I've been complaining about their computers for years.

But a family member's experience with a stolen Hertz car takes the cake. After he reported it stolen, Hertz shrugged it off (and his credit card covered the cost--thank goodness for Chase's primary coverage).

But Hertz's computers couldn't seem to understand that the car was stolen. He kept receiving automated phone calls warning him that his car was overdue. Each time he'd speak to an agent, remind them that it was stolen, they'd say "oh we see that in the record" and promise to fix it, and then he'd get another similar call a day or two later. It took a month or two for the calls to stop.

All seemed well and he rented from Hertz several more times since then without incident. A few days ago, however, he returned a Hertz car in one city, flew to another city and went to pick up another Hertz car there. But they didn't have a car for him and the agent said she wasn't allowed to rent to him. No explanation, just a polite apology and a phone number where nobody answered. He was forced to go to another agency and pay an astronomical walk-up rate that was something like 3x the reservation he had with Hertz.

After several days of inquiries, Hertz finally got back to him to say the problem was that he hadn't returned a car. He sent them the receipt showing he returned the car in the other city that same day, and they said, "no, the car you rented last fall."

Their computers had again remembered that the stolen car hadn't been returned, and again forgot that it was stolen. They apologized and said they'll fix it. But can he really trust them? Does he now have to have a backup reservation with another agency every time he has a reservation with Hertz just in case their idiotic computer system suddenly decides that he needs to return the stolen car before they can rent to him again?

This is remarkably frustrating.