Originally published at: If you rent a car from Hertz, watch out! 230 customers say they were falsely arrested for car theft | Boing Boing
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Yeah, this is a civil dispute. Cops pull suspected car thieves out of their vehicles at gunpoint.
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Nothing endears me to a Corporate Brand like the chance of real prison time when using their product.
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This is the tip of the Hertz shitberg. They have been an awful company for a very long time. Bait and switch is another of their very long-used procedures. (“Welcome to Hertz. It looks like you no longer have a reservation. It says here on the screen that it was cancelled. And oh look! All the other rental agencies in this airport are sold out… but we do have an SUV for five times what your original booking was for. It’s your only option. How would you like to pay your ransom?”)
They got way too big, bought a bunch of their competitors, then ran the table. They need to go away. Not just change their name. They need to burn.
(Maybe a little biased here, since I’ve been handled badly by them a number of different times.)
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Back in the 90s, I had the Gold level of Hertz (whatever is was called) where you strolled up, and drove off, pissing off all the people waiting in line. It was nice until the day at a FL airport when no one was getting a car, for whatever reason, and I tried the “but I’m a preferred customer” thing and they basically told me they didn’t care, and there were other car rental companies I could try if I didn’t want to wait 3 hours or more.
Dollar and Budget have had my business since then.
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I have actually accomplished a charge-back against Hertz for half the amount of a rental due to their incompetence of not letting me return a return on time. Thank you Amex.
Many years later, I became “gold” or whatnot at Hertz. New management at my local rental location I guess.
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I was returning a rental car in San Diego. Someone had driven into the return lane, then upon realizing they werent a Hertz customer they backed up and popped their tires on the spikes. Nobody could get into the Hertz return lane and they charged me an extra day for a late turn-in. And i nearly missed my flight.
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It’s not you, it’s them. Hurtz is a horrible company. They invent damage on international rentals, comfortable in the fact that customers won’t spend more to show up in person at the place they just left just to fight the repair fee.
They charged me an extra $800 fee on a family vacation for a rental where I rented the car in one city and returned it in another, even though I provided that information when I requested the quote. It wasn’t in the small print, either. Fraud is their middle name.
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Hence their new motto: “Ouch, that Hertz!”
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Wouldn’t it be easier for everyone involved if Hertz simply called back and said “hey your card didn’t go through, can you fix it?”
It’s clear they are trying to write off as many cars as possible as stolen for the insurance money.
Hell, my Apple card rotates the CVC every few hours. If they try another charge with the one on file it will not work.
Cops hate this bullshit. Courts hate this bullshit. DAs really hate this bullshit. It wastes taxpayer money, and if you do it enough the jurisdictions you do it in will charge you or sue you for it, not to mention the people you screwed with it (who are already suing over it)
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Well they are being sued in bankruptcy court for this practice. So it seems like they are going away, people are just trying to get what they are due out of them.
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Hertz donut.
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And let us not forget the great Dutch artist, Hertz van Rental
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California passed a law recently where if you are late in returning your rental car for more than three days, the company can report it stolen. It used to be 10 days. And cops treat it as a situation as if someone stole it at gunpoint.
Here’s a story where a company rents their cars to people who want to be Uber drivers. This driver was a bit late on his payment, company immediately reported it stolen. Automated license plate readers picked it up. San Ramon cops pull him over, and at gunpoint, he’s a bit slow getting out of the car. Cops sic their hound on him. (Not sure, but this might be paywalled).
Watch the video from the dog handler’s view. At about 1:20 you’ll see that the cops are SO out of control, they can’t even get their dog to release without a metal bar jammed into its jaw.
This is some fcked up sh1t.
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Driving back to Vegas after a 4 corners camping trip, I was pulled over by the Highway Patrol in the middle of the night on a lonely highway. Kinda frightening. What did I do? Is this real highway patrol?
Asked for my license/rental agreement. Went back to check. Said he pulled me over because the car was registered as compact but is actually a mid-size or something like that. Jeez…
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Uh huh. I’m sure cops are always on the lookout for vaguely non-compliant vehicle registrations.
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Sounds like a total fishing trip, ugh.
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Actually though, why are the police involved? Wouldn’t the car company need to seek civil damages in the normal way? If they over bill me the police aren’t going to go arrest the president of Hertz, they’d tell me to take it to court, right?
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