / sole proprietor / LLC if that’s actually legally required (I never needed to even take it that far).

I guess the other thing to consider is potentially claiming it as income if you do end up charging them.

The fun part is insinuating you’ll also send it to collections if they don’t pay.

[sveiss]

If you do this, be prepared for the company to call your bluff.

Many places have a policy that invoking legal is a one way street, and once you’ve threatened to sue they will give you the contact details for legal and then refuse to speak to you through normal customer service channels for any reason.

You’re now stuck dealing with the people who’s job it is to mitigate risk, and not those who’s job it is to keep customers happy.

[somenewaccount1]

I have yet to call into a customer service department "who's job it is to keep customers happy".

The only time that has been my experience was with companies that were in a growth phase of early existence.

Also, I assume you are calling in with legit reason - so my point is exactly that the "risk team" will start taking appropriate action, ya know, to mitigate their risk. Indeed if you are calling to blow smoke up the company's ass in order to get something for free, you will have a bad time.

[rudolph9]

I’ve been contesting random zipcar charges for over a year now and had to change my credit card number because of it (which takes time to take effect with subscription type charges).

[kag0]

Did you contact them or get any response back?

[bumpkinjunkie]

Similar thing happened to me, but my card on file had expired . Zipcar sent me an email threatening to send me to collections. I sent them a polite message on April 11th and they finally got back to me on May 30th that the charges would be removed.

[py4]

They ripped me off a long time ago. Tried to contact them through twitter, Facebook, email and phone call. Never answered. Worst tech company ever in the history of humanity.

[offsky]

Based on all the comments here, Im confident this is Zipcar's fault and not the OP. However, I have had some experience being on the other end of this type of billing problem (not at zipcar) so I'll share my experience.

Several times I have received an email from someone saying that my website charged their card incorrectly. In each case the amount charged has been an amount that is impossible based on what I sell (my product is $10, but they are billed for $17.23). I attempt to lookup the transaction in my Stripe dashboard using the date, amount, and last 4 digits. Nothing. I have to reply with something similar to what OP got back from support. In every case where I received a followup with the customer, they had misread the credit card statement and it was for a totally different company's charge. I guess there was a company with a similar name. Sometimes customers get quite irate, but they never apologize when they realize it was their fault.

[londons_explore]

I have the reverse situation. I have had a Zipcar account for ~5 years, and despite the website being pretty clear that I'm on a paid monthly plan, I haven't been charged for a single month ever.

I'm still charged for the actual hires I make though.

[JaceLightning]

It sounds like they didn't make those charges and someone else is pretending to be Zipcar, charging your card.

[dikaio]

I honestly didn’t even know that company still existed…