The Ministry of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and the 2030 Agenda has announced today the imposition of a one million euro fine on the car rental company Avis for carrying out abusive practices.
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The company charged a fee of between 33.88 and 45 euros as administrative sanction management costs to customers who had been penalized with a traffic fine at the time they had one of their vehicles rented. Avis made this surcharge for managing the payment of the fine and communicating the identity of the infringing person to the public administration. However, Consumer Affairs considers this surcharge for this management abusive because it is legally obliged to do so and therefore imposes the sanction.
The company had already been condemned for these bad practices by a court in Vitoria
The file arises after a complaint filed by the Basque Consumers and Users Association EKA/ACUV Euskal Kontsumitzaileen Alkartea (EKA/ACUV) and with this resolution exhausts the administrative route, but it can be appealed in the courts.
The Consumer Affairs resolution, specifically, considers that “it imposes the payment of a service on the customer that corresponds to the fulfillment of a legal obligation of the company and establishes a disproportionate economic burden that breaks the contractual balance to the detriment of the consumer.”
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The resolution recalls that the identification of the driver responsible for an infraction constitutes a legal obligation of the vehicle owner, in accordance with the law on Traffic, Motor Vehicle Circulation and Road Safety. In the case of rental companies, this obligation is fulfilled by providing the Administration with the identity of the renter or, where appropriate, the rental contract. Thus, “an additional cost cannot be passed on to the customer for carrying out a procedure that the law imposes on the vehicle owner,” the Ministry assumes.
These practices have been considered a very serious infraction as the aggravating circumstance provided by law is appreciated, for persisting in a practice previously declared unlawful. In this regard, the resolution highlights that the Court of First Instance No. 1 of Vitoria-Gasteiz already declared this clause abusive in a September 2020 ruling, in which the nullity of various general conditions used by Avis – including the fine management commission – was declared and the company was ordered to eliminate them, stop applying them in current contracts and refrain from incorporating them in the future.
