bsd

Had a confirmed reservation for a full size car at SFO on 26 Dec 2014. Reservation made four months earlier.

Arrived on time at SFO after a 12-hour flight from New Zealand. Chaos at the Hertz rental counter - "no cars available, try other companies". The manager blamed Head Office at Oklahoma City for continuing to take reservations when there were not enough cars, but hey, we had booked four months earlier. We tried other airport car rentals - nothing available.

We had to travel to our pre-booked accommodation in Carmel - the cheapest option was the Monterey Shuttle. Arrived four hours late after an uncomfortable ride in a packed shuttle van.

Tried car rental companies in the Monterey area - nothing available. Finally spoke to Gary (a really helpful agent) at Hertz Seaside (near Monterey) who initially said "no new rentals", but he relented when we told him we had a confirmed and dishonored Hertz reservation from SFO. A car had been returned faulty (radio not working) and he allowed us to apply our reservation to it, and we were all set.

Now, Hertz's failure to honor our confirmed reservation left us out of pocket - the fare on the shuttle, taxi from hotel to Hertz Seaside, and the relocation or drop fee from Seaside to SFO (we had to return to SFO four days later).

I have written to Hertz's head office (Oklahoma City) with documentation of our extra costs. No reply. I am being ignored.

Have others had experience of arriving at Hertz with a confirmed reservation to be told they have no cars? What is the point of booking a car in advance if they don't have cars and tell you to go away? Yes, I am sure they have a few no-shows, but the benefit to them is that by taking advance reservations they get a good handle on likely demand, and also it steers customers towards them and away from the competition.

Suggestions on how to proceed please. One option could be to ask our bank to do a charge back on the credit card payment.

davew277

Unless you prepay or put down a deposit that you will lose if you fail to show up, then it's first come first served. I agree that it stinks. It's only happened to me once, but they still offered me a compact instead of the premium I reserved (only because that's all they had left).

wobbly wings

I didn't know this! How can I put down a deposit to an existing (not prepaid) reservations?

djk7

Based on posts here on FT, having a prepaid reservation doesn't seem to make any difference when they run out of cars. I've never even heard of putting down a deposit otherwise, I see no way to do that on their web site reservation pages.

At the very, very least, Hertz should refund the one-way charge, and they should really refund all of the out of pocket costs. Getting them to do that is another matter. I'm not sure if it will help with Hertz, but a lot of people have found that Twitter gets faster responses with various airlines, hotels, etc., you might want to try that.

And if nothing else, you can see Seinfeld's take on this situation.:

davew277

I've seen the option to put a deposit down a few times. I don't know what conditions must be met before that option becomes available though. I'm guessing location is a key factor. It warned me that if I did it then I had to cancel the reservation more than 24 hours before the pickup time or else my CC would be charged the deposit amount if I didn't show up.

The point of putting money down is to hold your car and telling someone else who reserved that same class that they are out of cars instead of giving them your car because they were there first. But mistakes can still happen, and probably have (I think I read about such an incident on the forums here about a prepay).

Likely, the biggest reason for them running out of cars is because they allow people to reserve cars that are due back by the date they reserve, But then the person renting the vehicle extends their rental and Hertz ends up short. The only way to guarantee that they will never be out of cars is to disallow rental extensions. When they are short because of rental extensions and everyone has a reservation, who gets the car? The person who gets there first.

Edit:
Another reason could be because Hertz just keeps taking reservations until they physically have no cars on their lots? I remember the one time that they were out of cars I could still reserve a car for that day. Until after I complained to them when they called me to tell me that they only had a compact available instead of my premium. Then when I looked on the website after the call every single car from the HLE and SRQ was unavailable, even though all of them were available not 60 minutes prior. (I was doing last minute rate checking) I basically gave them the Seinfeld speech that you posted above. I love the end of that BTW.

austin_modern

Absolutely no possible way Hertz SFO rented all their cars - they always gave a MASSIVE fleet of high end cars there just stacked all over the place. No way they rented all of them... they just didn't want to give you one.

davew277

Here it is, I found it:

https://www.hertz.com/rentacar/reser...AL&EOAG=MSPT11

"Guaranteed Reservations

Hertz sometimes accepts �guaranteed reservations� for non-prepaid rental transactions. Guaranteed reservations generally involve vehicles Hertz classifies as �Special Equipment� (such as premium and luxury cars, sports utility vehicles and mini-vans). A guaranteed reservation is not the same as a prepaid rental, because you are not required to prepay all or a substantial portion of the overall cost of the rental when you make a guaranteed reservation.

When you make a guaranteed reservation, you will betold of a fee (a �No-show Fee�) for which you will, under certain circumstances, be liable and will be required to provide Hertz with details of the debit, credit or charge card to be charged if the No-show Fee is incurred."


I knew that I seen this before...

cestmoi123

Yeah, I've seen the deposit requirement for Prestige and Dream cars, but not elsewhere.

harvardkim

yeah it's not the best. I've got a Chevy Spark when I reserved a Full-Size because they have nothing left. I've even called three local editions and they have nothing. I guess President's Circle doesn't mean much when they have limited supply. Its a bummer they take reservations when they don't have cars. I think on the west coast cars are in high demand due to Valentine's day.

randidliyo

Something like this happened to me at PHL once. There were about 50 people in the Gold booth, and there were "no cars". You could see the guys running the returns through the car wash and the agents there were telling people that if they were willing to take whatever comes out of the car wash, then they could take it at no extra charge, if applicable. Most of the people started having fun with it and it was almost like a game show to see what was going to come out of the car wash and watch the expression on the next person in line. "Yeah, I'm getting an Altima!" (crowd cheers). "Aww, it's a minivan". (crowd: AWW).

randidliyo

davew277

Oops, I never answered your question about a course of action...

Hertz has it written into their contracts and terms of service that they are in no way liable for consequential damages due to not having a car for you (even for prepaid and guaranteed reservations). So it is highly unlikely that you can recover any money from Hertz for your issue.

As for a charge back. I thought Hertz didn't give you a car? Did you prepay? If not, then what money did Hertz take that you can charge back?

Edit:
Oh, I guess you mean the rental that you finally received later... I wouldn't do a charge back on that rental. You did accept the rental and the rate along with it, so you legally owe the money on that rental regardless if whether or not you feel that Hertz owes you money. You will certainly lose and be blacklisted from renting with Hertz again.

bsd

OP here again.

Consequences to Hertz of not honoring a confirmed reservation - nil apparently.

Consequences to me: the possibility of being stranded, a whole itinerary falling down because I can't travel from A to B. Expense. Not even covered by travel insurance because it is not a 'scheduled' transport delay and not prepaid.

I guess the moral is, don't get mad, get even.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant, so I will expose this behavior to various travel publications, the travel editor of our newspaper etc. I'll pitch this along the lines of "A traveler can have a confirmed reservation for a car, but Hertz don't have to give you any vehicle at all, let alone the class you reserved, and if they have no cars they won't meet the reasonable costs of traveling to another Hertz location; you could end up completely stranded and Hertz won't even respond to you in a professional business-like manner.

TerryK

The only thing is that other car rental companies have the same practice. You are not exposing Hertz but the practice of the entire car rental industry.

bsd

OP here again. I would assume the California Civil Code trumps Hertz's terms and conditions?

California Civil code 1936 (j) (2)

A rental company shall not engage in any unfair .... conduct, including
conduct such as, but not limited to, refusing to honor the renter's
reservation

http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/fa...201320140AB359

ijgordon

I would think so. You might be able to take them to (small claims) court there (in CA) and win your various reimbursements. But that's probably it.