Driver says rental company left him stranded with flat tire for almost nine hours

BOSTON — When we found Bill Liu Wednesday night, he was stranded on the side of Bennington St. in East Boston with a flat tire on his rented Ford sedan. At that point in the evening, Liu said he had been calling the Avis Budget Group for help for more than six hours.

“I am desperate,” Liu said. “Six hours [and] nobody [has] come here to help me.”

According to Liu, no one from the company ever arrived to fix his flat. Liu said he called Avis at least 18 times between 3:40 p.m. — when he got the flat tire — and 12:30 a.m. when he said an Avis employee told him it was okay to abandon the vehicle.

“I contacted them so many times. Every time they said, ‘OK, technician en route in 20 minutes, in 30 minutes. They will contact you shortly,’” Liu said.

Liu showed a series of automated text messages on his phone. One message from 4:04 p.m. said, “On Point Assistance LLC…ETA 55 minutes.” Another text from a different number at 6:37 p.m. said, “Has a roadside assistance vehicle arrived? Text 1 for YES, 2 for NO.”

Liu said a friend eventually picked him up and drove him back to his Wellesley home around 12:30 a.m.

“Nobody gave me useful information. If Avis told me, ‘You don’t have to wait. You can go home,’ it’s okay. But nobody told me, ‘You can go.’ I can’t leave their car over there,” he said.

An Avis Budget Group spokesperson said the company is looking into the incident.

“Avis Budget Group is looking into the matter, which will take a bit of time. We won’t be able to meet your deadline to provide a statement, as we need to understand what happened internally before we can comment,” the spokesperson said in an email to Boston 25.

Liu’s wife, Jessie Sun, contacted Boston 25 Wednesday night after Avis failed to respond. She said the company didn’t offer an apology or an explanation Thursday when the couple returned the car key to the Waltham location.

“It’s ridiculous, you know?” Sun said. “The [worker] just said, ‘We are [short-staffed].”

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