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Old Atlas Choice car hire user? Check bank statement now for extra charges

Paloma Kubiak
Written By:
Paloma Kubiak
Posted:
Updated:
13/01/2017

If you’re a former Atlas Choice car hire customer, you should check your emails and your bank statements to see if any extra charges have been applied to your card. We’ve been told €45 will be taken.

Atlas Choice acts as a car hire broker, letting customers choose the best rental option from a range of car hire companies.

Over the Christmas and New Year period, many frustrated Atlas Choice car hire customers took to social media and review sites to report that on collecting their car from the rental desk, they were told there was no reservation or that the booking had been unexpectedly cancelled.

If they still wanted the car, they would have to pay for the booking again, often at more expensive prices than when they originally booked.

Atlas Choice’s website stated that it was no longer accepting new bookings and due to “exceptional circumstances”, the rental voucher for upcoming car hire could not be honoured. It added that its payment provider, WorldPay was not processing any refunds so it could not assist.

“The only alternative is to contact the customer services department for your card provider and ask them to commence a charge back claim for the total cost of your original booking including prepaid extras,” the message stated.

Former customers should check for extra charges now

In July, we booked a week’s premium car rental for August in Poland via Atlas choice. We paid just under £300 via credit card.

Yesterday we received an email from the direct car hire company (CarsRent) to let us know they’ll be charging our credit card for €45.

Here’s the email:

Dear Customer,

I am writing with reference to car rental services recently provided to you by CarsRent Poland.

As you will be aware, your original booking was made with an online broker, namely Atlas Choice (parent company: Evershine Travel Limited), which you paid directly for the services.

Unfortunately, we have been advised today by Atlas Choice’s parent company, Evershine Travel Limited, that they are not in a position to pay for the services that CarsRent provided in good faith to yourselves and as such to cover the services provided to you, we are advising that we have applied a charge to your credit card in line with our terms and conditions the amount of 45 Eur.

RECOVERING MONIES PAID TO ATLAS CHOICE

We are advising that in order for you to recover your monies that you paid to Atlas Choice that you contact your credit card provider immediately and request a charge-back any sums paid over to Atlas Choice and / or Evershine Travel Limited stating that Atlas Choice / Evershine Travel Limited have not paid over the monies that you deposited with them in good faith to the supplier, namely CarsRent, that provided your car hire services.

Call your card provider and explain the situation

We called our credit card company last night to let it know about the email. It told us that it had received a note on 4 January about Atlas Choice and it had already taken calls from concerned customers.

We were told to keep an eye on the account and as soon as we see a pending transaction or the amount withdrawn, we would need to call again so the charge back process could be started so that we could get our money back.

Seeing as we booked in July and completed the rental in August, it’s concerning that six months later we’re being billed again for an amount that was unpaid by Atlas Choice to its partnering car hire company.

YourMoney.com understands the current status of Evershine Travel Ltd is ‘Active proposal to strike off’ and its accounts are overdue. We’ve attempted to contact Atlas Choice but the email bounced back and calls are being kept in a queue.