About 3 months ago, I got in a car crash where the car got fairly significant damage (I oversteered into a tree). I notified both the local police department and Hertz about the crash, got incident reports from both, and moved on with my merry life (after getting a replacement vehicle from Hertz). I got emailed a request to fill in a vehicle incident report from Hertz, which I submitted the day of receipt. Now here’s the thing: I didn’t have any insurance from Hertz, relying on secondary insurance from my credit card. I don’t own a car, so there’s no primary auto insurance to speak of. My credit card insurance provider requires claims to be submitted within 100 days of incident for them to consider them, and they require a statement of claim from the rental agency in order to submit claims. I’ve gotten crickets from Hertz in this respect the past two months…and I’m concerned that they won’t provide me with paperwork in time for me to appropriately file the claim. I was *considering* sending Hertz a polite but firm letter using certified mail asking them to provide me with a statement of claim in a timely manner in order for me to proceed with this claim given that I don’t want to wake up to a $20,000 bill from Hertz in half a year or something that my credit card insurance policy won’t cover. Is this a good idea? If not, anything else I should consider? I’d appreciate any advice! Jurisdiction: the car was rented in Virginia with a New York drop-off. The crash occurred in Virginia, and I’m a New York resident.

Tl;Dr: Hertz overcharged me when renting a car. After customer service could not help, I opened a dispute, but on the wrong charge as I'm dumb. The dispute was closed and money returned to Hertz. Now they have sent multiple invoices requesting payment for this charge, and as of March 5 it has been sent to collections. Hey! So back in August 2024 I rented a car with some friends, to be picked up in San Francisco and returned to Las Vegas. We booked online and chose the extra insurance and have a layout of all charges in the initial email. We paid $350 CAD when booking. When picking up the car, we also added a secondary driver. The remaining $1680 was to be billed to the card already on file. When the email came through after picking up the car, I saw it was about $230 CAD above what I expected, but I assumed this was a damage deposit or something of the like. When we returned the car however, the final invoice was still about $230 above what I expected based on the initial booking invoice, plus the additional driver. This is also taking into account the charge for dropping off at a different location, the extra insurance, etc that was all listed in the initial email. Unfortunately, we dropped off the car late at night and flew home the next day, so there was no staff in the office to speak to. Fast forward a couple weeks, the two charges were posted and still remained, collectively, about $230 above what I was quoted, including the extras we chose. So I called Hertz. Customer support couldn't see any issue, but also said there was no manager present to speak to. They put in a request with their financial team to contact me. I was never contacted. A couple days later, I called again, and met the same result. I should have been more aggressive and demanded to talk to someone who actually knew how to look an invoice, but I didn't. Again I got them to request an email from the financial team. This time I did get an email from them, to which I replied and explained the situation.. And never heard back. At this point, I just opened a dispute with my credit card. Unfortunately, I still wasn't sure which exact payment was overcharged, so I opened the dispute on the initial booking fee of $350. This means that this amount is refunded back to me temporarily, pending the final results of the dispute. In hindsight, that was obviously not the way to go, but at the time I assumed they just didn't subtract the booking deposit from the final bill. However, this was incorrect, and by mid December, after Hertz replied to my bank, it was deemed to be incorrect as the overcharge had nothing to do with the booking deposit. The $350 was returned to Hertz on December 13th. They already have the money. However, in mid-January, I received an invoice in the mail from Hertz detailing that I owed $350, with an invoice date of December 29th. So two weeks after the money was already returned. Prior to this letter, I also called Hertz yet again, and finally got someone who felt sympathetic and refunded me the $230 I was overcharged. This was done through official channels as he sent the request to their financial team. I wish this had been the result at the beginning, but unfortunately here we are. Now I stupidly ignored this first invoice letter because I assumed that once their financial team did a year end balancing of accounts, the disputed amount of $350 would be seen to have been refunded back in December, and I just wouldn't hear from them again. However, that was not the case, I got another couple letters from Hertz. Two weeks ago, I emailed the address listed on this Hertz invoice, and explained, in rather pissed off terms I confess, the entire situation, and that the money had already been returned to Hertz. I made sure to iterate multiple times that they already had the money back that they were requesting. I got an email a few days later notifying me that my email had been forwarded to the Hertz collections team. I never heard any confirmation back from them. Now, today I received a letter in the mail from a collections agency stating that they have been given the charge and I have 3 days to pay or contact the office or it would be placed against my credit rating. However, this letter was mailed on March 5. And I checked the mail yesterday. It just got here today, 7 days passed their letter date. What is the best course of actions here? Realistically it probably isn't productive to hire an attorney to deal with a $350 collections charge. I will be calling the collections office today of course. But I wanted to get some advice from the fine people on here. I do not want my credit rating to be damaged. UPDATE: Spoke with the collections agent who handled this, and she hadn't gotten to processing my case yet. So my credit is safe for now. I sent her my credit statements as proof that the charge has been paid back to Hertz. She'll update me later after she forwards this to Hertz. If anyone has advice for how to handle this if for some reason Hertz doesn't back down, I would greatly appreciate it. Is it just a safer option to pay this charge, even if that means double paying them, rather than go through all the legal hassle? Like yes it's about the principle of not letting a company walking all over you with no recourse, but at the end of the day, I don't want to hurt my credit rating or have to deal with thousands in legal fees with no guarantee it'll be covered if Hertz settled.