Signing a blank invoice

This dates back to May last year, and was first referred to in this column on February 10 this year. Here follow excerpts from a letter which Mario Gatt had sent to Budget Rent a Car:

On April 10 (2001) we paid for a self-drive car we booked earlier on with your offices for our ten-day stay in Sicily. Only a few months before I had a sour experience when I booked a Ford Mondeo in Scotland and was given a Scenic instead.

This time I wanted to make sure that a classification group letter would not be enough to describe the car I am paying for. Therefore I insisted on having the car make, a Fiat Brava, printed on the voucher. Anything smaller would not have taken our four medium-sized suitcases.

In Catania, the office you booked our car with... insisted that the car you booked for us under the classification letter K was a Fiat Punto, with a luggage boot so small that there was not enough room for two of our suitcases ...

Finally he told us he could offer a Daewoo Lagos, which though in the same group, might have a slightly larger boot. It was still no good ... But we were left with no choice even if we were to spend the rest of the day at that office.

We informed you of all this... but it did not seem you could sort the problem out... with the luggage exposed if we were to stop anywhere and park the car. So we had to change all our plans.

...it definitely caused us a lot of inconvenience and extra costs. We could only leave our car parked after moving our luggage into the hotel each time we went from one area to another. We could never stop and visit interesting sites on our way to a different location. It had to be from one hotel to the other. This was to waste a lot of our time and make us drive many more miles, resulting in a higher bill for consumption.

By now I assume you have contacted Budget Rent a Car's head office and asked for an explanation with some advice on how to compensate your clients, apart from the refund on a lower grade car than what we paid for.

I could have hired a car from some unknown garage in Sicily much cheaper but I preferred to deal with an established firm believing my holiday would be trouble-free.

May I hope that your recommendation for an agreeable solution will not be long in materialising. (Mario Gatt, May 21, 2001)

A follow-up letter was sent copied in to myself and, after having sent Budget various reminders, on February 10 I featured this letter and excerpts from a follow-up letter from Mr Gatt. I then received this letter from Budget:

We refer to the article entitled 'Drawn out pending case" in your newspaper regarding Mr Gatt's complaint.

We have written to our sub-contractors Thrifty Car Rentals in Palermo regarding this complaint, a copy of which is enclosed. Please find also copy of their reply, which was also sent to Mr Gatt.

It is our company's policy to satisfy our customers. Writing to a local newspaper, which the Italians certainly do not read, is not going to settle matters. It would have been better for Mr Gatt to request our services again and we would have been more than glad to settle matters then. It is better to lose money from one reservation than lose a client who can damage your reputation. Moreover we can assure you we have many satisfied customers.

Your comments would be greatly appreciated. (Joe Catania, operations manager)

Attached to this letter was a copy of one sent by Mr Catania to their agents in Palermo and their reply. Without going into too much detail, my comments are that Mr Catania did support Mr Gatt's complaint and he also conveyed his customer's sentiments to their agents in Palermo.

However the response from Sicily was not satisfactory. Suffice it to say that they were not receptive and made some allegations about their customer which I will not go into. At this point I must stress that my bone of contention is about the agents in Sicily making Mr Gatt sign a blank invoice.

In any case I sent Mr Gatt copies of the correspondence and he replied as follows:

To Budget Rent a Car:

Since my last contact, I managed to prove to my bankers the fraudulent means the Sicilians use to overcharge clients. As previously explained, they made me sign a blank invoice which they declared is standard practice. Luckily I was given a copy after my insistence. That same blank invoice was later filled in, after I left, as if I agreed to those charges. The bank asked them (Thrifty) the reason for making clients sign blank invoices. No reply ever came through, such that after several weeks Visa reclaimed the extra charges made plus bank and interest charges.

You had to accept the fact that I booked and paid for a Fiat Brava since I insisted on having this printed on my voucher apart from just a "Group K" description. You know I was given a much smaller car and the inconvenience this has caused us. In fact I wasted a whole morning, besides the extra expense on my mobile, to ask you to sort it out for us. Rather than mess up a whole day at Catania airport, I decided to suffer the inconvenience and complain later.

The Sunday Times' Customer Service Column taught me to ask for copies of agreements which explain fully well what I am paying for. Now I realise that had I not asked you to print "Fiat Brava" besides the code number on my voucher, and had I not asked for a copy of the blank Invoice that Thrifty made me sign, I would have had no proof to claim that I have been swindled.

This cannot be solved when I request your service again. I am sorry that this is case of "once bitten twice shy". (Mario Gatt)

On May 21 I asked Budget Rent a Car for their comments, to no avail. On July 9 I sent them a reminder, again to no avail. On August 6 I sent Budget Rent a Car another copy of this correspondence and another request for their comments, still to no avail. Their comments would be appreciated particularly in view of the implications of making a customer sign a blank invoice which, in my opinion, is a definite no-no! This is why I decided to feature this case.

In this spirit I thank Mr Catania of Budget Rent a Car in anticipation for his co-operation. As I already explained, my bone of contention is with his agents in Sicily, and the reason I am featuring this case is because it is worth sharing.