A “DLR*” charge on your credit card is a payment processed through Dealerware, a fleet management platform that car dealerships use to handle loaner, courtesy, and rental vehicles. The descriptor appears as “DLR*” followed by the dealership’s name, for example “DLR* Audi West Palm Beach.”1Dealerware Support. Learn What a Customer Sees on Their Bank Statement If you recently had service done, borrowed a loaner, or rented a car from a dealership, that is almost certainly the source. Dealerware runs the transaction, but the dealership sets the rates and fees and is the party you deal with if something looks wrong.
Who Actually Charged You
Look at the text immediately after “DLR*” on your statement. That is the dealership name. Dealerware is a cloud platform headquartered in Austin, Texas that connects roughly 60,000 vehicles at nearly 2,000 dealerships across brands including Audi, Ford, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, and Honda.2Dealerware. About Us It processes payments on behalf of the dealership, not on its own behalf. The dealership decided what to charge, and the dealership is who you contact.
What the Charge Is Usually For
Dealerships can configure a wide range of fees inside Dealerware. If the amount on your statement doesn’t match what you expected, it is often one of these:
- A daily rental or usage rate on the loaner, set per vehicle model. Even a courtesy loaner given during warranty service can carry a daily rate, depending on the dealership’s policy.3Dealerware. De-Risk Your Fleet
- Fuel. Dealerware can automatically calculate consumption during your contract and bill it at return.4Dealerware. Dealerware Home
- Tolls. If the loaner had a transponder, your tolls are tracked and billed at the discounted rate set by the local toll authority rather than the cash rate.5Dealerware Support. Learn About the Rate Your Customers Are Being Charged for Tolls
- Excess mileage, if the program had a mileage cap.6Dealerware Support. Charge a Customer
- Custom fees the dealership added: facility fees, transportation fees, road safety fees, trip fees, or flat charges. One dealership, for example, applies a flat $30 “Gas and Glass” fee to every contract in place of automatic fuel recovery.7Dealerware. Custom Fees Fleet Revenue
A “free” warranty loaner is a common point of confusion. Whether it was actually free depends entirely on the dealership’s policy, not on Dealerware.
Why It Showed Up Days or Weeks After You Returned the Car
Late charges are usually tolls. Dealerware imports toll data from transponder providers, and that data often arrives after you have already returned the vehicle. The system is set to bill tolls exactly 10 days after your contract ends.8Dealerware Support. Learn When a Customer Is Charged for Tolls If more tolls are reported after you have already paid, the system runs a second charge automatically and sends you a text with an updated receipt. You can view the invoice at my.dealerware.com.9Dealerware Support. Learn How Dealerware Automates the Recovery of Customer Tolls
Is It a Hold or an Actual Charge?
When you signed the loaner contract, the dealership may have placed a pre-authorization hold on your card. A hold can be set up as no hold, an estimated charge based on daily rate times contract length plus expected fees, or a flat security deposit.10Dealerware Support. Learn How Credit Card Hold Amounts Are Calculated
At the end of the contract, the hold is applied to whatever you owe and the unused portion is released. If no one formally settles the hold, it drops off on its own: 7 days for Visa and American Express, 30 days for Mastercard, Discover, Diners Club, and JCB.11Dealerware Support. View Customer Payment Status A dealership staffer with accounting access can also release it manually.12Dealerware Support. Release Credit Card Holds If the amount is still showing as “pending” rather than posted, you may be looking at a hold that will clear on its own within those windows.
How To Get It Refunded or Removed
Start with the dealership. Because Dealerware processes payments on the dealership’s behalf, refunds are issued by the dealership. A dealership employee with accounting permissions can apply a credit to your invoice and refund the amount back to your card from inside the Dealerware system.13Dealerware Support. Refund a Customer Call the service department or billing office at the dealership whose name appears after “DLR*” and ask them to pull up your contract and walk through the charges.
If the dealership won’t resolve it, or if the charge is one you never authorized, dispute it with your card issuer. Under the Fair Credit Billing Act, your liability for unauthorized credit card charges is capped at $50. To use your dispute rights, send a written dispute to the billing inquiry address on your statement within 60 days of the statement date on which the charge first appeared. The issuer must acknowledge the dispute within 30 days and resolve it within 90 days. You can withhold payment on the disputed amount while it is investigated, and the issuer cannot report you as delinquent on it.14Federal Trade Commission. Using Credit Cards and Disputing Charges
A different route applies if your complaint is that the service wasn’t as represented, such as being told the loaner would be free when it wasn’t. The Fair Credit Billing Act’s “claims and defenses” provision can cover that situation, but it requires you to have first tried to resolve the issue with the dealership, among other conditions.15California Attorney General. Credit Cards – Dispute a Charge Either way, trying the dealership first is the faster path and preserves your dispute rights if that conversation goes nowhere.
If you don’t recognize the dealership name after “DLR*” at all, and you have no recent service, rental, or loaner history with any dealership, treat the charge as potentially unauthorized and go straight to your card issuer.