I have covered the mess that Sixt Rent a Car was in due to their system outage over the last month and as I expected once they finally got around to starting billing people for their past rentals these invoices turned into a disaster.
Every single one of the invoices I got from Sixt for rentals since late April was incorrect as I expected considering all these manual contracts and returns, causing me to be overcharged by quite a bit of money for each transaction.
The IT outage has lasted over a month during which Sixt relied much on manual processes and car returns so it’s no surprise that things are messed up.
That being said basic data such as return dates, times, fuel level, and odometer should’ve been the bare minimum to record correctly upon return.
Here is an invoice I received for a car I dropped off two weeks ago at Frankfurt Airport:
First I wondered why there are 100 Euro extra charges on the bill until I noticed the return date was listed as May 29th. By that time I was already back in Thailand for two days, and the return of the car happened on May 27th. The invoice also lists that I only drove 1 km in eight days.
I contacted the Sixt Diamond Service and forwarded them a picture of my boarding pass so they’ll hopefully fix it soon.
Another invoice was sent to me for a car I picked up at LAX but it also charged me for an additional day and lists a car I didn’t even drive. According to Sixt I drove an Audi Convertible while in reality, I had a small BMW that day.
Thankfully I took a picture of the actual car I had and likewise requested Sixt to fix this.
Here are my previous articles related to this issue:
In my email, I asked Sixt to correct the amounts and also apply compensation for me having to research and rectify the matter. After all, when you get a speeding ticket and Sixt forwards your data to the relevant authorities they also charge you a processing fee for that. It’s only fair, isn’t it!?
Conclusion
Following their systems outage Sixt is sending out a lot of faulty invoices and customers are well-advised to check their bills diligently to avoid being overcharged by the car rental company.
I’m very concerned that Sixt isn’t even able to match the cars correctly. What if a particular car was involved in an accident and they are reporting you as the driver even though you were never behind the wheel?
Hopefully, Sixt will fix the billing errors in due course or I will process a chargeback for the entire amount. This is getting completely out of hand considering every single one of my invoices has been incorrect and I was overcharged by a lot. Totally negligent, if not to say criminal!
