Ministry of Social Rights sanctions Avis with one million euros for abusive practices

The Ministry of Social Rights, Consumption and Agenda 2030 has today announced the imposition of a fine of one million euros on the car rental company Avis for carrying out abusive practices.

The company charged a fee of between 33.88 and 45 euros for administrative penalty management costs from customers who had been penalized with a traffic fine at the time they had one of their vehicles for rent. Avis made this surcharge for managing the payment of the fine and communicating the identity of the offending person to the public administration. However, Consumption considers that this surcharge for this management is abusive because it is obliged by law to do so and therefore, imposes the sanction.

The file arose after a complaint filed by the Association of Basque Consumers and Users EKA/ACUV Euskal Kontsumitzaileen Alkartea (EKA/ACUV) and with this resolution the administrative route has been exhausted, but it can be appealed in court.

The Consumer resolution, specifically, considers that "it imposes payment for a service on customers that responds to compliance with a legal obligation of the company and establishes a disproportionate economic burden that breaks the contractual balance to the detriment of the consumer."

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 tenant or, where applicable, the rental contract. In this way, “an additional cost cannot be passed on to customers for carrying out a procedure that the law imposes on the owner of the vehicle,” assumes the Ministry.

These practices have been considered a very serious infraction when the aggravating circumstance provided by law is appreciated, by persisting in a practice previously declared illicit. In this sense, the resolution highlights that the Court of First Instance No. 1 of Vitoria-Gasteiz already declared this clause abusive in a ruling from September 2020, in which the nullity of various general conditions used by Avis – among them, the commission for managing fines – was declared invalid and the company was ordered to eliminate them, stop applying them in current contracts and refrain from incorporating them in the future.