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> 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.

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.

Is this US story? Sounds pretty damn ridiculous to me as European. But then again I use only rentals for my and my family's vacations, and simply going with cheapest offers in given category worked great for us in dozens of cases.

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).

You did a charge-back, right?

This doesn’t bring me confidence. Just rented from Hertz yesterday and after waiting 30 minutes to even get to the counter I needed to wait another 30 minutes for them to locate the car I was supposed to be renting. They never located the car and swapped to a different car. I’m going to be paranoid that someone else’s rental is going to show up on my tab now. Not a good experience especially after a very long flight. Their process and operations is broken. It should not take more than an hour to rent a car when you’ve already reserved online and already have an account setup with them.

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.

> Sixt

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.

This article describes their efforts at streamlining their systems, which resulted in lawsuit against Accenture:

https://www.henricodolfing.com/2019/10/case-study-hertz-acce...

Awful customer service seems to be industry standard now. Companies have worked out that they can just entirely ignore any problems that aren't fixed by automated/scripted responses without cutting into their profits more than having proper customer support would.

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.

It’s become really frustrating. You used to be able to just talk to people to solve problems. Even Amazon in the 2000s was like this. Nowadays, it’s just nothing but “the computer says no”. I ordered a keyboard from Logitech’s own website, as I’m trying to avoid Amazon these days. The keyboard was marked as ready to ship and awaiting carrier for two to three weeks. I called several times because I was needing the keyboard, and I asked them to just cancel the order. They couldn’t because “it was already shipping”, but that status held for nearly three weeks. I asked if they could just call the shipping warehouse or some actual person who worked in that area to either pull the box back or actually have it shipped. I assumed it had just gotten kicked under a table or something. Logitech acted like I had just asked them to solve Schrodinger’s equation. It was flabbergasting that a product just enters into this purgatory state, and no one could talk to anyone or even verify what it’s actual state was.

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”.

Same inventory purgatory issue happened to me about 6 months ago with Best Buy. Ordered an item for same-day delivery that was in stock at my local store, and they were unable to deliver the item for several weeks even though the item was clearly available. Had to buy the item at another store and then return the Best Buy item when it arrived weeks later.

Diffuse assets like reputation don't appear on the quarterly asset sheet. So the first time such a company has a bad quarter they'll be forced to pawn them off for cents on the dollar in the name of 'efficiency' ortheir funders will have a tantrum and coup the management.

The vc funding model is fundamentally incapable of respecting anything that isn't 'more control for investors and make line go up now'

I think a big part of the problem is consolidation and lack of competition. In an ideal market, if you had a bad experience like these you would stop using that company, and tell your friends to as well. But, in many industries there are at most a handful of companies to choose from, and as long as none of the other big companies have good customer support, they don't have any incentive to have good customer support. And a newcomer doesn't have much chance of competing unless it is extremely well funded, or is more niche.

I make it a rule never to leave the lot in a rented vehicle, from any company, without a printed copy of the rental agreement that matches the vehicle number and license plate, and that shows my name and the return time I expect.

Hertz’s customers shouldn’t have to be this careful, of course.

In addition to verifying the paperwork, I also take a full set of pictures before and after returning rental vehicles as evidence of the condition they are in.

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.

Take a video instead. It's faster and have a better coverage.

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)

A video would work too but I actually prefer taking high resolution stills vs android's smearing/stabilizing video features.

I got double charged for a similar situation in summer of 2019. I had to swap out a car due to a mechanical issue half way through a trip at a different location than where I rented from.

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.

> 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"

> it's simply shitty customer service

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.

Shitty customer service is pretty much the norm these days across all industries in my experience.

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.

Not that this really excuses them, but if you search for "support" (in the product search box) you'll see a link that takes you to their CS flow or you'll see their phone number, depending on your interface.

This omnisearch box stuff is taking some time for me to get used to.

The process uses ancient terminal tech duct taped together and connected to dot matrix printers. This contraption is operated by inexperienced folks that are used to iPads. Failure is all but inevitable, it’s a wounded things even work at all

> 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).

This is the first thing you should have done.

their customers don't find this problem bad enough to stop doing business with them, (including your big company), so Hertz will continue doing what they have been doing.

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.

Much like enterprise software, Hertz's customers when it comes to the enterprise is not he person getting in the car. It takes a bit or some luck/unluck for someone who matters to get hosed and end the contract.

Talk to your travel coordinator. Backlist hertz. Someone is going to get arrested. Someone is going to get killed. They’re still doing it.