If this is the one on Courtland Street, nothing at all would surprise me. It seems to be where half of Atlanta's Uber and food delivery drivers rent cars. A friend of mine went to rent from there for a road trip last week on a Saturday morning and there were about a half dozen more people with reservations than there were cars and the resolution was "just all of you go to the airport."

Yes, I opened the driver door mainly to see what the mileage was (I'm not taking a 50k mile special) but didn't look for the key fob I guess as it's usually down in the cupholder and not readily in sight. I then closed the door, walked around the car, took a photo of the license plate/back of car so I could add it to my toll profile as a temporary, scanned the barcode into the app to rent it, opened the back lift gate, put my bag in, and upon closing it went back to get in, and the car was locked. I tried the passenger door, then walked back and tried the driver door and it unlocked and opened - I thought I had maybe activated it with the key fob inside but that seemed odd as most wouldn't lock with the key in it. That's when I turned to see someone holding paperwork and the key walking toward the car from the booth.

So lesson learned on grabbing the key fob first thing (or looking for it at least). I usually do that.


I got off the phone with Hertz customer service a couple hours ago. I had not heard back from them and it has been two weeks. The person I spoke to acted like no information of what I said was on my account (that they could see I guess) but said that a full refund was processed by Hertz today back to my Amex. I haven't seen the credit yet, but now see I got a note from Amex my dispute was resolved. Spoke to the Amex rep there who said it was, in so many words, resolved to my satisfaction by merchant's actions. I guess they accepted it and cooperated.

Amex rep agreed that opening a police report probably helped the matter resolve quickly. I called the DFW Airport police dept to give them follow up from my end (and they asked just to call back to confirm when I see the refund). The officer I'd spoken to wasn't in today but the officer today told me that someone did pay Hertz a visit. I'm glad I did take that step because it gives me peace of mind (necessarily or unnecessarily) to have proactively on record that the license plate assigned to my name cruising around the DFW Metroplex for better part of a week wasn't me. I feel that 1.) if I did nothing, something would be more likely to come of it, and 2.) this was the far easier path than having to go back and make an explanation in the future.

Unfortunately I will have to deal with Hertz in the future as my work travel takes me to a lot of small airports and sometimes Hertz is the sole option - and I mean sole real option when the alternative is the town has 2 taxicabs, driven by a husband and wife who don't drive after 6pm or on weekends, and if you're really really lucky you could promise the hotel front desk $10 and they come and pick you up in their personal car.

Appreciate the advice and feedback from the group here on FT as always.