Last September, May and I went to the Connect music festival on the banks of Loch Fyne in Scotland (see my Flickr set). We hired a car with Hertz (IBM discount) which we picked up in Glasgow, and then dropped off in Edinburgh. Everything with the hire went very smoothly, or so we thought until last December.
When we received this:
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As you can see, the letter is with respect to a penalty charge notice from the 31st of August, issued at Queens Gate. Now, we didn't remember getting a parking ticket so after racking our brains a bit and consulting May's diary to see where we'd been on the 31st, I called Hertz to request a copy of the original PCN and also called my credit card company to dispute the payment. This was on the 9th of December and they promised to send me a copy within 10 days.
Here's what they sent me on the 23rd - see if you can spot the problem:
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Did you spot it? If not check this one and compare it with the PCN above:
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For extra LOLs, remember that I said I rented the car in Glasgow, and dropped it off in Edinburgh, then take a look at the issuing council for the PCN. Commando lol!
With this evidence in hand I called Hertz back on the 23rd December and spoke to a nice chap called David and offered him the opportunity to provide me with a full refund before I instructed my credit card company to reclaim the unlawful charge. After he'd spent a few minutes with the documents, he came to the same conclusion that I had and exclaimed "that's absolutely ridiculous" before proceeding to issue a full refund. Good man.
3 comments:
IGDI. Are you saying you couldn't have driven to London in 3 days? Or have I missed something?
Ohh, they've misread the parking ticket, using the tax expiry date rather then the issue date.
Good detective work, I hadn't spotted that.
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