Avis charged a man $4,200 for driving nearly 18,000 miles in 7 days, then he did the math on how fast he’d have to drive nonstop

Avis has officially apologized and promised a full refund after charging a customer thousands of dollars for a physically impossible amount of driving. The rental company admitted a data entry error led to the massive, incorrect bill, which claimed the driver covered roughly 18,000 miles in just one week.

As reported by Dexerto, Yuehao Huang, a resident of Toronto, rented a car from Avis. He flew into Montreal for a family road trip, intending to visit spots like Ottawa, Quebec, and Mont Tremblant. He had already prepaid over CAD $1,000 for the rental, but the real trouble started when he returned home. Huang noticed an additional, unexplained charge of CAD $5,900 on his statement, which is approximately USD $4,300.

When he looked into the bill, he found that Avis claimed he had driven 28,968 kilometers, or about 18,000 miles, during his seven-day trip. To put that into perspective, that distance is nearly 75% of the entire circumference of the Earth. 

Getting the refund wasn’t easy

Huang did the math on what that would actually look like in practice. He realized that to hit that number, he would have needed to drive at 180 km/h for 24 hours a day, without stopping for food, sleep, or fuel. He noted that the vehicle would have needed maintenance like an oil change to survive such a journey, which obviously never happened.

Huang had his own tracking data to prove his side of the story. His iPhone recorded only 1,400 kilometers of travel for the whole trip, a figure that even included time spent hiking when he was not in the car at all. Despite having this evidence, the process to get his money back was a nightmare. 

He reached out to Avis to dispute the charge, and they initially agreed to look into it. Weeks passed without any progress, and he was eventually told to submit his complaint all over again. He even tried to challenge the payment through American Express, but that effort hit a wall when Avis insisted the charges were valid.

The situation finally shifted when Huang contacted Speakers Corner. Once the media outlet reached out to the rental company, Avis changed its tune within one day. The company stated, “Following a thorough review, we confirmed that a data entry error resulted in the customer being incorrectly charged for excess mileage.” They also mentioned they are reinforcing procedures with their teams to stop this from happening again.