car rental

Jun 01 2021

When he returned the car he got an emailed receipt showing he was charged “the full dollar amount of the rental.” When he called customer service he faced “several long holds” but was finally told he was charged because he “did not select the right vehicle type at SFO.”

In other words, he used his point for a standard vehicle. Hertz didn’t have that car, so the points couldn’t be used. Hertz did him a favor by renting him anything at all, but demanded cash for that rental. Only they never told the customer this was happening and that his award reservation wasn’t valid.

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Mar 11 2021

A Michigan man spent 5 years in jail for murder when all it would have taken to prove his innocence was a receipt from Hertz.

After numerous subpoenas and court orders, Hertz was ordered to appear in person and finally produced the receipt. The man’s conviction was overturned and he’s now free.

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Feb 07 2021

Hertz is in bankruptcy yet last year their stock was a favorite of Redditors on the Robinhood app. They’ve been sending customers to jail when they fail to mark rental agreements as extended, or fail to mark a car back into inventory and rent it again.

Now they’ve sent out a message seemingly at least as customer-friendly as everyone else: that they were pausing points expiration through December 31, 2021. But their fingers were crossed.

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Jan 16 2021

Hertz is accused of falsely reporting cars stolen on a number of customers – and the customers wind up in jail. This appears to have been going on for a couple of years at least. Hertz has been sued for the practice. And yet it seems to continue.

The stories have a common thread involving switching out of the originally-assigned vehicle, or extending a rental, where Hertz employees didn’t properly complete the paperwork for the transaction.

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May 19 2020

At the end of April Hertz was looking at a large payment on $17 billion in debt. Their loans are backed by their fleet of vehicles, but the plummeting value of used cars meant Hertz had to make up the difference in cash. Lenders didn’t want to force them into bankruptcy, though, believing debt would have a better shot getting paid if the rental company continued as a going concern.

Hertz has a deadline of May 22 to develop a financing plan – but the lack of financing is an own goal, since their CEO walked away from up to half a billion in cash back in March.

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