Hertz Charged Member $277 for Not Filling Gas Tank on a Tesla, Won't Remove Fees
viewfromthewing.com
viewfromthewing.com
"Update May 9, 12:45 p.m. ET: After this story was published, Hertz informed The Drive that its Customer Care team would be "reaching out to Mr. Lee to apologize and will refund this erroneous charge.""
https://www.thedrive.com/news/hertz-is-charging-tesla-model-...
If a company doesn't offer a reason why it happened and how they are going to change policies, it's not a real resolution.
Car rental agencies are King's when it comes to BS fees and practices.
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1140998674/hertz-false-accusa...
https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/Dinged-for-normal-wear...
The problem here was the company not having a reasonable way for the customer to reach someone with both common sense and the authority to reverse the charges.
At a certain point, if they muck about with chargebacks too much, they are going to be in trouble with Visa themselves. And I don't think any business fears being on anyone's bad side worse than Visa.
I'm a host, and one of our guests clearly encountered a bug in the app that caused their reservation to get cancelled. We had a clear paper trail with screenshots.
After hours of denying anything was wrong, Airbnb's offshore support finally admitted that it was probably a bug. But then they admitted that they had no way of contacting Airbnb to report a problem - all they were authorized to do was answer customer questions and come up with explanations. But they couldn't do anything the app didn't let them do.
Airbnb provides no email addresses, no contacts, or even any mailing address for complaints.
Somewhere, there's a lazy executive rewarding himself with stock options for creating a "perfect" experience - a box from which no customers' or employees' screams can escape.
Ritz Carlton famously provides each employee $2,000 in discretionary spending to make things right for a guest without bureaucracy. Hire good people, trust good people, empower good people.
Does anyone know of a ‘good’ car hire company that isn’t out to take advantage of the customer every way they can?
I argued a hospital charged my wife too much for a 5 min procedure. ($2900 bill)
after many back and forths, they lowered it to 2800, then to 2000, then 1800, then 1400, then just wiped it all away.
Just bureaucratic red tape all over the place.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38058979
https://www.thedrive.com/news/hertz-is-charging-tesla-model-...
How fucking stupid is their customer service team?
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1140998674/hertz-false-accusa...
Yet Hertz tried to basically have all these cases dropped when they went through bankruptcy. Never change, corporate America.
However in my case if they pulled this shit, it would end up as a chargeback because it is definitely outside of the terms of their hire which I have carefully archived and screenshot should any crap like this happen.
There are a handful of Advantage rental car locations, and Fox rental cars is big outside the US.
Other than "yeah, Hertz has really lost the plot" and (with a nod to lobste.rs) "Hacker News is not customer support for your car rental company", there doesn't seem that much to discuss here?
(And for the record: Sixt [a major-ish car rental company] in .eu requires EVs to be returned with at least 80% charge these days, and will have an add-on fee otherwise [so: take a picture of the dashboard upon return!]. Not, like US$277, but a fee nonetheless)
> This customer actually returned the car with a 96% charge, the same as they’d picked it up at.
> And there is no fuel tank to fill on a Tesla EV. Prepaid fuel is based on the capacity of the gas tank being filled, and that amount here should be zero.
This is amateur-hour, highschool newspaper levels of journalism going on in this article.
Is the fee ridiculous? Yes. Did the customer agree to return the vehicle at a specified "fill" (read: charge) level? Yes. Did the customer not return the vehicle as agreed? Yes.
It doesn't matter that the vehicle physically doesn't have a gas tank - they are charging a fee because they now have the burden of charging the vehicle. Ridiculous fee, agreed, but so are all of the extra fees a rental company tries to charge. News at 11...
It reads like someone never rented a vehicle before, and the article author perhaps was born yesterday..
> Can I Return My EV Rental With a Low Battery?
> Yes, you can. However, if you return your EV at a charge level below what it was at pick-up, we will change you a simple $35 Recharge Fee. A low EV battery can lead to delays and add to our turnaround times for other customers.
https://www.hertz.com/us/en/blog/electric-vehicles/do-i-need...
The story here is really that Hertz customer service is absolutely awful.
(and while 96% isn’t 98% this accuracy does represent a notable shift from gas cars. Usually if you’re within the same needle mark (e.g. 7/8, 6/8) the company doesn’t make you pay. Requiring 98% feels like a scam: they have charging facilities onsite to give the car to you at that level but you’d need to find your own charger within a couple of miles of dropoff to make sure you’re at the right level. They’re well within their rights to demand it of course but customers should be aware)
The publicity from the articles about this situation is the only reason why Hertz corrected the overcharge.
The issue was resolved before it even made its way to HN...
> Update May 9, 12:45 p.m. ET: After this story was published, Hertz informed The Drive that its Customer Care team would be "reaching out to Mr. Lee to apologize and will refund this erroneous charge."
They doubled down that the refueling “service was provided.” Follow up phone calls couldn’t get Hertz to reverse these charges.
The driver is disputing the charge with his credit card company, however that is likely to get his descendants placed on the company’s No Rent list.
> This customer actually returned the car with a 96% charge, the same as they’d picked it up at.
This is a completely distinct person and rental incident from the customer being charged the $277 fee, as is clearly indicated by the change in first-person vs third-person.
I assume the author added their 98% anecdote just to further the point that Hertz's customer charging policies are especially nonsensical, because they can require customers charging the car back to a level which is harmful to the battery health long-term.
If I charged the car and lost 2% while driving to return it, I also would be furious at being hit with the fee.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/hertz-is-charging-tesla-model-...
> This customer actually returned the car with a 96% charge, the same as they’d picked it up at.
96% is not 98%. Agreed the fee is ridiculous, and it does appear it should have been a max of $35, and the update states Hertz corrected the overcharge.
Somehow the author is confused and thinks these charge levels are equal when they are clearly not.
Not only that, that unrealistically strict standard is 10x stricter than gas cars.
on gas gauges the resolution is like 10%ish chunks that aren’t even equal width. My cars top bar lasts about 50% longer than the rest and no I don’t top up.
This is Hertz's recharging policy: "You can return your EV at any charge level and we’ll recharge it for $35—or just $25 for Gold Plus Rewards Members. Or, return it at the same level as pick-up and pay $0."
They got the car at 98%, and returned it at 96%, so... no, that's not at all what this is. I don't understand why you assumed it was. Maybe they would charge him the $35 for returning it 2% down, but that's not what happened here.
Obviously the fair cost should be amp hours needed to charge the battery times cost of electricity where the vehicle is charged.
The price should be simply accounted for in the rental price.
In the EV case it takes a significant amount of time to charge the vehicle (nobody wants to do that before taking a flight) and it is more expensive for the user in a public charging station than it would for a rental company that invested for its own chargers within their parking spots. Also the time used to charge the EV can be mutualized with the time it is eventually checked and cleaned. Very rarely is a car returned and rented within minutes.
I guess in an ideal setup you would get a car with at least 60% of charge and when you return it the rental company expect the same. This leave you time to plan your trips and charge so you don't have to look for a crappy place to do a last charge with nothing else to do just before returning it.
> This customer actually returned the car with a 96% charge, the same as they’d picked it up at.
But it's also true the car's gas tank was full when he returned it.
He could have played that game, too—"yes, I filled the gas tank completely". What are they going to say? If they say "no you didn't", he could ask them to prove it. If they claim he couldn't have because there is no gas tank, then he could ask what he should have done, that they were charging him to not do?