Watchful

The attorney handling many of these cases was interviewed today on Michael Smerconish's morning program on POTUS channel (Sirius XM). It was posted on his YouTube as well.

jason8612

There was a similar older thread also related to the lawsuit for wrongful car thefts, which I went ahead and merged.

Thanks
Jason8612 Hertz Mod

ralphs

This is a huge bummer because I've been getting rates at Hertz at half of National. But any time spent dealing with administrative BS would make it much more worthwhile to just pay twice as much and go with National.

thatmikereed

An arrest on a valid warrant signed by a judge isn't false arrest, and a police officer in the field isn't going to look at evidence/try the case. You're going to get arrested, booked, and be required to post bond (bail) to get released.

You'll have a field day later with the civil suit against Hertz, but that won't fix any of the immediate problems getting arrested on a warrant will cause.

tmorse6570

It seems like a lot of the reports claim that Hertz made multiple attempts to contact the renter. But that could just be Hertz lying trying to cover their mistake. It also seems to happen mostly when people try to extend their rental.

This is minor, but Hertz almost always charges me toll fees in Florida even though we always use the cash lane. The credit card company has always removed it after I question it.

view-with-a-room

The last high profile case is a consequence of no-show to a court case, not a rental; albeit a court case initiated by a rental.

Generally I don't leave the lot without a rental agreement and return the vehicle during hours with staff. The rentals could be easier on me if I didn't pursue the paperwork diligently but the goal is to limit the risk. Extending rentals is problematic and confirming the extension online is a good idea.

One state or another sent me 5 bills for unpaid tolls over the past few years. None of the bills were legitimate but I pursued the issue nonetheless. Failure to pursue the issue could result in the same scenario as note.

notquiteaff

Define “last high profile” - I see new ones all the time.

Here is one that is really weird.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/judge-r...tomers-public/

The person who was arrested reportedly wasn’t in the state where the car theft was reported and had never rented from Hertz. Weird.

Apparently Hertz reports around 3500 vehicles stolen each year.

My wife isn’t a frequent renter (when we travel together, the rentals are in my name), but a recent solo trip had her pick up a Hertz car I booked for her. She had seen these stories several times on the news, and upon return she declined to leave the contract with the agent so it could be checked in later (never understood why they want the contract back, it’s my copy) and insisted on a printed receipt.

notquiteaff

A human employed by Hertz presumably filed a police report that resulted in the valid warrant. It would be nice if every such judge and DA, mislead by Hertz, would hold the employee responsible for filing a false police report.

N1120A

Unless, of course, the arrest is based on information they know is false. As it appears to have been with Hertz repeatedly.

Hertz appears to be outright lying constantly.

Not really. The guy out of Arizona who was arrested by CBP thugs had filed paperwork to have his attorney appear for him. I'm shocked prosecutors are taking these to grand juries - that should be misconduct.

MileKing

Looks like the problem continues. Story below is from this past Thursday.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ve-re...ycsrp_catchall

We're moving Hertz to our "do not do business with" list.

thatmikereed

There's no way for an officer in the field to know that. All the proof in the world you have in your hands doesn't invalidate a warrant, which is essentially a judge's order to arrest someone, and let the judge weight the evidence.

Boraxo

Exactly. The critical problem here is that judges are issuing arrest warrants for individuals, presumably based solely on the testimony or affidavits of sworn law enforcement, who in turn rely on fabricated stolen vehicle reports filed by Hertz.

The easy solution is for law enforcement to refuse to seek arrest warrants based on any info they receive from Hertz. Or for a nationwide injunction precluding Hertz from filing any stolen vehicle reports until they have demonstrated their system is fixed. Unfortunately it does not appear that any attorneys have sought this remedy, instead focusing either on defending individuals who were arrests or filing lucrative class actions. Neither will stop the false arrests from continuing.

PrivatePilot

Is there a way to check that there is no fake arrest warrant out there? Regardless, we should publicize this more and write to them on social media and tell them we'll never rent from them again unless they change their practices.

doglynx

As one of the best ways to deviate from the truth is to only let one party talk and silence the other party, to show more facts on this topic it’s crucially necessary to see what Hertz says:

“Hertz cares deeply about our customers, and we successfully provide rental vehicles for tens of millions of travelers each year. Unfortunately, in the legal matters being discussed, the attorneys have a track record of making baseless claims that blatantly misrepresent the facts. The vast majority of these cases involve renters who were many weeks or even months overdue returning vehicles and who stopped communicating with us well beyond the scheduled due date. Situations where vehicles are reported to the authorities are very rare and happen only after exhaustive attempts to reach the customer. “

So just as expected-most of the cases were customers keeping their cars for as long as they wanted and not allowing hertz to authorize new amount and to make things even worse for themselves, ghosting hertz too. No wonder why you were reported to the police. Why not?

Also, Hertz on average filed 3365 vehicle stolen reports a year - considering their fleet size is only 300k in the US as of now, that’s more than 1 in 100 got stolen every year. If you run a company and do nothing with this ridiculous number, for example, not contacting the law enforcement to get your cars back, you should be fired immediately.

Among 3365 cases every year, and that’s from 2014, which is 8 whole years from now and that resulted in nearly 27k total reports, only 230 were considered as ‘false’, and the majority of these ‘false reports’ was because of customers kept the car well after the due date and ghosted hertz.

Boraxo

Hertz has consistently lied to the public and in court filings. Why would anyone believe them?