Have reservation but Hertz has no car
 

I arrived at SJO (Costa Rica) one hour after my reservation start to be greeted with " sorry we have no more cars". I was handed over to a representative of a local car rental company, shuttled to their location and given a very beat up car, of same class as reserved at Hertz and at the same price. In the end all worked reasonably well with that company, but this is absolutely not what I expect from Hertz.
What can I expect from Hertz, where should I complain?
Needless to say I didn't get the points .

Here is Hertz's stated policy for SJO:

You can complain to Hertz corporate but Hertz in SJO is not a corporate location. They are an independent licensee which means they are a local Costa Rican company that licenses the Hertz name, reservation system, etc. That's not to say that they have no sway over the licensee, but it's quite limited as compared to a company-owned location.

I understand you're annoyed but there is an argument to made that you got a car, in the same class that you booked and for the same price you paid. I'm not sure what your complaint would be?

Yes, in travel industry parlance, this is called "walking the customer". We've certainly heard of other situations with lesser companies where the customer is just told "tough luck--you're on your own". It actually happened to me with Thrifty in Cancun once when I was about 45 min late, but I didn't care since I had a backup reservation with National. All in all, you made out OK here, so probably best to consider it a win.

It's overbooking for auto rentals. Air carriers do it and hotels as well. It's an unfortunate necessity of the business model because it's based on the assumption that there are some number of no shows.

I would complain because Hertz will likely award the points and perhaps toss you some smallish consolation, simply as a customer service gesture, but the bottom line is that there isn't much to be done.

I did not get a car from Hertz. Hertz didn't honor the reservation. I was there 1 hour after the reservation started (an I'm Gold so well within the limits) I got a car because I signed a completely separate contract with a different company.
I understand overbooking, a hotel will book a room for you in a different hotel, an airline will find you a different flight, maybe on a different carrier. In this case, Hertz says: "tough luck".
I have a feeling Hertz SJO is funneling business to this other rental company so they don't need to pay Hertz a fee...
I filed a complaint with Hertz, see what they say.

I once got completely walked. No car available, none of the other rental companies had any. They comped a taxi for me to my hotel but had to share it with someone else and a 45 min ride turned into an hour. Luckily was able to carpool with coworkers for the week as the other local location did not have any cars either. I was president's circle and this was back when you had to have like 40 rentals per year for it. Didn't even bother sending an email to Hertz cause they probably wouldn't care at all.

Doubtful.

It's a busy time of the year here for rental car companies. Lots of tourist as it's the start of the "summer" time here. If you arrived in one of the afternoon bank of flights that have Lufthansa, Iberia, Rouge and a few others arrive at the same time they could've easily ran out of cars. Consider it lucky they could find you one.

This happens in Europe and the US. Don't think being Gold will help you in a franchise location. They only use the name.

Which company did you get the back up car from?

Solid

Unrelated to the company dba as Hertz in all public records. Likely they just had cars available.

This happened to me with Hertz last year at a non airport location. Showed up at exact time of reservation and was told "sorry, we haven't had available cars for 2 days, maybe go down to airport and check but no guarantees". It's 15 miles to airport from this location so not happening. Complained to Hertz and got a $25 gift certificate that expired in 90 days so never used it.

If renters didn't feel they needed to have a 'back up', for whatever reason, then maybe the car rental firms wouldn't need to overbook?

It's now been a week since I filed a complaint with Hertz, didn't hear back, not even an acknowledgment.

I wouldn't expect much from them.

I once got almost walked by an HLE around the holidays - I went in and there were no cars, and while I stood around and talked with the guys at the HLE they walked a bunch of other people who came in for their reservations. There had been a big snowstorm a few days earlier resulting in a lot of accidents. State Farm had suddenly started sending over tons of people for insurance replacements while they waited for repairs, and they had instructions to prioritize the insurance replacements because it's a huge corporate contract. The HLE had already had two deliveries of cars (via car carrier) that day from DTW and was out of cars again when I got there. I think I was first in line after they ran out because I left my number and they called several hours later to see if I still wanted a car. They came and picked me up and it worked out, but they walked three more people while I was checking out.