Hertz Charging a Tesla Renter for Gas Was Not an Isolated Incident
thedrive.com
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_Hertz_ messed up the rental dates on their end of the transaction (by multiple days, even) and would not allow me to modify or cancel the rental. I ended up disputing the charge with Expedia via an AmEx chargeback and lost.
AmEx owns 10% of Expedia.
The reason car rentals provide the convenience of charging your credit card without the immediate authority of you reviewing the charges is a feature of credit cards over cash, and a benefit to consumers. The other feature is that you can dispute those said charges if the merchant is also charging you for services/goods you never received (e.g., gas for an EV).
A business can sue a consumer for not paying.
They are two sides of the same coin.
Most complaints are people who don't pay with CC are paying a premium.
Huh? You mean in the example scenario if I charge $500 for a car rental and get 2% cashback from my CC. I find out the car rental is charging me an extra $100 for gas that I never used. I'd complain because I'd lose out on the 2% * $100 difference for the $100 that my CC company gave me back as a result of the dispute charge?
I was responding to this.
I also don't understand after re-reading where the "extra ~3%" comes from. If I go to the store and spend $100 on my CC, I'll get $2 cashback. I can pay the $100 off immediately with no interest for a savings of 2%. How are they getting 3% extra from me?
I know I get at least 2% back on all purchases and sometimes more depending on the card and category.
This is also why I brought up that usually I hear people who pay in cash get overcharged - they pay the full $100.
(leaving out how credit card fees require merchants to increase prices leading to even more expenses for cash buyers)
FYI - For people who work in payments, they know it's not as simple as this, but the point is that there is a delta between the two, and it does help pay for both of the convenience AND the ability to dispute.
"pays it" is relative. The merchant is generally charging 3~6% more than they would otherwise if they didn't use a CC. Said differently, assuming all other things equal, buying the same good for the same price from two identical stores, one who only accepts CCs and one who accepts cash, the one who accepts cash will profit more. Therefore they can, in theory, charge less for their good.
> being cheaper for the CC holder due to cashback
"cheaper" how? The spread is effectively paid for by the merchant (their processing fee is 99% of the time higher than the cashback bonus a consumer earns) which in turn goes to vendors (like credit card providers, payment processors, etc) who then allocate costs against things like customer service for charge disputes.
EDIT: The spread is the original ~3% I'm referring to, which would be an average 1.5% cashback against a 4.5% payment processing charge for a delta of 3%. In many cases this is lower (or null) but you get the point.
The only way I see the extra 3% for cardholders is because they are "forced" to shop in card-accepting establishments which will have higher costs to cover fees while the cash user can choose the cheaper cash vendor.
At a point in time basis, you are correct.
> The only way I see the extra 3% for cardholders is because they are "forced" to shop in card-accepting establishments which will have higher costs to cover fees while the cash user can choose the cheaper cash vendor.
Correct. And my point is that this 3% tax gives you the feature to dispute the charge.
It's a belief held by people who don't actually try to use these systems. Major credit card companies aren't in the business of consumer protection.
Many times I've tried to do chargebacks, only to be denied by the card issuer with some unsubstantiated claim by the vendor that they held up their end of the transaction. No recourse short of spending four or five figures on a lawyer and a lawsuit. As a result, if they cheat you out of less than $5k, they win.
It could really fuck a company's day up if several hundred to thousand people across the world decides to seek redress from a small claims court on the same day.
That said, just because there’s an arbitration clause in the contract doesn’t mean you’re absolutely stuck. You can hire a lawyer and try to get out of it. They’re trying to keep you from doing something like that.
At this point fixing it requires congressional action.
See https://arbitrationinformation.org/docs/problems/ and https://arbitrationinformation.org/docs/solutions/ for my complete writeup.
Now the company has to pay one of their lawyers ($$$) to show up, or the claim is a default judgement, which they have to pay.
So the lawyer shows up and says blah blah mandatory binding arbitration. The judge can interrupt and say "don't care, judgement against, pay the man". Or the opposite, in which case at least you cost them more than they cost you.
Which is why they probably take the default judgement and pay you.
So multiply that across even a few hundred times...
Still takes time, and arbitration isn't all that scary, ao forcing them to arbitrate can also be a costly endeavor for them.
Bear in mind that motions and discovery are highly frowned upon in Small Claims courts that I've litigated in. And 95% of the time the court will rule in favor of the bigger party if they bring a lawyer, just out of general hatred of courts for unrepresented litigants.
Did you really? Monetarily you did of course. How much time does it cost you though? It might cost the company a couple hours.
JAMS just updated their "minimum standards" for consumer arbitration as of May 1, 2024, and they now seem to allow for transfer to small claims court.[2]
[1] https://adr.org/sites/default/files/Consumer_Rules_Web_0.pdf
Not only they could not tell me in advance how much it was going to cost, but also everything in the final invoice was abbreviated and laid out in a nonsensical way. I tried summing the values in every possible way, and it never got to the total they charged.
I'd be absolutely pissed if it was my money.
Funnily enough, rented from the same company in Germany, and the experience was completely different. Clear value, fees, easy to understand invoice.
Fortunately for us it’s just a credit card charge that’s being disputed. For friends of ours they reported the car stolen and filed a police report.
This doesn’t seem like how a legitimate business operates, but more like a syndicate. While I understand individual locations are franchises, they have eerily similar catastrophic failures that seem to regularly occur.
Maybe still a win in the end because the incorrect charge was removed, but I get really uncomfortable with how casually people recommend chargebacks on this forum. They're not intended to get you out of charges that the other party can prove you did agree to pay.
> Ultimately they sent me a bill for the cost of the rental minus the gas and threatened to take me to collections if I didn't pay it.
This is the always-necessary reminder that credit card chargebacks do not in fact relieve you of the duty to pay for services that you did receive. A chargeback may be necessary to get the merchant's attention, but you do need to be careful to actually pay them the correct amount in the end.
There is no way to resolve this on the phone, so I filled out their online form to dispute the charge.
After not hearing from Hertz for 2 days, I disputed the charge with my credit card. The credit card instantly refunded the entire cost of the rental.
Within 12 hours of the refund, I got an email from Hertz saying they were sorry about the accidental charge and that they'd give me a free one day rental.
Ultimately they sent me a bill for the cost of the rental minus the gas and threatened to take me to collections if I didn't pay it.
I never got my free rental.
It's just an admin hassle each time.
[0] One big one is that credit cards that offer insurance for rental cars won't cover services like these.
No that’s the worst case scenario.
> you have to navigate high pressure tactics on buying upgrades, fuel, insurance, etc.
No you don’t. In the US, the major reputable companies allow you to register your DL and insurance, pick your default fuel preference. 20 minutes prior the reservation you get a list of available cars and proceed directly to the car. You then scan a QR code at the exit, maybe you show your DL to a guy at the gate, who is in no position to sell anything. This is for almost all airport locations and many corporate locations.
Even when you see an agent.. High pressure tactics? That’s impossible, they have no leverage. It’s not like buying a hot new car or something. The insurance is usually worthless to you so you aren’t losing anything by walking away. Just say no? A simple no always works. Carry a credit card with primary rental insurance. I have had a sales person try to give some bullshit song and dance even when I politely tell them I have primary insurance on my card. It’s a simple “no, not interested.” What are they going to do?
If they charged for tolls that can only mean they got billed by tolling agency, often by plate reader. I mean it kind of sucks but if your ezpass doesn’t work not sure how that makes the rental company responsible.
https://www.tollsbymailny.com/vector/videotolls/paytollnow/s...
True, although you usually have a 48 hour window to post register. Not saying this is the most consumer friendly setup, but the fees are avoidable.
> Further, not everyone in a rental (often in a strange place) knows they will use a toll road
When I end up in a such a state I reflexively register (actually use a checklist, can take care of this in the hotel room in the evening for instance) regardless of whether I plan to use a toll road or not. There’s no guesswork to this other than knowing what states I’ll be in.
Always make sure the rental car either does not have a transponder or that it is closed in its shielded box.
If you’re dealing with an agent always make sure every add on service is declined.
> Google & Apple Pay as a cashless alternative for people without an EZ Pass.
But how would that work with open road tolling?
> But how would that work with open road tolling?
For one, both companies also operate GPS services so perhaps it could all be integrated. Or just have one or two lanes available for people to slow down and tap to pay (still benefit from no staffing the toll booth). Or you could have a pull-off area right after the tollbooth with QR codes to pay by PayPal, Venmo, etc.
Ah the weak HN trope to anyone giving sound advice when all you care about is “winning” an argument.
This also veered the topic into ad hominem completely unnecessarily.
> doubtful that lots of people spend precious travel time (especially if with family/kids)
Sheesh. That website takes literally less than a minute to complete for a link that I found in less than a 10 second search. I have family/kids, so no, try again.
When I arrive at the airport and I see long lines of families waiting for up to an hour at the Thrifty/Dollar/Fox counter so that maybe they could save a few bucks (often not) while I am walking directly to the lot from a flight to pick up the car - perhaps I may be an outlier, but I certainly know something about saving “precious” time and false economies.
30 seconds to fill out a web form is a complete nothingburger.
> Very doubtful that many people have checklists for this purpose.
I have a checklist for traveling. This is one item. Do you not understand the “list” part, it’s not a whole list just for tolls. Ironically, before I had a family I wouldn’t often bother. Having a family/kids makes lists a tremendous stress reliever.
> still benefit from no staffing the toll booth
> pull-off area right after the tollbooth
Open road (overhead) tolling has no toll booths. Some states are entirely toll booth free outside of bridges and others are following. The cost savings of eliminating toll booth infrastructure entirely is substantial because it’s not just the booths, it greatly simplifies hundreds of interchanges.
As far as the rest, I wasn't trying to even make an argument, let alone win it. Just an observation that few people register their rental cars with out-of-state toll web sites. You sound like a very organized person, kudos, many people would like to run their lives as efficiently as you do. I certainly can't get from this page https://www.paturnpike.com/e-zpass/rental-vehicles to a completed, registered account in 30 seconds - it often takes me that long just to find my wallet and pull out the necessary credit card, let alone type it in.
There’s no booth. There’s no place for a booth.
> There's a physical structure which exists for the purpose of supporting the infrastructure and electronics necessary
No, not really. In addition to the overhead gantry there’s a small off road utility cabinet and some solar panels. Most of the mainline NYS thruway for instance now has no toll booths. The tolling system is literally just a stantion/gantry like those holding up the road signs over the main highway. There’s no slowing down, and if you’re not paying attention you might not even notice it. There is no infrastructure for anyone to pull over or slow down, there are no dedicated access lanes. In some cases the toll points are not proximal to any interchanges. All of that has been permanently removed. Hence “open road tolling”.
As far as a pull off area? There are rest stops (some manned) and cell phone lots.
You realize once you put in that one “special” lane you’ve created a massive chokepoint (This hybrid has in fact been the status quo for years in many areas, getting away from it is the point)? It’s all or nothing really.
https://www.stantec.com/en/projects/united-states-projects/n...
I’ll admit the PA site is relatively unfriendly steaming pile. The NY one is much faster. Some states have a 14 day registration period (like IL), which should be the norm IMHO.
Finally, a tag is less and less onerous. Virtually every toll state on the east accepts Ezpass. You don’t need a Sunpass or whatever anymore.
Other thing many don’t do but should. Spend a minute or two making a walk around video with detail shots for damage. This is a small inconvenience over trusting the last check in guy. I prefer not having to get insurance involved if I can avoid it. It’s a $40000 piece of equipment I just took possession of (I do think the idea that this fundamentally can be an absolutely hassle free experience is some first world thinking - this is not a defense of the sliminess of the business, but still, let’s be reasonable, it’s too easy to just get the keys to a newish car. That said, I support existing and some further state level consumer protections).
Sounds like a plug-in hybrid might be a great car for you. I have one and it works pretty well.
front desk: “want to add fuel protection”
me: “no”
front desk: “Okay, sign rental agreement and sign here to indicate you declined protection. Here’s your keys. “
I would say a majority of the time it’s just a script they are told to recite.
Dealerships on the other hand is a whole new beast. I wish very much that dealerships in the US go away.
Unnecessary middlemen used to extract as much profit with no added value.
Car sells for MSRP, but you want MSRP + $2000 in “market adjustment fee” and “document fees”
Fuck off.
The only thing I'm relatively cautious with is suspiciously high deposits/credit authorizations.
When I run the numbers, it would literally take years for the amount I spend renting to surpass the amount I'd spend on just the sales tax or insurance for a hypothetical viable car. It turns out that owning a car is like owning a McMansion, such that you end up inflating your lifestyle to fill the space or depend on the car.
I get that some people just don't have the time (or executive function?) to deal with refilling before return on some trips, or they're so rich that they just don't care, but otherwise I just do not get why anyone would accept this option.
(Just take 10 minutes and return the car full, and don't worry about any of this)
The one that has bitten me a few times is the minimum miles fee. Rent a car at the airport because it’s cheaper than an Uber. Drive to a friends house and the vehicle never is used until return. Since it is bellow some threshold, 30 miles or so, you get charged a $15-25 fee unless you had shown a receipt for gas.
I got bit by the opposite where one of my rentals had a maximum miles limit. I use a corporate code that usually includes unlimited mileage but this location didn't offer that. They had a limit of 300km unless you paid extra and since I skip the counter and go directly to the garage to pick a car, I wasn't aware of that. It was only when they emailed me the receipt later that I saw the extra charges.
I've had a lot of rental car experiences. Usually it's fine. Taking photos sounds like a good idea.
I called customer service and they quickly removed it, but it left a bad taste in my mouth.
To be clear, there was rain so maybe a smudge of dirt near pedals, but car was kept clean throughout.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikakelton/2019/05/02/hertz-ma...
Of course 10 years later there’s a class action lawsuit where everyone gets a check for $23 in the mail, but, at that point what’s the point?
They exist for a reason.
If enough people use them, it'll end up costing the company far more than a class action, and you'll get more back too because Lawyers won't suck up 50% of the payment.
Fraud is you giving them your money under false pretenses. They falsely claim a service has been provided to you, and are charging you for it, per the agreement that you've entered.
Theft is trivial to prove and cops take you straight to jail for it. Fraud is a lot harder, because by the time it gets to the courts, they need to dig through the weeds and determine if it is deception, or just a disagreement about a contract.
(It's, uh, also called theft of services when you do it against a service provider. You may want to get in touch with your local legislative body about the unfair nature of this sort of asymmetry, but you'll be wasting your breath.)
Last year they tried to charge me for a tiny chip in the window that I hadn’t seen before. They tried to force me to fill out a form admitting fault for insurance but refused. Nothing came of it and have rented since no problem.
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1140998674/hertz-false-accusa...
Five weeks later I returned the car and flew back home to Australia. Found letters that had been posted saying that the car hadn't been returned and was considered stolen.
They'd rented a car for a fixed period, and were arrested and jailed for driving a stolen vehicle. They've shown police the lease agreement from Hertz showing they were authorised to drive the vehicle but police either couldn't or wouldn't verify the information with Hertz.
If being arrested and jailed for this wasn't bad enough, in some cases Hertz managers were slow to respond to police requests for information - so people have sat in jail for extended periods.
For instance, if I make $500k today, the company should be obligated to pay me this amount every year plus additional compounding interest on that amount in order to account for inflation and expected salary growth over the remainder of my working life.
The company should be forced to put this money aside in a trust immediately so I do not have to worry about the company going bankrupt. Company resources and equity ought to be garnished, if necessary, in order to accomplish this.
It's frustrating and bizarre to me that people are allowed to ruin others' lives and then they do not have to bear the full consequences of their actions. Surely, if one is found to have ruined someone's life, the least our justice system can do is obligate them to repay in full?
I think that, in theory, compensating people for life-ruining is obviously the right thing to do. The issue is that it relies on people to be perfect and never try to abuse the system, and if we can assume that, then we can just get rid of law enforcement and become a communist utopia.
What is practical is making these companies far more liable than they currently are, though. It is unacceptable that they have no penalties for destroying someone's future.
While it might create an incentive, it’s a very high risk activity.
It also creates the right incentives for the company that it should:
A) not create policies that can result in ‘ruining a consumer’s life’ or at least do so knowing that it is a high risk, high cost activity.
B) know that if they choose to create such policies, they need to be adequately monitored for fraud and false positives.
That seems like a positive outcome.
It sounds good to make all these measures to make sure the scummiest people can't do their scams but most of the time you end up punishing people who need the protection the most by locking them out of the protection for not being able to legally navigate all the box checking.
Punish scammers harshly when caught, make it some exponential number of any profit gained, and open them up to audits in the past to figure out that exponential number. Opening it up to criminal liability and elimination of certain settlements without admitting guilt seem like it might help too.
Unlike the current system which relies on companies to be perfect and never try to abuse the system.
Of course, companies abusing the system happens far, far more often and at far, far larger scales than people abusing the system.
Thankfully I had no interactions with the police while driving that car.
You're dealing with broken automated systems and an out-sourced customer support agent.
Wait until LLMs arrive on the scene and further exacerbate the problem.
I really think government needs to enact laws that make companies compensate people for their time when they have to deal with bureaucratic nightmares like this. Right now companies just get to externalize the costs of their fucks ups onto everyone else.
One obvious example: OneTrust cookie banners. They're nearly all misconfigured to have the "Reject Cookies" button greyed out or missing (or a link to a little minigame) and the "Accept Cookies" button prominent. Are all companies simply so incompetent? Is OneTrust (easy; no, it's correct on their own website). Or are they deliberately and maliciously breaking the law and when challenged will just do the wide-eyed "oh gosh, I'm such a silly-billy clutz with these things tee-hee"
> The term ‘Hanlon’s Razor’ and its accompanying phrase originally came from an individual named Robert. J. Hanlon from Scranton, Pennsylvania as a submission for a book of jokes and aphorisms, published in 1980 by Arthur Bloch.
https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/philosophy/hanlon...
Hopefully we can collectively begin to put it to rest.
What they found, was that every (100%) error in price went to the favor of the company. Not one single error was in favor of the customer.
Often, the stores were good about correcting the error, but the cashier could never do it. They always had to go to the service counter.
Yes, customers that notice it can have it corrected to the accurate, lower price. But the problem is that whenever there were "whoopsies", it's hard to just believe it was just a bug or well-intentioned mistake when there were never mistakes that would have resulted in a lower price.
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/regulations/massachusetts/202-CM...
If you walk into Walmart and intentionally walk out with a banana without paying, you can't get out of prosecution by claiming that you didn't know it was illegal to do that.
If, on the other hand, you accidentally neglect to scan the banana at the self checkout then it is a valid defense to say that you thought you'd already scanned it in and you must have gotten confused by all the other items you were handling.
Theft requires intent.
> If you walk into Walmart and intentionally walk out with a banana without paying, you can't get out of prosecution by claiming that you didn't know it was illegal to do that.
> If, on the other hand, you accidentally neglect to scan the banana at the self checkout then it is a valid defense to say that you thought you'd already scanned it in and you must have gotten confused by all the other items you were handling.
> Theft requires intent.
No one will care what you say when you will get caught. https://www.good.is/lawyer-explains-the-risk-of-using-self-c...
Call me old fashioned, but I'm not going to take legal advice from TikTok personalities, especially when the claim sounds like one of those scarebait articles newspapers print on a bad news day.
The only way out is to reverse the situation - companies should have even less leniency. You can't expect a single person to know the specifics of every law or to pay attention 100% of the time, but you can absolutely expect a company to be able to hire the necessary manpower to ensure near-bulletproof compliance.
Big company incompetence exists because, paradoxically, it's more profitable.
The solution is making it less profitable, or better yet treating the business like you'd treat a human. Put a derogatory report on their credit and make sure they can't get any kind of credit (often even including pre-paid rent) for 7 years....
Just take a look at wage theft and federal police theft stats compared with all other forms of robbery in the US - it’s out of control but the only thing that seems to get actioned on is the small shoplifting issue, not the vastly worse forms of theft (per dollar value)
Like, Wells Fargo set up millions of fraudulent accounts for its customers, and zero people went to jail.
Even if you accept the premise that upper level management somehow didn't know, a certain level of negligence should absolutely lead to prison time when the impact is this is large.
>A former top Wells Fargo executive avoided prison time for her role in the bank’s sham accounts scandal, after a federal judge on Friday instead sentenced her to six months of home confinement and three years of probation. She was also ordered to pay a $100,000 fine and perform 120 hours of community service.
I don’t understand why everyone in their HR department wasn’t immediately terminated and thrown into prison, and forced to pay the salaries of anyone who was fired.
Kareem Serageldin got a 30 month sentence, and Lee Farkas got 30 years but only served 9 and was released because of his "susceptibility to COVID-19 while incarcerated at the Coleman low-security prison in Wildwood" [0][1].
Talk about a lack of culpability.
0: https://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/news/mortgage-fraudster...
1: https://www.mortgagefraudblog.com/lee-farkas-released-from-p...
Hertz has been actually triggered false arrets of its own customers -some going to jail - due to poorly implemented software logic....[1]
And no one at hertz is going to jail [2]. They are settling as usual.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hertz-claims-false-arrests/
[2] https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1140998674/hertz-false-accusa...
Also, at what point do police stop accepting "stolen" car reports from Hertz? This is such a failure on so many levels, why is Hertz the only ones receiving the hate?
Ultimately I'll point the fault at the district attorney, as they are the ones who decide what is prosecuted and what is not.
They take unsubstantiated allegations from hertz and put people to jail, but at the same time don't lift a finger to prosecute the clearly guilty corporations for fraud. So yes, while mistakes are made all around, the ultimate guilty party is the district attorney.
For it to be the DA's fault, lots of other things have failed first. So I don't really see how the DA is that relevant. If devs failed by making software that doesn't work in a way that the company using it cannot keep track of their inventory in a way that makes it look like their customers have not returned items in a way that looks like it has been stolen so that they can make a report to the police who cannot properly investigate which results in someone being arrested but never charged does not make any sense for a DA to receive any blame in this situation at all. (jeebus that must be the longest sentence I've ever typed).
Because only they are the one with the power to actually act on this and pursue charges. They are supposed to validate the facts before proceeding, but here they just take the word of hertz without any evidence (since hertz's systems are messed up as you say so they don't have any idea what's where) and run with it, accusing innocent people.
The DA is the one with the power to tell hertz to produce credible evidence or go pound sand. But they don't.
Stuff like this is easy to charge back with your credit card company.
But in this case, the article makes it clear that the people were able to get the charges reversed by talking to Hertz. It wasn't necessarily convenient, but the funds were returned when a human saw the mistake.
> If I made charges to someone's card for services that weren't rendered, I'd probably go to jail.
If you entered into an agreement with someone to do business and then accidentally charged them the wrong amount, you would not go to jail. That's what happened here, as annoying as it is.
I know this is HN and we're supposed to get our pitchforks out any time a company makes a mistake, but your analogy doesn't hold. Legally, intentional theft is a higher bar than a mistake. You're right that you'd be in trouble if you just started charging random people's credit cards fraudulently, but you're not going to jail if you're doing business with someone and you occasionally make a mistake about the amount when it's time to bill them. (FYI: Billing mistakes happen all the time at scale)
If you could prove that someone in Hertz was diabolically masterminding a scheme to knowingly milk money from customers by charging EV drivers for gas, you could have a case. But if Hertz is just accidentally charging a couple people here and there for gas (as appears to be the case from the article) then that's not "stealing". It's just a mistake.
That's not actually true. This sort of "oh, you never have to pay for services not rendered" is mostly just a fiction. I've had multiple issues with major credit card issuers who refused to persist chargebacks when vendors screwed me.
The other issue is that, even if you successfully chargeback against a vendor, oftentimes that vendor is a monopoly or duopoloy, and they will terminate your account and ban any new accounts using the same name or card number, and you'll be screwed.
> The other issue is that, even if you successfully chargeback against a vendor, oftentimes that vendor is a monopoly or duopoloy, and they will terminate your account and ban any new accounts using the same name or card number, and you'll be screwed.
That sounds like what someone who's never had to waste hours getting 'stuff like this' charged back, with varying levels of success, would say.
Hah. Your card company will accept the dispute, Hertz will provide them with the rental contract you signed and say "he agreed to pay it!", and your card company will close the dispute without ever even following up with you.
> But in this case, the article makes it clear that the people were able to get the charges reversed by talking to Hertz. It wasn't necessarily convenient, but the funds were returned when a human saw the mistake.
Actually the article makes it clear that they had to go round and round in circles with bot-like support reps who probably haven't ever seen a Tesla in whatever slum they can afford.
> If you entered into an agreement with someone to do business and then accidentally charged them the wrong amount, you would not go to jail.
It's not accidental when you keep doing it until the news gets involved. BTW, how can they even charge a fuel fee without a human being involved to... you know... fuel it? Shouldn't that human have noticed that there was no gas tank? Hmm... Almost like it wasn't accidental.
On two separate occasions a company has charged me for something and after I've made multiple calls and escalations (which of course can only happen during certain hours) they finally refunded me by saying "we'll make a one-time exception as a favor to you" even though they were literally stealing from me. In one case they only finally did it after I contacted the attorney general.
Honestly I don't even really care if it was a mistake (which are usually systemic issues) vs intentional, it is theft. In one example Comcast charged me a late fee even though I had autopay set up and they just missed running the charge. I wonder how many people just didn't notice.
I've long thought the only solution to these issues is to levy fines (or jail time if intentional theft) large enough to discourage the behavior. If it is still happening, keep raising the fines until it stops.
We need a corporate death penalty and three strike laws - where three is scaled to the customer base or total monetary damages or whatever. Upon death, any and all assets (including shares of the company, in case of restructuring) go to employee salaries until the company can be wound down.
That would of course require them to strive to provide the best product or service they can rather than towards maximizing their profit, though.
> Private individuals should not have to waste their time in the legal system to defend laws that the government created.
Government should not make a mockery of it self by creating laws that it doesn't intend to enforce or is incapable of.
We also have this in the US, actually we have many (state attorney generals, federal FTC and CFPB, and so on). Unfortunately (similar to our cops with crime), they're only going to bother to do anything if a company is blatantly screwing over somewhere between hundreds and thousands of people, or if the person complaining is a wealthy political donor or otherwise a friend of an elected official.
I see no real world benefit to allow such companies to exist, it creates "too big to fail" schemes, inefficient structures, and overall companies that are able to compete with literally small states or countries in terms of capital /legal / lobby power.
Beyond a certain marketcap, a company should not be allowed to grow anymore and just forced to split in multiple entities.
Two companies are not allowed to merge if their total market share would past 30%, because that would allow a monopoly and thus total control over the price of goods. A winner cannot just buyout his previous opponents indefinitely.
Similarly, a company cannot (at least where I live) sell at a loss. That would allow a company with more capital to lower prices at an impossible level until competition dies out, and then increase prices back when concurrents are wiped out.
These regulations are different of course, but the overall idea is similar: a company should not be able to press its advantage exponentially. And I think the marketcap is but a forgotten rule in these regulations.
Once a company reaches a monstrous level of market cap, it is too diversified to fail, and can press its legal / lobbying leverage on some of its subbusinesses at an unfair level against competitors. If you're a search engine company, competition against Google is not just competing against an other player in the search space. You're competing against the legal and lobbying power of 10 companies.
And that's not even mentioning state supremacy concerns. I vote for my government. They may not be always want I want them to, but hey, that democracy. I don't vote for mega corps governance. I don't want them to have bargaining power over my state or country.
The mismatch should be detectable from basic BI. Nobody did because the failure was profitable.
Not unlike the UK post office ICT failure in that respect.