Category Archives for car rental.
At the beginning of the year there was consternation over the ‘end date’ for Hertz benefits for Capital One’s suite of Venture cards. The Venture X card in particular offers Hertz Presidents Club status, while the Venture offers Five Star.
People keep renting cars from them. So here’s finally some advice on how to do so without ending up in jail as their next victim, or at least one way you may be able to see an early warning signal that this could happen to you.
A Budget Rent a Car customer was pulled over by police, and had their Chrysler Pacifica confiscated. Police said that it was unregistered, and had fake plates. They were left on the side of the road for hours. Budget had no new car to offer at Newark airport where they rented (or anywhere else nearby), so they had to scrounge to come up with another vehicle to make it to their daughter’s college graduation – paying for both. The original rental was one-way, with a return in Canada. They couldn’t replicate that with another agency, so had to drive the car back to the United States taking up extra time, effort and $2,913 in expense. The original Budget rental was for $1,391 They had to change their flights to return the second car where they…
I’m not even sure what advice to give to this reader who redeemed Hertz point for a free rental but found that they charged his company credit card for it anyway.
A week ago I wrote about a Hertz President Circle member charged $277 for returning a rented Tesla without filling it with gas. That’s the second-most Hertz thing ever, after getting arrested because the rental company reported the car you rented stolen.
Being charged exorbitant rates for not filling up the gas on an electric vehicle seems to be a systemic problem for this very broken rental car agency.
A Hertz Presidents Circle customer was charged a fee of $277.39 for not filling up the gas on a Tesla model 3 in Los Angeles. This is an obvious, impossible claim because it’s a Tesla that doesn’t run on gas. But Hertz customer service is so bad, that they kept doubling down saying that there’s ‘nothing they can do’ about the charge.
This is the story of Hertz going biblical on a customer, banning the first born male child of another customer from ever renting again from the agency. Even though the banned renter had never broken any Hertz rule.
Navigating travel is all about making the best use of time. If you can do that, you don’t need to show up two hours before your flight. Most of all you don’t need to waste time.
When he rented the car he “noticed a huge dent.” So he did what many advise and took a photo, and also pointed it out to the rental company staffer. “[H]e noted it.” Also what you’re supposed to do!
Yet a few weeks after the rental, he received an email claiming he damaged the vehicle, showing the dent that he’d documented.
It seemed like Hertz really got this under control, after bringing in Palantir to help track its rental fleet. So it was pretty jarring to me that a reader recently received the scariest letter than anyone who frequents this blog can get. They rented a car from Hertz. And Herts wrote to them to say the car was missing.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
