Hertz Phone Reservations and Loyalty Program Call Handling — Abysmal !
 

What a wild ride this company is going through. I’m fairly fed up with the dealings I’ve had with Hertz over the past 18 months. Today 3/10/21 was beyond belief!

I made 5 attempts to call in for assistance with the loyalty program (none of my past rentals are posting points). Wherever the calls are routed to, what a mess...lacking language skills, and enunciation of words etc. I had to reiterate what I thought the agents were saying.

+Requests to speak to supervisor denied
+Disconnected/hung up on when I mentioned I had already stayed my reason for call
+Phone system routes all calls to reservations, even if selecting assistance with loyalty point credits
+Offers of getting text help by pressing (xyx) results on disconnect and no text back

WTH! Are others receiving this poor service ?

I won’t mention the app updating and then system down/unable to sign in today. Loyalty status or not, this is no way to reflect to your patrons.

Can any of you offer a Liaison, alternate means of contact, or way of communicating with this company ?

I feel like the ship is sinking FAST!

You do know they're in bankruptcy right? Not that they shouldn't treat their customers better, but they are going through some challenging times.

Others are having similar issues with them. They will probably lose a bunch of customers over it. As bad as that is, they are facing far greater problems than poor customer service right now. They are just trying to find a path forward.

Hopefully, they will emerge from bankruptcy and build back better. Or not. That remains to be seen. As to whether customers like you are willing to continue to give them your business after being put through the wringer also remains to be seen. Interesting--and challenging--times indeed for Hertz.

Have you tried [email protected]? I contacted them a few weeks ago about some missing points from a rental last year. I heard back from them about five days later and points were redeposited into my account.(long story)

Their customer service was lackluster pre-bankruptcy and has only gotten worse.

You will get the best service by DMing them on Twitter.

We were in Key Biscayne last week and rented on our last night. The hotel (Ritz Carlton) said they had removed the Hertz desk there, but that a car could be delivered. The local rental office was closed, so I waited until the morning to call rather than book online.

The agent at the office said they would not deliver the car. They said they were too short staffed. Only when I asked which other agencies in the area were there did he ask if I was a Gold member. I told him I was Five Star. He then said they would deliver a car to the hotel. The rate was also substantially higher and when I questioned it, he said it was because I wanted it delivered.

The car (Hyundai Kona) was left with the concierge. I picked it up at the arranged time.

The car was listed as having a full tank. It had 7/8.

We began to drive and I kept hearing wind noise. I thought a window was open. Wrong. The driver door frame was bent and I could see outside.

I called Hertz to complain about the bent door, the fuel being listed as full when it wasn't, and also for what appeared to be additional fees that didn't seem right.

After jumping through hoops on the phone, I was connected to an overseas call center to someone clearly reading from a script. I explained the problem and he told me he could not do anything about any of it as I had the car. Anything would have to be done with the (closed for the day) office. I would have to file a report about the fuel online (which could not be done on a smartphone). I grew frustrated when I was not getting anywhere and asked for a supervisor. The agent told me that the supervisor couldn't do anything different. I thanked him and said I would still like to speak to one. He put me on hold and said that he could not connect me to one. I asked him to confirm that he was refusing to give me a supervisor.

I called back and got another agent who was friendly and polite, but also said there was nothing he could do.

As it was only a one day rental, we dealt with the car since we didn't want to waste time at the rental office. We were checking out and had activities planned before our nighttime flight. We drove around all day with the wind blowing.

When I returned the car to MIA, I filled it to 7/8 and told the agent what had happened. He apologized and told me that he had been furloughed but recently came back and that he really felt everything had gone downhill. He did not charge for the gas, noted the damaged door, and gave us a small credit.

Perhaps I should have contacted them via Twitter. I was very honest in the e-mailed survey...

I have given up on Hertz despite years with them at various loyalty levels. I now book best rate/value from whomever has what I need.

I am on the phone with Hertz as I type. It's my second attempt in the last 30 minutes as they immediately disconnected my first call as soon as a human arrived.
A reservation I made a month ago has vanished from their website. I'm trying to be done with them, but wanted to use up the remaining points in my account. Of course, those points have been removed from my account AND the reservation is gone.

Hertz has gone down the crapper in a big way. Yeah they are in bankruptcy reorg but that is no reason to treat your customers like garbage and drive them away. There will be nobody wanting to rent with them when they come out of bankruptcy with how they are treating people now.

Account activity is dysfunctional and does not show recent rentals or points credit properly
Useless call line (see above)
Crazy rates at many locations on order of 3-5x higher than competition

Especially exasperated with Hertz today. Agents at Seattle 8th Ave HLE refusing to upgrade me or honor my 5 Star, saying that the reservation says I'm First Time Gold and that there is nothing they can do on their end to fix it. Completely unwilling and unable to help which seems to be the standard.
Call/email lines dead as per above.

I was about to post a thread about this, but seems quite relevant here, especially that you two brought it up.

WHO is even renting with Hertz these days? I don’t get it. Their rates are laughable and not in line with any of the competition.

So who even books with them now? Certainly not many people with status when National is much better (or even Avis, using the app swap and not interacting with any of their miserable staff).

And people without status - why would they book here? Go for the cheapest price.

Are they trying to adopt the pre-COVID Delta strategy - price higher than the competition and you have inventory available when others don’t, so people are forced to pay your higher prices? That only works with high demand/holidays, nowadays, anyways.

Their rack rate pricing may be meh, but their discounted rates can be extremely attractive. We price out thousands of rentals per day on a discounted basis and we can tell you without hesitation that Hertz comes out at the lowest-priced option on quite a few of them and they win the business.

While the FT crowd with status would typically opt for National, the truth is that the vast majority of the traveling public just wants the lowest price possible and they don't even bother with the loyalty programs, which they obviously realize is a mistake once they see the long line to get into a car.

We're certainly not disputing that Hertz has a ton of challenges and service levels have fallen off precipitously but there are bigger problems facing the rental industry right now and to the average person, getting a rental for their trip at a decent price is the overriding concern.

Thank you for your prompt reply! And for your fabulous website!

I have indeed used Autoslash many times before to get even better deals at Hertz, pre COVID. Some of their best deals were with AAA or ABN rates.

However usually the discount amount was still a reflection off the original - i.e. the lower rates held compared to the competition, but the association discounts made it even better.

It sounds like you’re saying now, they’ve potentially jacked up the rack rate, but the association rates are competitive? If so, that’s funny because who are they targeting with the high rack rates?

Either way, good to know, and thank you for your insight! Very very valuable!

Picked up a rental at MIA on March 6 (Range Rover Evoque) that I will be returning on April 3. I got a very good rate on this rental. The RR is a 2019 with 29,000 miles, no complaints .... BUT, after a very long flight when I picked up the car directly from G+ parking areas, I noticed quite a bit of superficial damage to the paint job (black car with spots of white - paint? - and some nicks and scratches. At teh exit booth talked to teh attendant, who had watched me via video taking photos of the car. He said not to worry, all had been noted previously, though this is my fist Hertz rental since 2019 and the first time I had never been given the document with the car diagram for damage. Do they not do that any more?

This didn't sit right with me so the next day I called the MIA location directly, several times. Each time you press through the phone menu to finally try to reach a CSR; the line rings and you end up on a voice mail that says the mail box is full!

Impossible to reach anyone on any other Hertz number, so I sent a message via the web site on March 8, which was immediately acknowledged by an auto-reply from Hertz (no case number, etc., though), but nothing since .... 🙄🙄

You did the smart thing by taking photos of the car. Ideally, you could tell from the photos that you were in the section of the lot where you'd pick up the vehicle but regardless, you shouldn't have anything to worry about. We don't find Hertz to be very nitpicky about stuff like that. They understand that a vehicle with 29K on the clock is going to sustain "normal wear and tear" (some more than others). Nicks and scratches are part of that.

We'd advise you to avoid Hertz phone hell and rest easy. Even if you get someone on the phone over there they are basically just going to blow you off, because they really can't give you any definitive answers anyway. All should be fine when you return (they probably won't give it a second look) and if not, just ask for a manager and show them the photos you took.

Quick advice for next time... Instead of (or in addition to) taking photos, take a quick video while you slowly walk around the car. You can sort of annotate as you go like, "rear bumber is scuffed on on the driver's side", "passenger side front rim has multiple scratches", etc. Then you can pan around to make it obvious you were in the pickup section prior to leaving the lot. Basically, that leaves no question whatsoever what condition the vehicle was in prior to leaving the lot.

AutoSlash Many thanks for your helpful reply ... I hadn't thought of taking a video, excellent idea, especially with the possibility to add commentary. I'll follow your advice and rest easy until I return the car on April 3. Thanks again for your useful input.