Atlaschoice car hire fraud?

danwednesday

Hi,

I made a car hire booking in January this year. The booking was through a popular car hire agent Atlaschoice. They took a payment of £250+ from my credit card in January for the full amount of the hire. The hire was for a holiday in July and was fulfilled as expected this year, by the car hire company Noleggiare. All fine.

However, this morning, almost 1 year after making payment for the booking, I received notification from my bank and from Noleggiare that £250+ payment has been taken today by Noleggiare because Atlas Choice have failed to pay them for the original booking in January. This payment has been taken from the Debit card I provided at the desk to cover damage to the car (of which there was none). Here's the email:

Dear Customer,

hereby, we have to inform you that the charge is related to the cost of your rental.

Unfortunately, we are forced to charge you for the car hire because Atlaschoice tour operator hasn’t confirmed your service payment; as per art. 9 Terms&Conditions signed, the customer is directly liable for the rental to the Lessor.

As all of their customers are proceeding, we suggest you to contact directly Atlas Choice Team for the refund of the amount you paid them.

Here, you can find all of Atlas Choice contacts:

0800 013 12 13 Call Our Car-Hire Specialists

UK: 0800 013 12 13 Open from 9am to 7pm (GMT)

US: 1-800-986-9451(Toll Free) Open from 5am to 2pm (ET)

ES: 911 899 455 Abierto 10am - 8pm (CET)

DE: 0800 673 8188(Kostenfrei) Geöffnet von 10:00 bis 20:00 (CET)

FR: 0975 18 14 16Ouvert de 10 h ! 20 h (CET)

Worldwide: +44 (0) 2083 26 36 00Open from 9am to 7pm (GMT)

Best regards,

Noleggiare Team

So I've now paid a second time for the car hire, almost 1 year after the original payment. The original payment was on my credit card, and the duplicate payment is on my debit card.

After several hours trying to get through to Atlas Choice by phone, I eventually spoke to an agent who bluntly advised that it wasn't their problem and that they're "still trading".

I've contacted my bank who advise they can't cancel the debit card transaction from this morning.

I've spoken to my credit card company who are due to send me some paperwork in order to raise a dispute on the payment, but they're not confident in a resolution as the original payment happened and the goods were 'consumed' more than 120 days ago.

There seems to be a huge number of people in the same situation (see social media: https://twitter.com/atlaschoice/with_replies, https://www.facebook.com/pg/AtlasChoice/posts/?ref=page_internal).

So it appears Atlas Choice are not paying their suppliers and are just blatantly stealing the money customers are paying to them. Yet this morning they still tell me they're solvent and are merrily continuing to take bookings. Surely this can't be legal?

Does anyone know what the best steps are to (a) try to get my money back and (b) quickly prevent AtlasChoice from continuing to rip people off like this? It's quite sickening.

Thanks folks.

richardw

See the thread in the car hire forum.