Help! A French Car Rental Company Charged Me Fees for Speeding Tickets I Never Received!

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/05/travel/foreign-rental-car-fees.html

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In September 2021, I rented a car from Europcar in Paris, used it for a day and returned it. The next month, I saw two charges from Europcar of 45 euros each on my credit card. I wrote to ask what the charges pertained to and received a response that seemed to imply (although it did not categorically state) that the charges were fees related to traffic tickets issued to me while I had the car. Yet I received no traffic tickets. When I asked Europcar for details, I was told they couldn’t tell me because of privacy regulations. I found that highly doubtful — and somewhat akin to going to a doctor who claimed she couldn’t tell me my diagnosis for privacy reasons! My credit card reversed the charges, but Europcar has since sent a collection agency after me. Can you help? Henry, San Francisco

Renting a car abroad can be tricky business. Even if you’re fine with stick shifts and aren’t in one of the many countries where people drive on the left (Japan! Barbados!), you still have to contend with differing traffic laws, confusing insurance requirements, baffling road signs and an appalling lack of Cheetos at highway rest stops.

But you, sir, have stumbled upon a perfect storm of car rental trouble — not a scam, but a nightmarish intersection of European privacy laws, molasses-like bureaucracy, international snail mail and French customer service agents whose English could be clearer.

First, some good news. I had a very long video call with a friendly and forthcoming Europcar official — who asked not to be identified because it is against company policy to speak publicly — and he told me the company made some mistakes in your case and would end its attempts to recover money from you. And some even better news — you actually ended up 45 euros ahead of where you started. (More on that in a bit.)

Let’s dissect what happened. On Sept. 15, 2021, the car you were driving was flagged by two different traffic cameras at 2:17 and 2:22 p.m. This much you already know, from the sparse details Europcar originally sent to you.

Had this happened in the United States or many other countries, the process would have been straightforward. Police run the license plate, connect it to the rental company, send over the details of your misdeeds (often with a grainy photo of your car, caught in the act). The rental company charges your credit card for the fine, plus an administrative fee and pays the government. Case closed.

But things in the European Union are more complicated, thanks in part to a 2018 law called the General Data Protection Regulation. At least as interpreted by French authorities, it prohibits government from sharing data with a third party, in this case, Europcar, about where you were and what you did. “The regulatory framework is so strict that you are always on the verge of infringing G.D.P.R.,” said the Europcar official. That’s why all the company could tell you at first is the time and date of your offenses, although it eventually determined they were speeding infractions of some kind — but would not tell me how they got the additional information.

As required by law, Europcar turned over your name and San Francisco address to the French Interior Ministry, which should have sent you an avis de contravention — the violation notice — by mail. But you told me you haven’t received it, which is not surprising. In reporting on your story, I spoke to several people who received traffic violation notices up to 18 months after renting a car in Europe. That jarred a memory from my own travels, and I unearthed an email I received in July 2018 from Sicily By Car, charging me a 60-euro processing fee for an unspecified traffic fine that I never received.

Whether 45 (or 60) euros is an appropriate fee for simply passing along an address is an open question, but Europcar and Sicily by Car both disclose this policy in their terms and conditions, and companies worldwide have similar policies. In fact, as Europcar told you in one exchange, their policy is to refund that fee upon request if the customer does not receive the violation notice in one year. For you, Henry, that year actually expired earlier this month, though the point is moot since you got your bank to reverse the charges.

The French Interior Ministry told me that fines must be issued within a year of the infraction, so you’re almost off the hook. If they were mailed by Sept. 15 and eventually find their way to you, though, you’ll have to decide whether to pay or contest them. I should note that a lot of people ignore fines they get on vacation, but I cannot recommend you take that route (though I admit I did scan the 1996 extradition treaty between the United States and France and unearthed no references to speeding violations).

That explains what was supposed to happen, but as your exchanges with Europcar show, and the official at Europcar admitted, things got very confusing. The whole process got off to a bad start last October when Europcar notified you in French about the fees. That’s their right as a French company, but Europcar told me its policy is to communicate in English with English speakers. After you got your credit card to reverse those charges, the company wrote to you in December to seek payment (again in French), though, for some confusing reason, they asked for just 45 euros, not the total 90 euros you had originally been charged. In January, they started responding to your protests in English, but things soon got weirder.

On Jan. 7, they sent you a confusing “invoice” for “-45 euros,” which turns out to have been a credit to your account, on top of the money you had already been refunded by your credit card. Four days later came a truly confusing exchange of messages, including one implying you owed them 45 euros from before and another in muddled English that read: “Regarding the invoice 100229951324, the customer service canceled, but after your rejection you were refunded an amount that you did not pay.”

Is there anything Americans can do to avoid troubles with international rentals? In general, I recommend favoring companies based in the United States, because it is easier to deal with customer service if something goes wrong after you’re back home. Jonathan Weinberg, the founder and chief executive of AutoSlash, a discount car rental site, agrees with my tactics but for a different reason. “The major rental companies tend to behave in a more customer-friendly way,” he said, referring to the familiar brands owned by umbrella companies Enterprise, Avis and Hertz. “They are more permissive about small dents and dings.”

Neil Abrams, a longtime consultant to the rental car industry, had another sensible tip, though it wouldn’t help with traffic violations: Even if you are skeptical of insurance add-ons on domestic car rentals (perhaps because your credit card or own car insurance policy offers some coverage) be less stingy abroad, so you don’t have to spend months seeking documentation to be reimbursed. “You don’t want to deal with these international government agencies and police,” he said. “It’s just too much of a pain.”

Also, be sure to read up on local regulations before you travel (starting on this State Department page) and once you arrive, ask locals about speed cameras — even in the United States and even places you’ve been before. For example, in August, New York City started operating 750 school zone speed cameras 24 hours a day. And the N.Y.P.D. will almost certainly find you much faster than the French.

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