Generally speaking, travelers like renting from airports – despite all the extra fees – because the major rental car companies just haven’t worried about minor nicks and scrapes on vehicles. Hertz, Avis and National are high volume, and these locations tend to be high revenue as well. So renters tend not to get nickeled and dimed (often for minor damage that they didn’t do to the vehicle).
While it’s always advisable to take photos and videos of vehicles prior to renting, the hassle over minor dings just tends not to come into play with major car rental chains at major airports. This may be about to change.
Hertz is installing more than 100 UVeye inspection portals at its biggest U.S. airport stations, starting with Atlanta, and full deployment is expected by the end of the year.
They’ll have returning vehicles drives through a camera‑and‑sensor tunnel. These devices, dubbed “MRI for vehicles” flag anomalies and creating a digital record. The original use case for the Uveye technology was detecting contraband/explosives.
- This helps Hertz identify problems with cars quicker and keep them in service to rent next.
- But it also logs customer damage, in a way that rental agency staff often don’t.
- And it spots hard to find damage (undercarriage, uneven tire wear, hairline windshield cracks).
| Portion of Car Scanned | Typical faults caught | |
| Undercarriage | frame cracks, leaks, brake/exhaust issues, missing parts | |
| Tires + wheels | tread depth, sidewall bubbles, pressure, rim damage, mismatched sizes | |
| Full body | dents, paint chips, glass cracks, missing trim |
Hertz is heavily focused on costs after a $2.86 billion 2024 loss tied to EV‑fleet depreciation, and this is one way to control costs and potentially seek reimbursement from customers.
Expect this to spread to other rental companies. Enterprise – know for their excruciating vehicle walkarounds (which help upsell insurance in addition to catching vehicle damage) – is piloting similar technology and Avis has discussed plans for trials.
How much radiation will I be immersed in for this adventure?
,@Walter Barry
How do you type while you’re giving your president a reach-around?
Yeah, Hertz can f__k right off. And whoever came up with this honestly needs to be fired.
Rented at Hertz EWR. Scanned in and out. I returned the car with NO DAMAGE. Several days after the return, I received an email claiming rear bumper collision damage, with a screenshot date-stamped 33 hours after the return. Many calls to Hertz went nowhere. I’m a hertz platinum member through my Amex centurion card. Hertz then sent me a follow up email asking me for my CC insurance info, adding that Amex would pay the claim. All BS. I started an Amex investigation, so we’ll see. But beware, this technology is a scam.
@Martin Gross
Happened to my wife as well, except it was 72 hours after her rental. She demanded records of the previous rental before her and subsequent rental after her. Hertz dropped the case.
This is probably to force customers to pay for their expensive rental insurance policy
The last time I rented a car was through Turo. It was a convertible in Hawaii and cost me about half of what all the major rental companies wanted for a similar vehicle. In the future I plan to the same.
Funny how they can use this technology yet the check in process is slow and unnecessarily a waste of time.
Hertz lost all my business when it started having customers arrested when they couldnt find cars in their possession
Hell to the no on this one. Problem is, if other agencies adopt the practice then your hands are tied. What are you going to do, not rent even if you need a vehicle? Best to push hard against this while a signal can be sent.
A copy of their findings from last rental should be mandatory so customer can turn the vehicle down if it had issues. This would also give customer a means of before and after comparison. At Shannon in Ireland there is evidence of cash incentives to Hertz staff finding issues.
Hertz has become the worst. Presidents Circle for +20 years and now I get charges for windshield chips and other miscellaneous items. Clearly the customer focused finance department rules Hertz. They have become dishonest and unethical. Im done with Hertz.
You can thank the Israelis for this amazing piece of nickle-and-dime tech that will surely not be abused by the company seeking to get customers to pay for damage they didn’t cause or for normal wear and tear. Everything they do over there to abuse people is an experiment that they eventually bring over here to use on us. Think about that next time AIPAC endorses a politician.
Yea…returned a car at DEN Alamo yesterday and she was more thorough than my last colonoscopy. This is totally about an upsell on the insurance … Or at the very least …passing on wear and tear repair costs to the consumer so they don’t have to absorb it when it comes time to liquidate the vehicle. Time to look at lesser known brands
I guess this is cheaper than regular maintenance on their vehicles? Explains why Hertz’s prices shot up about 100% – paying for this junk. When Budget is cheaper than you, something’s wrong with your pricing model.
So Hertz bought a bunch of EV’s and took a huge hit in depreciation. So customers needs to pay for it by nickel and diming them to death for routine usage and wear and tear.
Yeah. That makes sense.
When returning my car rental in Guam, the car check-in lane is on an incline. This made my just-filled gas tank read only 7/8 full, resulting in a potential $25 extra fuel convenience fee. I solved this issue by turning the car around to the vehicle check-out lane. The vehicle was now on the same incline but angled downward. This made the fuel indicator read above the full mark. The car rental company said I could leave the vehicle there instead of returning to their check-in lane, and they would waive their $25 extra fuel convenience fee.
I think it’s completely fine. Saw one of these at a dealer and it showed before and after, super transparent.