Thrifty Rent A Car review: Charged for un-requested insurance for car breakdown

I made arrangements for a rental of a Thrifty Rental car through Spirit Airlines who processed the particulars through Priceline. The car was to be picked up at Phoenix, Az. airport location on July 5th. We were the last check-in of the night, my husband filled in the agreement and declined all extra coverage as we are AAA members and have extra rental car coverage on our automobile insurance policies. My husband presented an American Express credit card for the clerk to verify. Never was anything said about insurance for breakdowns of the rental car and no explanation of an existence of such an option mentioned or pointed out on the agreement nor an extra charge discussed. The rental car was pre-paid when the reservation was made.

On our next American Express statement, a charge from Thrifty Rental car of $51.32 appeared. I called the 800# and spoke to someone and they said it was a mistake and it would be corrected. The correction did not occur, so I contacted American Express credit card co. and they removed the charge and said if after 30 days they did not have a dispute from Thrifty Car Rental that it would be permanent.

In September I received an invoice from Thrifty requesting payment. Again, I called and spoke to a representative - Shalovi and she said the request to remove the charge would be "escalated".

After still not getting a response, I called again...

On 11-13-23 Rao emailed a copy of the contract, all extra coverage is shown as declined.

Another invoice arrived by US Mail with the amount still due. I spoke to and emailed Fred H. at customer Correspondence for Thrifty. Again nothing was done and I even requested that he respond that he received my request.

At the end of November we received a letter from Thrifty Car Rental that they have removed our privileges? for failure to pay outstanding charges.

My husband called Victor on 1/6/24. he said he would send the information to the Phoenix office directly and hoped to get authorization to remove the charge and clear our account.

My husband called again this morning 1/25/2024. He was disconnected by telephone.

We are not asking for anything extra... just to remove a charge that was placed in "error" on our account. We were never advised that we had this coverage and if the rental car broke down in our possession we would not have been able to use insurance we didn't know we had. Thankfully the car was in good order and no break downs.