Advice with dodgy holiday car rental?

pricksqueak

I've recently returned from a trip in Italy where I rented a car with a company called Maggiore. I returned the car on time, with the correct amount of fuel. The car was checked over and okayed by the hire representative and a receipt and invoice was generated with no outstanding amount to pay. That was on the 11th May, now since I returned I happened to check my credit account online and and found an additional payment had been taken from my credit card of £291.79 - transaction date 13th May from 'MAGGIORE RENT A CAR'

This is almost exactly twice the amount of my original payment. I immediately called the customer service dept and gave them my hire reference number- I was told there was nothing flagged on his system and no record of additional charges. He gave me the number of the local office I had used and was asked to email the complaints dept. I tried the local office but it was closed for the weekend- I tried again on Monday but was told by the lady who answered that she wasn't in the office so couldn't call my info up on the computer. I work full time so I don't get much opportunity to make personal calls, I'll keep trying but these people are far from helpful. There has been no response to my emails.

My question is can anyone recommend my next course of action- should I contact my credit card company incase of fraud? I suspect this is an error and I've been charged 3 times for the same booking but I'm pretty worried incase it's something else and it happens again. Any help would be appreciated- I'm starting to panic!

dalesrider

Contact your card provider and get them to request the details of the transaction.

Very common to see this happen.

They will refund you while they await the paperwork from the Hire company. 32 days.

pricksqueak

Thanks for the advise, I called my credit card company and was told the matter would get forwarded to the dispute/claims dept. They said that since there was a legitimate transaction from the hire company a few days earlier there were no guarantees I could make a successful claim but was told I'll hear from someone within ten days. Here's hoping it'll get resolved since it seems a bit mad a company can just take a significant amount of money from a credit card without any notification or prior warning.

dalesrider

I hope they have refunded you while this is being taken forward. PSD (payment services directive) requires that you are refunded in these cases.
If you have not been refunded then ring back and ask to speak to the disputes team and get it resolved straight away.
All they will do is request a voucher to see what the debit is for. The hire co have 32 days to provide this.
Takes all of a few seconds to request this info from the company.....