Hertz is still having rental car customers wrongfully arrested, lawsuit claims
thedrive.com
thedrive.com
Hertz initially gave me a car with a mechanical problem, so they swapped it out before we had even left the rental car lot.
The attendant at the gate assured me they had updated the paperwork.
They hadn’t. I was on the phone with support for hours trying to fix this. They never fixed it and I had to pay for someone else’s rental. They even told me that the car was not marked as stolen.
In addition, when I returned the car, the attendant looked at me pretty funny and said it was good I never got pulled over.
Nothing got done on this until I threatened to bring my company’s travel coordinator into the mix (I work at a large company that spends a lot on Hertz rentals every year).
Still waiting for a refund of the additional fees they charged for my “second rental car”. The way it was handled by Hertz customer service and the location manager was an absolute joke.
I’m not unique here either, after this experience I went on my company’s internal chat and found tons of stories similar to this.
There is either a big problem with the process at Hertz or a severe bug in their system that they aren’t acknowledging.
Or it's simply shitty customer service: "Hertz: where the customer always has criminal intent"
I split time between cities where I don't need a car, and a town where I do. The plan was to rent when in the latter. Hertz was so horrible I wound up buying the one Subaru on the lot (after an interregnal Turo). Going into a dealership blind was literally less painful than dealing with their B.S.
Even companies historically known for good customer service have realized its an unnecessary cost center. eg Amazon used to have great customer service at the click of a "Contact Us" link. Now you can still kinda get customer service but its 18 levels deep to contact someone who can do anything for you and 99.9% of the process of getting from realizing you need service to getting something done is a byzantine automated electronic process clearly designed to make people give up and go away to minimize actual customer service costs.
This omnisearch box stuff is taking some time for me to get used to.
This is the first thing you should have done.
adding any additional checklists , training, or quality control to their existing process would cost money, and so would reduce profits.
it is simple cost benefit analysis.
Hopefully some startups will realize they can attract customers by paying for customer support staff with basic reading comprehension skills (and not incentivising them to close tickets as fast as possible without actually confirming issues are fixed), but I'm not holding my breath.
In another case, UPS destroyed a suitcase and refused to pay their minimum insurance on it, claiming that they don’t pay insurance for boxes and the suitcase was a box. Their customer service refused and could not care less.
These big companies do not care. Customers are a statistic, and the companies are perfectly happy treating customers like shit if the statistics say it doesn’t matter much to their bottom line. It’s also why they just ignore regulations because they get hit with fines that are a pittance compared to their profits.
It’s gonna keep getting worse be like that for everything. Computer systems have turned every employee’s perspective into “not my problem”.
The vc funding model is fundamentally incapable of respecting anything that isn't 'more control for investors and make line go up now'
Hertz’s customers shouldn’t have to be this careful, of course.
Enterprise attempted to file a claim against my insurance for damage they stated happened while it was in my possession. In reality, I had returned the vehicle in pristine condition that morning and there was a minor hail storm that swept through the area that evening which damaged all the vehicles parked in the lot. It was pretty easy to see what had actually happened and I told them I was taking photographs and was prepared to sue them if they filed a fraudulent claim against my insurance. They backed down but I will never rent from that company again.
Weirdly enough, I've never had any problems with Hertz.
I always have do full 360 degrees inspection during pick up and return. Clockwise / counter clockwise, scanning top to bottom. Often narrating with what I'm currently seeing. Also giving often damaged areas a good attention (wheels, bumpers, etc)
I normally rent with Enterprise or Sixt through Lyft with no issue but they did not have any available cars so I tried Hertz. It now doesn’t surprise me Hertz went into bankruptcy.
Someone rented though them, but put in my email address. I get this a lot, so I just ignored it. Then they got in a crash, and I got stuff from Sixt about it. Then a collector email me. That's when I said they always had the wrong email address and they left me alone, but still.
https://www.henricodolfing.com/2019/10/case-study-hertz-acce...
I got charged 2x. Called 3 times and never could get an agent to fully understand my issue even after escalating to managers each time. I got promised a refund once but it never showed up. After over a month of fruitless calls I did a chargeback.
I will never use Hertz again. Criminally incompetent scumbags running that company. I suggest you send a final email for a paper trail and do a chargeback if they continue their incompetence.
Went to rent a car with a company card from Hertz. For some reason the franchise decided they needed to do a credit check on me ("not a score, just a general check") personally, which I "failed" (had only been in the country two years).
"We're going to be unable to rent to you." (I started typing "sorry, sir, we're going to..." when I remembered at no point did they apologize).
Okay I say, figuring out a taxi to the Enterprise dealership, since my patience was already thin. "Just refund my prepaid rental and I'll be on my way."
"Prepaid rentals are not refundable."
"..."
Huh. Take someone's payment. They show up to rent the car. They have a valid credit card and ID. Refuse to rent to them. Refuse to refund them the rental amount?
That got sorted, but like you, not there. Nearly a week later with corporate. Who still acted like they were doing me a favor.
No shenanigans like mentioned, but I never used the big companies since they are more costly for 0 added value to us (and often have huge queues on the airports, not something I want to experience with 2 small kids).
^ This is the final paragraph, but I wish the story went into more detail about it.
The plaintiffs' lawyer alleges that there have been more than 300 cases of wrongfully arrested customers since 2015, and that most of those cases were subject to the bankruptcy proceedings.
So there are likely 150+ people who would ordinarily be able to seek recompense from the company -- but because it went through the bankruptcy process, now they get to wrestle with a shell company that has been crafted to protect Hertz as much as possible from financial liability.
Meanwhile, the company gets to carry on and -- as this lawsuit shows -- commit the same injustices after emerging from bankruptcy.
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/e...
That could also cover cases like 'person X shields themselves with an LLP', or 'bob gave all his money away to Fred before declaring bankruptcy' (go after Fred instead).
It makes the law 'less strict' about exactly who needs to pay, and gives Jurys more room for whatever they think is 'fair'.
I told them I'd already returned it (usually locking the car at the return location terminates the rental). They didn't accept this and proceeded to tell me I should return it and the various consequences of not doing so. I told them again I'd returned it and suggested that their management unit was faulty which still didn't convince them. I then told them that there was a Hertz rental office right there and I'd put someone in the office on the phone who could confirm that I had indeed returned the car. They also rejected this.
At that point I told them that if they wanted their car they could find it where I told them it was and that they should fix their system and there was nothing else I could do for them. She made some vague threat and I got off the phone. I never heard anything about it again and was billed correctly.
Since, then, I've had a paranoia that results in me, if I'm not directly handing off the car to a person, to take a picture of the car. I turn on meta data and the pic has the car, license plate, and enough of the drop off location in the background as scheduled. If there's any problems, I have the picture as backup.
It came into play last year. Avis called me and asked, "Where's our car?" I had changed the drop off location and date via the app. I called loss prevention, they confirmed the change, and I sent them the pic. The agent instantly changed his tune from aggressive to puzzled and quickly dropped any harassment. No idea if the car was ever found, but the pic instantly stopped Avis from bothering me any further.
But most car rentals aren't based upon calendar days, they are generally based upon 24-hour blocks that start and end at the time you drive the car out.
Also, buddy, 20 years is a long time to hang onto a grievance about possibly being charged one extra day... if that's the level of your suffering in life, consider yourself pretty lucky.
I’ve had, especially in Europe, multiple incidents where prior damage is described as “too minor to note” on pickup, but the guy handling returns has a very different opinion.
It's also much easier to preview, zoom, and manipulate a single-frame photo to find points of interest, than comb through a shakycam video for them.
Why not obtain both, a full-length video for personal reference, and a few snapshots for attachments? That's been my M.O. lately.
100% this! Had this happen to me in Germany, a scratch on the bottom of the door suddenly became a “we need to repaint the entire door”. I had been warned about this “business model” before I went too. I’m convinced they scam tourists with this scam all over Germany.
I learned this lesson as an 18 year old idiot first time renter with some friends. Luckily one of my roommates' siblings was a law student, and took on advocating for us for fun and learning. We got back 3x our deposit after it was clearly explained to the management company what liabilities they were creating.
(That being said, at least in my rental agreements, "day" starts 24 hrs after pickup time. I.e. If I picked car up at 09:23am, I'll get charged for 2nd day at 09:24am tomorrow...)
This could be worthy to go into the engineering fallacies about time "the day begins at midnight" is not always true.
The rest of it is always good insurance.
Back home in Switzerland I discovered a charge of $50 on my credit card statement. I called the credit card company and they asked me whether I signed it, and I said, no. This was my first successful chargeback ever.
I learnt to check the car carefully before taking it. By the way, the trunk got wet during rainy weather. I put plastic bags on the trunk floor because my things got wet from below. I told them and it was fine, just the missing hubcap was a problem.
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-po...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
https://www.barneslawllp.com/blog/police-not-required-protec...
“the duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large, and, absent a special relationship between the police and an individual, no specific legal duty exists”
None of this says the actual role is to protect the rich and corporations. They get the same non specific legal duty at all. They could just as easily ignore Hertz.
While I wouldn’t be surprised that the rich get more responsiveness out of the police, I’m sure there are rich people too who also get ignored. Just like when my father had his phone stolen and we found via find my and IP logs the physical address of the thief, police refused to go retrieve it and arrest the thief.
It elevates police above regular citizens.
Contrary to popular perception police have almost no powers beyond that of regular citizens. Citizens can make arrests, police differ in that they can do so even if they are not direct witnesses of a crime. Citizens can enter private property to save lives, and can break laws and regulations to do so as well. Police can only enter private property absent a threat to life or property if given permission either by the owner or courts.
They have qualified immunity, as do several other professions and citizens acting in extraordinary capacities such as good samaritans.
The law and public expectations should be that police are regular citizens with a regular job, bound by the same laws as everyone else.
Not that they are specially-designated protectors.
They only become specially-designated protectors when they take someone into custody—- and depriving someone of their freedom of movement is one of the few things regular citizens cannot realistically do.
Elevating them to have some special extraordinary status is, again, very dangerous. Many powers would be enabled by such a status which do not exist today that could be justified by granting them a “duty” to protect.
Additionally, just from a philosophical perspective doing so would be immoral. Regular citizens, with very few exceptions such as vessel captains, parents, spouses, and employers (in the context of being required to be provide a safe working environment and facilitate rescue of endangered employees) having a “duty” to protect anyone. It is unreasonable, to myself and many others, to levy such a duty on anyone except in extraordinary circumstances.
Airline captains have a duty to protect their passengers. This RIGHTLY grants them near-total, absolute, and unquestionable authority over the conduct of their crew and all souls on board. Giving or forcing a duty to protect to or on police would do the same.
That’s bad.
And because police are NOT extraordinary they don’t have a parental-like duty to protect their children (the public). Nor are we their spouses or employees.
As far as cynicism goes, they don’t protect the interests of large corporations that’s more the purview of politicians. Police are generally just enforcing the laws as written.
The court decision and the cases it references you yourself linked to goes over some of my points.
Many people respond with “but what about when the police…” but the egregious cases of misconduct from which they draw outrage are what are wrong and should be stopped— not an absence of some duty to protect.
Go make some citizens arrests or set yourself up as a detective investigating felony crimes as a private citizen and see what happens to you from the "real" police when they learn what you're doing...
You obviously don’t know anything about the matter because any citizen, anywhere in the entire country, can subdue anyone they observe in the act of committing a felony.
Police are different in that they are empowered to arrest suspects they have not directly observed committing a felony though legal procedures.
What you suggested, forming a vigilante private police force and going around arresting people, is ludicrous and arguing with someone with such an absurd position will be fruitless so I can only suggest you reread my comment and examine the matter using other references more closely.
If a mugger takes my wallet then he's gonna run away with it, and I'm gonna be slowly going home by an alternate route.
When I worked as a clerk in a record store, we had strict orders to never pursue shoplifters or thieves of any stripe. It was the Loss Prevention Officer's job to track that stuff and it was clerks' job to notify law enforcement if we had to, but anyone stealing should be permitted to stroll right out our front doors unchallenged. It was way beyond our pay grade and we did not carry insurance.
One of my coworkers did scuffle with a thief outside, and IIRC, he was commended for his bravery, but it was also an opportunity for Loss Prevention to outline their directives to us about never doing that again.
I'd say protect the interests of capital, which just so happens to be something corporations have a lot of.
Think of it this way: grand larceny isn't dependent on the victim's net worth, so even if stealing $100 from a poor person has 1,000x impact on their life vs. stealing $100,000 from a wealthy person's private business, you can guarantee that the $100,000 will be what the police focus on.
Similarly in these cases, I assume the drivers of the "stolen" cars have the keys, some paperwork, email or other confirmation that they hired a car from Hertz and aren't driving or acting suspiciously. The cars won't have been hotwired, the police haven't been provided with any evidence of it being stolen. Provided the driver is compliant with the police investigation and there is no other cause for suspicion, there is no reason to arrest them at that point.
Why would a report by a company be treated as different to a report by Joe Bloggs? We had a similar scenario in the UK with the Post Office Scandal. The authorities seem to believe companies without question and give them the benefit of the doubt that they wouldn't to a private individual.
The problem is Hertz’ “documentation” is bogus, not that the police pursue stolen cars. (Though, at this point, Hertz reports should be viewed more skeptically by the police.)
There was several issues, one of which was the great lengths they went to imply that your gear was insured, only to find out its not, because insurers considered it "unlawful taking" not theft or fraud, if it wasn't returned. It should be noted that "unlawful taking", despite the name, is not a crime or legal concept, but purely an insurance concept. As a result, somehow, they'd convince the police that this was a civil matter.
Yet somehow, refuse to return (or be accused of refusing to return rather) a vehicle gets you lit up for Grand Theft Auto, which is most certainly a crime.
> Hertz manages tens of millions of rentals each year, which makes these 30 or so stories exceptionally rare, but not any less bizarre. The recent claims don't explain how exactly these mix-ups happen, but some of the renters reported switching vehicles, upgrading cars, or reporting mechanical issues before being approached by the law. One driver returned a vehicle for a flat tire and was given another to drive instead, and when the company did not complete paperwork for the second vehicle, the car was reported stolen and the police got involved. Another driver was alerted to an expired registration on her rental but was ultimately arrested before she could even return the car a few days later. Francis Alexander, an attorney who is representing some of the falsely-accused renters, says that Hertz’s computer system has a “glitch” that has led to the company-wide pattern of reporting cars stolen.
On the one hand, I can imagine that with employees not filling out forms/screens right and then clocking out, the manager comes in the next day and a car is missing, how do they know it wasn't simply stolen? Better call the police. Especially since if you wait two weeks to "be sure" the car doesn't come back, your chances of recovering it presumably plummet.
On the other hand... employees mess up all the time, so it seems like there'd better be a damn solid reason to presume a vehicle stolen rather than just the regular employee mixup (like security cam footage). And the idea that a computer system could automatically alert police of supposedly stolen vehicles without needing a manager's triple-verification seems incredibly irresponsible and shocking.
[1] https://www.thedrive.com/news/27976/people-are-being-arreste...
I don't think the people impacted are renting motorcycles or commercial trucks...
Tow truck drivers likely have similar systems.
Considering the magnitude of property crimes I've seen them refuse to put any effort into whatsoever, I can't imagine they put special care into solving car thefts. Except when they can solve them basically by accident, which is literally the only way I've ever seen them solve a theft.
Preferably by checking surveillance camera footage before calling the cops.
I don't need every rental place to operate like a busy international airport, but they absolutely can track that effectively.
It's physically impossible to take the car without the system knowing who has it. If it has issues and you bring it back, guess what, you can't get the keys for the replacement until you've done the paperwork...
The fact that a company whose literal job is to keep track of cars, can't manage a similar level of rigor, blows my mind and smacks of negligence. If any harm befell these people beyond an hour's hassle and apologies all around, I wish them all success in the courts.
Some rental locations do something fairly similar. At the airports I've rented from, there's sort of a free-for-all on the floor itself, but then as you leave, your plate and paperwork are checked. Can't get over the severe-tire-damage strips until the system OKs you and the operator lowers the spikes. Why some locations lack a double-check, well, I suppose you'd have to ask them.
We meet again, my oldest and dearest enemy, SAP.
People's lives are nothing to corporations.
I thoroughly inspected both the paperwork and the car before leaving the lot. The associate commended me on that. I took photos, noted minor damage, and asked questions. I was able to accept the first car they proposed to me.
I returned the vehicle early and the associate asked me if I'd cleared out all my belongings; I said "I think so" and he asked if there were any firearms in the trunk. I scoffed and then wondered why he'd been so specific.
Did they GPS-track the car to my visit to a sporting goods store? Was he judging solely by my somewhat tactical-looking attire? I don't know, but he did search the vehicle and returned carrying my rosary. That's a formidable weapon I wouldn't want to be separated from.
I want to know when the police agencies will start charging companies for abusing the police services.
Having to engage and arrest people puts officers in harm's way every time they make a stop, and when it is literally because some company thinks it's a profitable move to externalizing onto the police the problem to solve their management failures.
If you're looking to rent a car and want to optimize for peace of mind and customer service over bare minimum cost, then I highly recommend going that route.
A few years ago I had an Enterprise rental car in Hawaii.
Mid-rental, I got a phone call from a concerned Enterprise manager in Pennsylvania. Trying to figure out the status and location of a car of theirs, which their system showed I had rented.
I assured them that I had not visited Pennsylvania nor driven their car from PA to Hawaii; they were able to track down a data entry error by a frazzled agent that had led to this confused state of affairs.
http://www.smashcompany.com/business/why-are-large-companies...
This seems incredibly odd to me. Bankruptcy proceedings would be about monetary compensation, but that feels like it would only be one part of the proceedings. Knowingly making a false report of theft would be a criminal proceeding, an entirely separate realm from bankruptcy courts.
In a civil suit, you are expected to be paid in money damages or maybe injunctions. Those damages are construed to be the same as, say, owing money to a bondholder. Going bankrupt lets you wipe out those obligations; so presumably those pending cases might also get wiped out. But that's also judge-dependent and fact-dependent, which is why they get wrapped up into the bankruptcy proceeding.
[0] This is also why civil torts are almost always strict-liability. If everything required intent, corporations would be above the law.
because of the lack of investigatory powers (e.g. can't seize their documents, wiretap their communications, search their facilities, etc.) civil cases could generally never work against anyone if they had to show intent. If you get a judgement against you for a civil matter that requires intent you have really screwed up.
But the limited investigative powers afforded to civil torts are also a really, really big hurdle to proving intent.
Let me get this straight. Corporations should require a higher bar, because they have no ethical sense?!
We recognize that accidentally hitting a pedestrian with your car is different than deliberately doing the same. Both of these would be considered vehicular manslaughter (assuming the victim died) but the latter could also be a murder charge.
Hertz…Hurts.
You're lucky to get your car class. You're lucky if you don't have to wait around for it, or for it to be cleaned (last rental I had, "hasn't been returned yet and should have". There was no suggestion that they call the renter, and after about 20 minutes of being ignored, I said to call me when it came in. It came in 2 1/2 hours later.)
What's more, this is entirely of their own making, because most of those companies, or franchises or whatever, have decided to sell as much of their rental stock while they can make good profits. Only person it sucks for is you.
Everyone here in the comments is blaming Hertz, but really the problem is that the police are just arresting people willy-nilly without actually confirming the vehicle in question is really stolen. And even if they do stop to question someone, why are they pulling a gun on them, or even taking them back to the station before trying to de-escalate the situation?
This story just reeks of a series of serious societal failures.
Staff on minimum wage, dated systems and processes, overzealous police, insane court system (did you read the comments in that linked article? One poor man had to pay bail at 45k, lost his job, and a bunch of other fines!)
I just couldn't imagine any one of these things happening where I am from in Europe.
In case of a rental car, a call to the local or corporate office of the rental company would also be appropriate, all the more so now that there’s wide publicity about the problem of false or out-of-date theft reports.
if( car_theft->reporting_party == Hertz )
car_theft->credibility = Probable_Clerical_Error;https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEB&search_query=police+...
That's not to say that the arrest and bail processes don't need a lot of work, but I'm not sure there's a better structural alternative. Also, in the case of the individual with high bail, I can't find a reference to that particular case. Do you have one?
A theft report isn’t a warrant. It might give an officer reasonable suspicion to stop the reported vehicle and detain its driver briefly to investigate, but to make an arrest, a higher standard must be met: the officer needs probable cause that the suspect has committed a crime.
If the driver claims to have rented the vehicle, I’d expect an officer at least to try to contact the rental car company to confirm the situation, or to ask his or her dispatcher to do so, especially now that the problem of false reports has become widely known.
Why wouldn't it? The fourth amendment covers _unreasonable_ seizure.
> but to make an arrest, a higher standard must be met: the officer needs probable cause that the suspect has committed a crime.
The vehicle is reported stolen. You are found in possession of it. That's probable cause.
> I’d expect an officer at least to try to contact the rental car company to confirm the situation
How do you propose they do that? Check the paperwork? How do they know it's accurate and not forged? How do they know they've reached the appropriate agency? How do they know if the person they're contacting through the paperwork would have any authority of the reporting of the vehicles status?
You're expecting a lot to be available to an officer that just isn't. The best they could do is directly call the reporting party back and tell them that this person claims it isn't stolen and is a mistake on their end.. and if they say "it's not a mistake, it's definitely stolen?"
The police should do what at that point?
This is why we have courts with evidentiary standards and formal procedures that are defined in law. You cannot expect an officer in the field to be capable of maintaining those same standards.
What do you mean? Rental car companies don’t have 24-hour, toll-free numbers, published on their websites? Police don’t have telephones?
You're expecting a traffic cop to perform a pretty thorough investigation, using just a cellphone and mobile PC, on the side of the road, without adequate facilities to properly identify the party on the other end of the telephone or even properly review the details of the initial report.
If it was your car that was stolen, I'm not sure you'd want someone trying to "Kojak" their way through the case. I wouldn't. Likewise, if I was pulled over in a rental and told it was stolen, I'd accept that the few hours of inconvenience I would face over it would easily be remedied and I would never rent from them again.
The police are functionaries with qualified immunity and no actual duty to protect or serve you. This is established law in the US. You want these people doing the most minimal, simple, procedural thing they can do in any given situation and you want to get yourself into an actual court as quickly as you can.
If the "inventory" (the car) is "lost," then wouldn't that imply that the renter has a car that they shouldn't have? I.E. stolen it? Or at the very least not returned it when they should have?
Update: see this other comment for more examples. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32966606