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Comment by gdudeman | Hacker News Reader

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

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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

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.

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