Hertz - Oil change light on?

Do you get a rental car that the oil change light comes on?

99% of the time they forget to reset the oil change switch in the car, its always good to double check at the counter.

I do see situations often and wanted to post about it


Hertz is very strict about oil changes because it would void the warranty of the car.

It's happened to me a few times. If it's a car I don't like anyway I'll return it and hope for a goodwill upgrade. If it's a car I like, I'll just keep it!

I just bring it right back to Hertz and tell them to give me a different car.

Never had it happen to me...but my rentals are from a small airport (LUK) and the cars are brought over from a larger airport (CVG) for the day.

I presume the porters would not allow the oil light on cars to be rented.

I've had this happen a few times. Usually they look at the rental and if it just a few days (or if I don't expect to drive great distances) they'll just tell me to ignore it.

Hertz has always told me to ignore it when I've had a car that required it, one time I was behind somebody who had a month rental and was presenting a receipt from someplace because he had the oil changed and they were taking it off the bill.

Enterprise would not give me a car recently because it required an oil change during the rental period.

I don't think Hertz really cares. The oil should probably be changed way more often then waiting for the light to come on, and it's impossible for me to believe it came on seconds before I got into the car, who ever moved the car from the last rental should have taken care of it, and I'm fairly certain the last customer would have said when checking in "hey, the change oil light is on"

It takes like 15 minutes to change the oil and filter and reset the light, there's no excuse for a car to be presented to a customer with that on.

Funny, I wanted a different car from my HLE the first time I rented there, and they said all the others had tire pressure warnings on. Then when I called later in the day to see if I could switch, they indeed switched me...to a car that ended up having the tire pressure warning light on! Heh. I think someone screwed up. Or maybe they all really did have that light on. It was a brand new Jetta; I had to dig out the book when I got home to find out what the light was as it was a little cryptic with just the symbol. (If it was serious, I still had time to go back the next day to switch it out; it was for a week-long rental.) Turns out it was indeed the tire light, so I checked the tires and found one higher (or lower, can't remember which) and evened them out. Light went off. Rather do that than have crappier car (original car was nasty old Malibu).

If it's the oil change interval light that's on, maintenance interval, whatever, that's really not a big deal. They may change at a different set mileage interval and forget to reset. I really don't know how many of those lights are just "dumb" indicators of how many miles have gone by and how many are "smart" evaluators of what type of driving has been done and adjust the interval accordingly. But either way, they come on before the interval they are indicating, so a certain amount of extra time is built in. If you're taking a 1000 mile trip, maybe another car is in order. If you're using for 100 miles of local driving, no real issue I think.

That happened to me once last year. I had picked up the car at the local HLE a couple of minutes before closing time. Since I usually spend a few minutes looking over the outside of the car, then sitting inside and locating where everything was (I usually spend 10 or 15 minutes getting used to the car before I leave) when I discovered the oil was 'overdue' the counter had closed. I called the repair 1-800 number and explained the situation to them. They were able to look up the maintenance records, and we were able to discern that the oil had indeed been changed, but the alarm not reset.

Until then I didn't know they could look up maintenance records like that...so if you have to you could call the repair number and see if the car does indeed need its oil changed.