Car rental drop off confusion

[thatguy]

We reserved a car to drive to Florida and back, for most of February at our local NW Indiana rental agency. To be picked up and returned to the same location. about halfway theough the trip, Feb 17, I received a email recept for returning the car at a knoxville TN Airport location. Had additional emails thanking me for the completed rental and wanting feedback on my satisfaction with the completed rental. We had not returned the car, we were still in Florida with it. I have printed emails confirming our reservation with pick up and return in NW indiana with correct dates. The printed papers we got with the car at pickup have the correct pickup & return time date & locations. But if I go to the rental web page with my reservation number it shows the reservation drop off location altered to Knoxville. We drove through Tennessee to get to florida but were no where near Knoxville where the said the car was returned. I might be confused on the exact detail but I called our local indiana location where we picked up and asked WTF. So they made a 2nd rental appear cus we still had the car while their system shows it had been returned. They think the mistake was made in knoxville. The national rental number people said I need to call the local knoxville location. I have not. On retuning the car March 2 back in NW Indiana, The home agent appears to have charged us a final amount that makes the total near enough to our contracted total for the whole time as on our original reservation. The only thing left to correct is we got charged twice by AMEX for their Premium car rental insurance, cus it looks like 2 separate rentals. Pretty sure I can get that corrected with a phone call, but it's only $20.
But, WTF did they do in Knoxville?
Our little local car rental agency is a small low volume place. There was one other person picking up the same time as us. I'm thinking maybe he returned something in Knoxville. Maybe some info got mixed up between ours and his rentals. I don't think we were over charged. But did our payment get applied to somebody else's return in Knoxville.
It seems to be over and done with but I can imagine ways this could have gone wrong.

 

[RetireBy90]

Good that everything seems to have worked out. Some places correcting an error that is in the computer can be tough. We have had similar problems. Quoted price we have in confirmation email not honored by the vendor’s system jumps to mind. Then when you have to interrupt your vacation to resolve is twice the insult.
Sorry it happened

 

[bonvoyage]

I have done long term rentals in the past couple of years. My daughter used my car for an internship while I rented from Avis. The way such rentals work is that they actually rent the car in units of a month. So while you may think that you have, say, a three month rental, it's actually recorded in their system as three one month rentals. The first time this happened, I got a bit nervous but was told that it was absolutely ok and I could come by to pick up an updated rental agreement if I wanted.

 

[thatguy]

It just felt pretty weird when the email said the car we were still driving in Florida, that wasn't scheduled to be returned for 2 weeks, had been returned & paid for in a Tennesssee location where we had not been to.
I have seen stories on youtube where rented cars were erroneously reported stolen. At a traffic stop the renters were thought to be driving a stolen car.

I've not named the car rental company. We've used them before without issue. They are not one that's been most in the news for issues.
We'll probably use them again. More and more it just seems to make sense to rent for a long road trip. We recently bought a newer car, but we're trying to keep the new one off the salted ice winter roads. It breaks my heart what salt & rust has done to my cars over the years.

 

[HarveyS]

I would not have given this a second thought. You had a valid rental agreement, on paper, if you got stopped. By the way, when was the last time you were stopped? Not likely to happen.
Someone fat fingered something.
Not your problem -- enjoy your trip.

 

[Koolau]

^^^^^

This.

 

[engineernerd]

Pretty weird... adds to a general feeling I have that competence is not as commonplace as it used to be.

 

[latexman]

Don't sweat the small stuff!

 

[splitwdw]

Did you call the Knoxville location?

 

[Kings over Queens]

Anytime I've returned a car the person at the rental place scanned the barcode on the windshield. Can't remember the last time I handed the keys to someone at a desk and they manually keyed in the return at a computer.

Probably a simply explanation, such as was offered earlier about the blocks of rental time, but I'm wired to question things like that.

 

[sengsational]

Says something to be said for having paper / not trusting that you can "always just access the web site"

 

[thatguy]

Although I'm curious as hell as to how this happened. My best advise to myself is not to call Knoxville, and just leave it be.