themicah

The OP does highlight a serious issue with the DNR list, which is that when you're placed on it, you have no idea, and they'll often still let you make reservations, not informing you of your DNR status until you actually arrive at an airport and try to drive off in a car like the OP. They also won't tell you why you're on the DNR list when they deny you.

I have a family member who had a Hertz car outright stolen a few years ago. He parked it on a street while visiting someone, and when he went back outside the car was gone. A police reports and a few calls to Hertz and Chase later and all seemed fine (it was rented with a Chase Sapphire Preferred card with primary CDW, so Chase covered the loss 100%). The only issue was that he'd get phone calls now and then from Hertz reminding him that his car was overdue for return. He'd remind them that it was stolen and reported as such, and they'd say "oh yeah," and he wouldn't hear anything for a while. Meanwhile, he rented other cars from Hertz repeatedly without issue.

Then one day while on a multi-city business trip several months later, he returned a Hertz car in City 1 and flew to City 2, arriving super late. And at City 2 they refused to let him take a car, telling him he was on the DNR list (despite the fact that he returned another Hertz car that very same day!) and refusing to say why. Around 2am he managed to get a car from National, and over the next couple days he made multiple calls to Hertz to try to figure out what happened. Eventually they figured out that the issue was that Hertz's system STILL had the stolen car flagged as overdue. They gave him some vouchers and restored his ability to rent from Hertz, but it still left a heck of a bad taste in his mouth. I don't think he's had any problems with Hertz since then.

But it is baffling to me that Hertz's system allows you to have a Gold account and make reservations through that Gold account even when you're on the DNR list. When you get placed on a DNR list, they should immediately notify you and cancel all your existing reservations and make it so that when you log into your account it says you're on the DNR list and need to reach out to Hertz if you want to restore your renting privileges.

Drdikk

Thanks for reaffirming that my situation is far more than a simple anomaly. Within other travel-forums in which I've been posting, I've seen far too many stories similar to mine, than to not believe that Hertz is not very badly mismanaged. With reference to some of the responses herein, that I've seen, it's obvious that several of them have come from either Hertz employees, or others who have a motivation to support Hertz. In my case, it's obvious to see that the Gold "system" does not interact with either Billing or the DNR folks. It's obvious also that the I.T. function at Hertz is purely stone-age, and when someone tries to point that to the President of the company, either nothing happens to correct the situation and/or they take punitive-action toward the "complainer".

I've reasonablly demonstrated some examples of Hertz's inadequacies. Why risk your once-a-lifetime-trip to your dream vacation, which requires a rental car, to Hertz who may cancel the reservation - without notice. The left me stranded (fortunately I found another car), but you may not be so lucky.

jackal

Thing is, you very well may have had exactly the same experience with Avis or with National, and then you would have come here and created a thread entitled "Avis - Will Leave YOU Stranded!!!" or "National - Will Leave You Stranded!!!"

I agree the DNR process is poorly-implemented and should be handled better. But that's not at all unique to Hertz. Also, being illegitimately put on the DNR list is a one-in-a-million occurrence. So it simply doesn't do anything positive to come here and say that people here shouldn't rent from Hertz because they'll put you on the DNR list and leave you stranded is not a productive post for two reasons:

1) Most of us realize that if we end up with a big balance due, as you did, that we'll need to follow up and make sure everything gets processed correctly to make sure nothing happens.
2) Most of us realize that if we have problems paying a bill with Avis (and subsidiaries) or Enterprise (and subsidiaries), the same exact thing will happen with them. So no rental company is any safer to trust than Hertz.

This is the outlook when you deal with a crowd that probably rents on average 15-30 times a year. Those other travel forums you're talking about are likely leisure travelers who rent at most 2-3 times a year. I've learned to trust our collective experience here on FlyerTalk far more than just about anywhere else online. Again, we're glad to help you resolve this problem, but we're not likely to buy your argument that Hertz is of the devil and should be avoided at all costs. I know just as many people who have said the exact same thing about Avis/Budget and Enterprise/Alamo/National. If I trusted them all, I'd be walking everywhere.

Drdikk

Hertz now ranked #6 !

Of course, the issues I've described cannot possibly be the exclusive territory of Hertz; other car rental companies surely have similar problems; I've just never experienced such gross ineptness in my 50 plus years of business/personal travel including hundreds upon hundreds of rental car experiences. I suspect my value judgement regarding Hertz likely relates to Money Magazine ranking Alamo, Enterprise, Budget, Dollar, Thrifty ahead of Hertz in their 2017 rankings.

Dave Noble

I think that you are wrongly thinking that your single instance is a lot more important than it is

Drdikk

I think the #1 requirement of any rental car company is to provide the car they've contracted to provide, at the agreed upon time and place. If they plan to breach this contract, they need to notify the customer of their actions, in time for the customer to make other arrangements.

jackal

I don't think anyone here would disagree with that.

*Of course, it could be argued that it's not actually breaching the contract, since a reservation is not a contract--no legally-binding contract is in force until you show up, sign, and pay--and the legalese in the contracts gives the rental company a thousand escape clauses to get out of providing you a car if they don't want to...

Drdikk

"Big Balance Due"? Sorry, very incorrect assumption. The subject rental period was for a time of only a few hours; the bill was $108 and I paid it within days of it being presented to me by Hertz. Again, I had no knowledge whatsoever that Hertz had screwed-up the original billing, but as soon as they presented me with the bill, I paid it. Hertz has yet, to this day, properly posted my check which they deposited to my account even though I've provided them multiple copies of the cancelled check.

Again: Frequent travelers beware Hertz internal accounting function is stone-age, and they may very well "leave you stranded".

VivoPerLei

I would add one thing - 'at the agreed upon rate'. Avis, for example, continues to impose DCC charging (without notice) that result in totals above the agreed upon rate. I've been trying to get money refunded from Avis since December, but I think I'm almost there.

jlawrence01

Many years ago, I was a moderator for a travel forum and we had a very similar complaint. The individual had managed to work himself onto the Hertz DNR list.

In that case, it took about twelve posts from the OP to reveal that on his prior rental, the OP had been arrested for a DUI (and later convicted) while operating a Hertz vehicle.

Why can't we get the WHOLE story on the first post? It would save time and effort.

xela

I would not issue the do or don't directives... You cannot possibly know or foresee every situation or circumstance. Example: I had a reservation with Hertz that I later canceled due to their inability to provide a vehicle with very specific function that I required. Get this: later I received an email with the copy of my bogus bill, including dates of rental, miles driven, etc. I did call Hertz service, explained, they agreed and promised credit (btw, I'm always amazed at how it takes a few seconds to post a charge, but it always takes "up to" 14, 30, 60 or whatever days to credit it back). Anyway, 30 days later there was no credit, so I disputed with my CC, got it immediately removed from my balance and permanently removed from my bill a week later. Oh, and I'm still a President's Circle member and rented with them afterwards ....

Drdikk

Sorry, you are confused as I thought I had reported the "whole story" in my previous posts. Your insinuation that I may be hiding a DUI or something similar is just plain goofy! Do you work for Hertz?

By the way: today, I received an e-mail from xxxxxxxxxx, Executive Customer Service Specialist, in which she explained that Hertz had "no record" of the subject rental bill ever being paid. I responded immediately, sending another copy of the cancelled check which did pay the invoice immediately upon my receipt of same. And, I pointed out to xxxxxx, who reports directly to the President of Hertz, that in a letter to me from her, dated Dec. 12, 2017 that she acknowledged receipt of subject check as payment in full for the original Hertz bungled invoice.

Any more questions?

finarg

DRDIKK

my sympathies to you. the exact same thing happened to me with Hertz about 2 years ago.
for a similar silly reason of disputing a charge I was put on the DNR list without any notice to me.
I was also left stranded at an off airport location as they never advised me i could not rent.
seems they dont want you to question anything

finally got it resolved after about 1 year as hertz has no one to talk to
try to resolve the issue. in my company we rent thousands of days each year and this was an eye opener.

Jack David Institute

I think that everyone would agree with the fact that you should have received appropriate treatment and customer service from Hertz. The overall thoughts of people commenting are expressing that you can not materialize one instance to condemn the whole company.

Ancient Observer

I sometimes wonder whether or not folk in the big corporates train people in Service Recovery.
It is pretty basic stuff.
Even xxxxxxxx, it would appear, did not check the file before sending you another email.
I am just like what the Biz schools identify as a normal customer. You can screw up service, but if you do, put resources in to Service Recovery.
My example of this is my experiences with Amazon. They can screw up service with the best of them. But so far, when I have rung them up, they have fixed it quickly. So I am happy to buy from them.
All the car rental folk make screw-ups. Some local franchisees also appear to run scams. To protect the brand, they need great Service recovery.
Clearly, this was not the OP's experience.