Vancouver woman Giovanna Boniface said she rented a car from Avis for three days after traveling to Toronto Pearson earlier this month to help her daughter settle into university.
She said she drove the GMC Yukon Denali between the airport, in downtown Toronto, and Kitchener, where she was visiting her mother-in-law.
In all, he said he drove about 300 kilometers before returning the car to the airport and checking in for a flight to Europe.
Boniface said she put down about $1,000 to rent the car.  While waiting to board her flight, she said she checked her credit card transaction online to make sure the charge had been processed correctly.
“Then I notice this charge for over $8,000 from Avis,” Boniface told CTV News Toronto on Thursday.
She said she then looked at her receipt from Avis and noticed that the company had charged her for driving 36,482 kilometers at a rate of 25 cents per kilometre.
Boniface said he would have to drive for 72 hours straight at about 500 km/h to make it possible.  It’s also about the same distance as driving from Toronto to South Africa three times.
“The first thing I wanted to do was go behind the safety and just go to the bench,” he said.  “But I wouldn’t have had time to do that because the security lines were too long.”
Instead, she tried calling the Avis location at the airport, but no one was answering the phone.

A GMC Yukon Denali is seen in this undated file photo. (CTV News) “It was just knocking and knocking and no one was answering,” she said. “It was really frustrating trying to reach someone.” Boniface said she then called Avis through its general phone number, but still had trouble getting the problem resolved. “They didn’t seem to really understand what my problem was and I really needed them to remove that $8,000 charge,” she said. She said she was disconnected twice while trying to speak to an Avis manager and eventually had to board her flight. After arriving in Paris, Boniface said she called Visa to dispute the transaction, but there was nothing they could do because the charge was still outstanding. She said it wasn’t until a few days later, when the media got involved, that she received a call from Avis notifying her that the extra charges would be refunded. In a statement to CTV News Toronto, Avis said it apologized to Boniface for the error and has issued a refund. They didn’t say what caused the error. She said she understands companies make mistakes, but she doesn’t like the way the ordeal was handled and how it took publicity to fix the problem. “Overall, it was not good customer service,” she said, adding that the ordeal caused her unnecessary stress while she was traveling. “The most frustrating thing was not getting through to customer service in any way in a timely manner.”