Category Archives for car rental.
A customer who rented a car from Budget detailed how their vehicle broke down two and a half hours outside of Denver. There was no Uber or public transit. Budget Rent a Car sent a tow truck for the vehicle, but they weren’t allowed to ride in it. Instead two senior citizens “fighting altitude sickness added to pre existing respiratory challenges” were left stranded in the middle of nowhere to fend for themselves.
The reason Hertz gives for refusing to drop charges against any of the victims, even after acknowledging filing false police reports that have led to customer arrests, is insane. According to Hertz they can’t tell police they made a mistake or else police won’t believe them in the future.
At Budget Rent a Car in Detroit at least some rentals come with loaded firearms. Michigan is a shall issue state for gun licenses, and violent crime in Detroit is higher even than in Chicago, so a renter might be forgiven for thinking this was just a new package available for on-airport rentals.
A passenger from Florida (naturally) found a gun in their assigned vehicle at the Detroit airport Budget location.
Turo renters: Tesla owners can track their vehicle via app, and the car has a camera. The camera showed the owner that something wasn’t right, so he tracked it via app to… a warehouse.
The Tesla was up “on jacks and missing its front bumper.” The owner thought the man was trying to steal parts, but it turns out the rented Tesla was being used as a test vehicle for fitting an aftermarket bumper. The man who rented the car sells Tesla (and other car) parts online.
Hertz has become known for broken systems that don’t track their cars properly. It seems that just because a vehicle is returned, and gets re-rented, that doesn’t mean Hertz knows it ever came back. And though they claim otherwise, they seem to have a hair trigger for reporting cars stolen (or at least threatening customers that they will).
The rental giant argues that this is rare (a small percentage of total rentals) and a thing of the past (they’ve made process improvements). But it seems to keep happening. And though it may represent a small portion of transactions, readers of this blog keep reporting that it happens to them.
Hertz’s CEO admits mistakes and promises false arrests of customers won’t happen again yet it does seem to keep happening. It always seems, though, like ‘something that happens to other people’ rather than something we’d worry about. And Hertz often shows up being the cheapest!
Except it doesn’t just happen to other people, it seems, it happens to readers of this blog. And keeps happening to readers of this blog. At least one commenter on a post this week shares tht it just happened to them.
Hertz’s CEO finally admits they’ve been falsely reporting cars stolen, and getting customers sent to jail. But, they argue, it doesn’t happen that often. And, like a Hertz attorney argued in court back in January, it doesn’t happen anymore because of the so-called safeguards they’ve put in place.
Except, of course, it keeps happening.
There’s a class action lawsuit, with numerous reports of customers who were arrested for theft of vehicles they’d rented, and who wound up in jail while trying to clear matters up. I’ve even been contacted by readers trying to deal with the bureaucracy of Hertz over these issues.
Appearing on CNBC, Hertz’s new CEO acknowledges it happened, says it’s rare, and that it won’t happen again.
Federal prosecutors describe a “nationwide scheme that used stolen identities to fool ride-hailing and delivery service companies into hiring unqualified drivers.”
It’s become pretty clear that poor Hertz recordkeeping has been sending customers to jail for no reason. They report cars stolen that have been returned.
Usually, at least, the damage is limited to customers who have chosen to rent from Hertz.
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 »
