I get annoyed when the car is not all the way full as well. I'm talking about the idiosyncrasies of the gauge reading 8/8 vs what's actually in the tank, not when it's clearly 7/8 or less. The receipt thing won't work, though, because there are too many variables. Are the people checking the cars in supposed to scrutinize for date, amount, proximity of the station to the Hertz location, etc.? It's just too much to deal with when trying to get the returns processed quickly.

The part of me who's been annoyed a couple times by tricky low fuel levels (when it reads 8/8, it can be 1-2 gallons short) would like to see a policy to deal with that. But this receipt checking isn't it. The only really tenable way to deal with this I think would be for Hertz to top off every single car, not at return time but after cleaning, etc. Whether it's worth it to bill people $6-12 for shorting the tank that way, I don't know. And where do you draw the line? If it's an airport where there's really no station too near, and it's 1/2 gallon short, do you bill them $3? More likely they have to eat it and make it up in rental revenue, which is hard unless the other rental agencies are doing the same.

No, probably what will happen is the same old thing, and when a few of us complain we will be compensated, and that compensation will cost them less than topping off every car.