Hertz - Encounter with guardrail midway through LDW'd rental - exchange or continue?

Hi all,

A friend of mine is headed across the country from CA to NY. Near Yosemite, he scraped a guardrail and is wondering whether he should exchange the car in LA (Hertz said he could do this) or continue on.

The damage is mostly cosmetic, but there is some difficulty closing the front right door (I haven't seen the damage, just heard reports).

Without a copy of the LDW contract in front of me, are there negatives to exchanging the car in LA?


Can Hertz suspend the LDW midway through a rental after one accident?
In case of another accident (god forbid), would Loss of Vehicle Use Fees (not even sure if Hertz has these) make it worthwhile to continue driving the car so as to avoid two seperate instances of LOVU fees?


We spent a ton of time planning this trip, so I just want to make sure we won't encounter anything unexpected in LA if we try to swap the car.

Thanks for your help.

Just an update for anyone who was remotely interested. He brought in a Hyundai Accent with a scrape. They gave him a Prius to continue his cross country journey at no additional cost.

So, the moral of the story is that accidents = free upgrades :confused:

Thanks for the update, I had been wondering.

That is certainly a nice upgrade and saves a ton on the gas! A similar thing happend to my in-laws in Italy -- minor accident and their manual-shift VW was replaced with an automatic-shift Alfa -- making them very happy!

If you ever swap a car out in middle of rental period, make sure the check-in agent knows what you are doing and does not close out the rental.

I had one do that half-way through a week-long rental where I had someone hit-run my parked car and I had a helluva time at the counter about it. They wanted me to do a new rental for the rest of my time.

I had one do that half-way through a week-long rental where I had someone hit-run my parked car and I had a helluva time at the counter about it. They wanted me to do a new rental for the rest of my time.I had a similar experience with Alamo after a hit-and-run on my parked car. Alamo said that if I turned in the car they wouldn't give me another one since I'd damaged it. I even had a copy of the police report (left unsolicited on the windshield by a policeman!). Needless to say, I don't rent from Alamo any more.

Overall I find it a pain to exchange a car with Hertz. I have had some minor issues before, and fail to understand why I need to go back to the airport versus them coming to me. One was in Chicago where the window was off track so it was stuck open. Not a fun drive in late fall.