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Comment by coleca | Hacker News Reader

Hadn’t rented from Hertz in many years until last week. Made sure to fill the tank back up as high as it would go just in case. Get thru security at the airport and already had a $26 charge for fuel. Still working on getting this fixed. Funny how they can charge within 5-7 minutes but they take 5-7 business days to process a refund.

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Good luck. I’m fighting them from the beginning of April because they failed to check the car in properly (I asked for a receipt and they said they couldn’t print one at the return, despite being in the receipt line). I got charged for the next renters days, late fees, recovery fees, and tolls accrued by them. They agreed to refund (which still hasn’t happened) and a few days later they charged me for not returning the car full (it was).

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.

I recommend disputing the charge with your credit card. My credit card refunded my Hertz bill in under five minutes of clicking online.

If they did a chargeback, Hertz might dispute it, send you collection letters and terminate your account.

It's funny you should say that, because OP actually tells a more complete version of the story here [0]. Hertz did send them a new bill with a threat to send it to collections if it weren't paid.

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.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40412246

The context here was a charge that should not be paid…

Bundled with a bunch of charges that were, in fact owed. OP disputed the whole charge (probably because that was the only option), but it's important to know that Hertz did come after him for the rest of the money.

Right: as you say there probably was no other option -- OP was in a bind because all the charges are packaged together. There wasn't really a neat solution to this, except how OP played it, which could have ended up going badly wrong.

This is probably important context to include when you make this recommendation (from your other comment):

> 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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40412246

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