Hertz - Change Drop Location, Get $1500 Penalty?

What kind of experiences/charges have you had returning cars to locations other than where you had originally planned to?

Get this. I pick up a car for two days from a franchisee location. At night I decide I need to get to another city--a change of plans. I call Hertz, but the office to change the drop is closed, so I drive all night. The next morning they tell me I will get charged a total of $1500 in penalties for this two day rental.

Ever heard of that? None of the customer reps I talked to had. I get no traction trying to sort this out with the regular folks on the phone, so I write to the hertzexecutives@hertz.com. One of my requests was that they do something about the licensee location who had set this extreme penalty rate.

Hertz, ever fond of denying that it has any problems, told me this:

"Though it is impossible to figure an exact cost after the fact, had your rental originated from a corporate location, your rate would have increased based on your change in return location likewise."

What ticks me off at this point is that they are essentially saying, "We really might have charged you $1500 for that change in rental. Don't blame the licensee, because we aren't."

Thanks,

AnotherAbusedTraveler

PS: I didn't pay the $1500. Instead I spent five hours finding someone willing to drive the rental back to the licensee, which was 700 miles away.

$1,500 oh-my-god. Where did this happen? Was the "new" drop-off station in another state, country?

BTW, how can I see if I pick-up a a car from a "corporate" or a "franchise" station/location?

That's outrageous. I imagine that a franchise location owns its cars and that its fleet isn't interchangable with the corporate fleet, so that the franchise would somehow have to get its car back the 700 miles. I'm sure that's a pain for them and obviously costs them money, but $1500??? That's over the top.

On the other hand, I would still expect a hefty fee. Assuming 700 miles at 65 mph=11 hours, x $20/hr for someone to drive the car = $220, then $80 for gas at 20 mpg. And then the driver needs to get back. This isn't cheap.

I'm surprised customer service wasn't more responsive. Usually they're great, and that's one thing I love about Hertz. I would try finding out who the head of CS is and write to them by snail mail. And in your letter I'd pre-empt their argument that this is a franchise and they have no control; they can always take the license away for ridiculous fees like this.

BTW, how can I see if I pick-up a a car from a "corporate" or a "franchise" station/location?

Go to "locations" on the Hertz web site. Under the details for a particular location it will tell you.

I think the franchisee cars don't have the standard barcodes.

I did it one time and paid about $150~200 extra.

I always look before I leap.

The highest one way charge I ever got hit with was $5. :)

On the other hand, I would still expect a hefty fee. Assuming 700 miles at 65 mph=11 hours, x $20/hr for someone to drive the car = $220, then $80 for gas at 20 mpg. And then the driver needs to get back. This isn't cheap.

While $1500 seems outrageous, your calculation is way low, Loran.

Let's go with the 65 mph equalling 11 driving hours. (Depending on where we are that may be tough to do.) Over 11 hours a driver is going to need some breaks, for gas if nothing else. That probably adds a couple of hours. While some folks (including me) would do this in one day, a driving engaged by a business is likely to follow federal regs on maximum drive time, meaning an overnight stay. Then there are four meals (lunch, dinner, breakfast, lunch).

Finally, there's the cost of getting that driver to the car. If we're lucky there is a LLC on the route and we can keep the airfare down to $300. Of course, the driver is going to expect to be paid for the travel time, adding another three hours to the paid time.

The franchisee will also have lost revenue on the car, at least four days (two to make arrangements plus two to get the car back) and/or a fee for the 700 miles.

It adds up to:

16 hours paid (11 driving, 2 on break, 3 travel)
$320
Gasoline
$80
Meals
$40
Hotel
$50
Airfare
$300
Lost Revenue ($50 x 4 days)
$200


About $1000. I can guarantee you that the franchisee would much rather have the car back on time than the $1500, even if my rough calculation is close. It's simply not worth the hassle for $500. (I lend money to auto leasing/rental companies and "orphaned" cars are the second biggest pain in the business, right after people trashing their cars.)

So, is $1500 "fair and resonable"? It's probably 50% above the franchisee's out of pocket cost and certainly not detailed in the contract. OTOH, dumping the franchisee's car 700 miles away wasn't in the contract either.

(As an aside, one of my customers, a national franchisee, charges $200 when a customer dumps a car at an ORD terminal or parking garage rather than his off site location. And that's only 3 miles!)

Well, there a few things here:

* The argument from Hertz that a similar thing would have happened with a corporate location too is bunk because corporate locations don't care where their cars go. It's all the same fleet. So there would have been no need to have that specific car go back to the original location

* "Look before you leap" is good advice--so I called in advance, but Hertz didn't have the facility to give me good information after hours.

* The fee seems reasonable? That's a stretch. Not even anyone at Hertz (including the franchisee) asserted this is a reasonable fee. People pay Hertz to drive their cars, not the other way around, generally. I wanted to drop the car at an international airport. How many hours would it have taken for Hertz to find a renter going in the direction of the licensee?

* I don't think the $1500 was intended to cover what it would take to recoup costs of getting the vehicle back to the franchisee, anyway. The sum of costs was $650 for an unauthorized drop charge, 30 cents per mile, and then a new daily rate of $350. So imagine what they would have asked if I had been on a five day rental: $2500.

I'm interested to see people's thoughts and especially experiences.

See you,

AAT

While $1500 seems outrageous, your calculation is way low, Loran.
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Wouldn't Hertz throw the car on the back of a "car carrier" with other cars to go back to the original renting location?

This means that travelling expenses, meals,accom and petrol are all moot costs. Instead a fixed fee is charged by the trucking company for the movement of the car.

I cannot see the justification in sending out an employee to move the car when a car carrying company can do an equal job at much less cost...

Wouldn't Hertz throw the car on the back of a "car carrier" with other cars to go back to the original renting location?

Your assumption is that there is a carrier going from (or near) point A to point B on a timely basis (and that it is inexpensive). That's rarely the case for a franchisee location. While there are transportation consolidators, the cost and delay is higher than sending your own person. That's why, when my customers have to pick up a car, they always send a body. If there was a reliable, less expensive way of getting that car back they would use it.

How much of a pain is this whole process? I know that if it is a situation where they are not going to get reimbursed (ie credit card fraud), rather than go through the cost and hassle of retireiving a "wayward" car with higher mileage, they'll have the local agency take it to auction with some of their fleet and sell the car early. The franchisees figure that they lose less on the early sale than the "all in" cost of getting the car back.

WOW! The worst drop fee I have had was $150.

I am not sure whether franchises own their own cars or not. A few weeks ago, I reserved a one way Kalamazoo, MI to Detroit, about 2 hours away, with about a weeks notice. The daily rate was reasonable, and no drop fee was quoted. When I picked up the car, there was some mention about it being a franchise location, but I didn't pay much notice. As it turned out, the car they gave me was registered in another state, so it wouldn't have been one of theirs, but I don't know how they would know a week ahead of time that they would have an "outside" car to rent. It was still an upgrade, so no problem with me.

The only problem I had was that when I returned it, the roving checkin couldn't process it, they said one-ways from franchise locations had to be processed at the counter. At the counter, the agent told me it could be as long as 15-20 minutes to get a reciept. She did a *lot* of typing, but it only took 6-7 minutes, and there were no surprise charges.

Well you were either in the dakota's or down in louisianna. These are people who pay to use the Hertz brand who own there own cars they rent you. Hertz does NOT. If i took your car and borrowed it and was to leave it 700 miles away and i told you to go pick it up yourself i'm sure you be a little upset. thats 1400 round trip and oh hey i can't rent it to anyone else because it's up in nowhere land for two days. So i say hey John can you go pick up are car. Hey guess what he has to pay 1100 dollars for a airline ticket and a cab to go get it.

Was when I had to fly into Miami to drive home to Orlando. This was last year, when hurricane Charlie had closed the airport.

Since the power was out all over Orlando, and I actually had power at my house, I filled the tank before I returned it. I figure, be a nice guy, they're probably going nuts, etc.

Our corporate agreement allows for all miles paid, except for one-ways like this. What really cheesed me was that not only did they charge me the higher corporate rate, plus the miles between MIA and MCO, but also the extra 90 miles I put on the car to go home and back to sleep and refuel. Note: I actually had a gas can in the car with me so I could top it off before returning it.

Next time (hopefully a long time), it'll be get the fuel option and here, she's your problem now, MCO Hertz.