JAXPax

Hello all,
Seeking any anecdotes of this occurring, or suggestions to handle differently (other than canceling all future Hertz reservations and making them again with National, which I already did).

Three weeks ago I had a reservation to rent a two day weekend rental from Hertz at a major airport with a CONRAC. I'm Hertz President's Circle. Not seeing much of anything desirable at all, I did eventually find a small SUV that would be suitable. I did my walk around, took a photo of the license plate (so I could add it to my toll profile later), scanned the barcode on the windshield into the app to activate the rental, and put my bag in the back. As I close the back, the vehicle locks. I can't get the driver or passenger door to open. Trying the driver door again, car beeps and unlocks. I turn around to see someone holding a remote walking toward the vehicle, rental papers in hand. They said they had the car (no idea why they would grab one off the selection area then go inside to the desk). A little back and forth that I am showing this rented to me in the Hertz app, and I said whatever, took my bag, and went inside. Waited and spoke to the agent and advised of situation. I asked them to please remove that car from showing rented by me because I cannot undo it in the app. He said do not worry, it will all get settled at the exit gate that when they try to drive out, and name doesn't match me, they'll rent it per that person's ID, and when I take another car to exit, they'll change the vehicle assignment. I started to walk away, but annoyed at the person's overall attitude, I turned back and asked them to please just cancel the rental and I will go elsewhere. I made a National reservation and walked down the lot and got an A4 off the Aisle.

Two days ago, I'm reviewing my Amex statement and see a huge charge from Hertz, quite a bit more than my reservation would have been if I did take a car. I go online and see a receipt matching in my Gold Club profile.... the car I originally scanned apparently was driven around for long after I had town to go home, and then returned. Appears to me nothing got fixed, my reservation wasn't canceled (or presumably the person at the desk didn't act or the other person drove out the gate without their ID being verified properly). Called Hertz who was of little help and said they have to open a case, will hear back in 5-7 business days. I asked what are they going to do in order to resolve. They said they have to verify if I drove the car or not. Many follow up questions I did not ask about how they were going to go about that... I voiced my concerns starting with they clearly didn't verify ID on the reservation at the exit. "We will make a note of your concern."

I filed an Amex dispute. They agreed that the first time I attempted to resolve it was on date of rental when I advised them to cancel it. I also called the police department for that location (it's on an airport that is its own legal city and has its own police force) who took a report, and said that I did the right thing by reaching out, given someone drove around a car tied to me for better part of a week. They are able to verify my identity because I used to manage an airline location on that airport and had an airport ID until two years ago - which the officer was able to pull up my record so they have my info - photo, fingerprints, background check results, etc. which presumably would make verifying camera footage easy.

I am waiting to likely get a charge to hit for tolls.

Has anybody had a situation like this? Any suggestions on how to have prevented it, or different means of going about a resolution?

Appreciate any feedback. I did move quickly in making the rounds of calls first thing in the morning after I caught it on the statement (maybe too quickly, maybe jumped the gun with the police report) as I was in another city about to board a flight and had let it ruin my morning (though many kudos to Amex Plat agent who was very nice, calm, assuring).

notquiteaff

Scary story, but perhaps not surprising in the “Hertz Mess” forum.

Two questions/comments:

1. I didn’t know you could scan the bar code in the app. New feature? And what does it actually do that would not happen at the exit gate? Seems like (given your experience) it’s better not to do that?

2. If the other guy got the key fob at the counter, it seems that it wasn’t available for self selection? I.e., you couldn’t have driven away in it even if you had tried?

What location was this?

JAXPax

It was at DFW.

1 - It is a part of the self-checkout feature on the app. I'd not done it before, but most of my Hertz rentals are places too small to have a "select your own car" line-up. In theory all you have to do then is show your ID and a barcode or something at the exit gate. National does it (though their QR codes won't scan 90% of the time).

2 - The person acted confused at the concept of selecting a car and just driving out to the gate. I got the impression they took the keys and went inside, then locked it when walking back out and saw me with the back end open.

notquiteaff

Interesting. Where they should use that self-scan is at the car return.

m907

This sort of thing is to be expected with Hertz nowadays. They are a barrel-scraping corporation with no interest in customer service ever since they went bankrupt.

It sounds like your chargeback was successful. I would have filed for arbitration or a small claims lawsuit to stick it to them as that would have cost them a lot more money.

TerryK

Sorry to learn about your experience and thank you for warming other FTers about potential pitfall.

You need to escalate with Hertz to get a resolution. Hertz may put you on DNR list if you chargeback without a resolution.

7Continents

For my own personal future rentals: You went to the car aisle and before noticing there was no key fob in the car you did whatever in the app? And the other person had gone to the car, took the fob and walked away with it?
Yipes. I always go to the car, grab the fob and wouldn't walk away if I didn't intend to drive it out, or at least lock it if I did.

c1ue

I had an experience last year with the Avis location in downtown Atlanta.
I can't speak to other Avis or other rental car company locations, but what apparently happened here is that this location uses a literal hand written list of daily rentals - and my reservation # was switched for someone else's by mistake.
The consequences were Kafka-esque as well as comical:
1) The car I was supposed to get as notified by text, was not available as it was apparently given to someone else. I instead got a ginormous 4x4 Ford F150 truck - just what I needed to drive 600 miles from Atlanta to Charleston SC to Hilton Head SC and back... And I got this car after sitting in their office for 1.5 hours because they basically gave my car away to someone else. It was apparently graduation week so they were low to start with, to be fair.
2) Emails from Avis now refer to me by the other person's name
3) I never got credit for the double credit Amazon Prime promo; I am not even sure I got credit at all. Maybe the other person got it.
4) I got 2 different notices - 1 for a $12 ding plus $35 in services charges; I just sucked that up without question until the 2nd notice of another $50 charge for a service call. As I never made this service call, I fired up an email to Avis complaining that it is almost certain that they were assigning damages and this service call to me when it was not actually me in the car in question.
5) related to the above - I got 3 different Avis emails with receipts for a credit card charge for my Avis rental. 1 was correct.
So - don't assume that it is computers that are at fault although it is clear the computers made the problem much, much worse in my case.

TIGA31328

Hertz is the worst and I avoid renting them. I always make sure the keys are in the car when it’s an aisle, too many times I’ve loaded one with my things only to find no key inside or it.

i would not have given up the vehicle, once it was assigned to your account, and would have made them get an employee to fix it before changing vehicles.

good on you for being proactive. Hertz has a long recent history of not properly tracking their inventory.

i had a location once try to charge me 2,000 in mileage, they wouldn’t budge. I asked them how they thought so could have done that with a two day rental and never left the city and had receipts for food and hotel. Someone with Hertz National told me to request their paper mileage log, eureka, they dropped the mileage, because no one was filling out the log after each rental.

Good luck!
Tiga

mechteach

I had someone take my rental car from Avis in SFO - not when I was in it; my flight was delayed, and I didn't end up picking up the car. I had called to cancel the reservation once the delays started stacking up, and they confirmed that, but ended up giving the car to someone else anyway. Once the charge posted, I fought it with Avis repeatedly (even showing that I was in the air on the way to SFO from across the country around 40 minutes after the car was driven away), but they never reversed the charge, despite multiple agents saying they were going to do so. Next step, I disputed it with my CC (Chase), and so the next part of my saga will now probably be relevant to you....

The CC dispute was easy; they looked at the evidence and reversed the charge. But it turns out that had two consequences. First of all, I went to pick up a rental car from Budget about 6 months later on a holiday weekend in a tiny airport, which I was able to book under my profile just fine, only to get to the front of the line (fastrack wasn't functional at that airport) and find that my reservation was cancelled, and I was blacklisted "forever" from all future rentals from any Avis-affiliated company (I've appealed that, but never heard anything back from any postal or email address, so I assume it still stands). Almost all rental cars were gone from that airport, and I had to drive 2.5 hours to my destination, with no public transit options - it was a nightmare.

Secondly, Avis sent my account to collections. I had to dispute that with both the collections agency (who were also super-reasonable about it, and handled it very professionally) and the credit agencies due to the hit to my credit rating (again, this was fixable, but it was all just a tremendous pain in the neck).

So, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you might have more headache in your future. I hope Hertz acts differently than Avis, but I doubt it.

notquiteaff

At this point I would make it my personal hobby (and mission) to be a major pain the rear for Avis. Sue them in small claims court for time and expenses dealing with their mistakes (since you never actually completed a contract with them, presumably an arbitration clause in the contract doesn’t apply). Then create a website (say howavisscrewedmeover.com) and post my experience and post links to it everywhere Avis is discussed.

Loren Pechtel

Can you sue for your time in small claims??

notquiteaff

Don’t know, but what if contracted my BIL lawyer to write the letters etc.?

JAXPax

If this is the one on Courtland Street, nothing at all would surprise me. It seems to be where half of Atlanta's Uber and food delivery drivers rent cars. A friend of mine went to rent from there for a road trip last week on a Saturday morning and there were about a half dozen more people with reservations than there were cars and the resolution was "just all of you go to the airport."

Yes, I opened the driver door mainly to see what the mileage was (I'm not taking a 50k mile special) but didn't look for the key fob I guess as it's usually down in the cupholder and not readily in sight. I then closed the door, walked around the car, took a photo of the license plate/back of car so I could add it to my toll profile as a temporary, scanned the barcode into the app to rent it, opened the back lift gate, put my bag in, and upon closing it went back to get in, and the car was locked. I tried the passenger door, then walked back and tried the driver door and it unlocked and opened - I thought I had maybe activated it with the key fob inside but that seemed odd as most wouldn't lock with the key in it. That's when I turned to see someone holding paperwork and the key walking toward the car from the booth.

So lesson learned on grabbing the key fob first thing (or looking for it at least). I usually do that.


I got off the phone with Hertz customer service a couple hours ago. I had not heard back from them and it has been two weeks. The person I spoke to acted like no information of what I said was on my account (that they could see I guess) but said that a full refund was processed by Hertz today back to my Amex. I haven't seen the credit yet, but now see I got a note from Amex my dispute was resolved. Spoke to the Amex rep there who said it was, in so many words, resolved to my satisfaction by merchant's actions. I guess they accepted it and cooperated.

Amex rep agreed that opening a police report probably helped the matter resolve quickly. I called the DFW Airport police dept to give them follow up from my end (and they asked just to call back to confirm when I see the refund). The officer I'd spoken to wasn't in today but the officer today told me that someone did pay Hertz a visit. I'm glad I did take that step because it gives me peace of mind (necessarily or unnecessarily) to have proactively on record that the license plate assigned to my name cruising around the DFW Metroplex for better part of a week wasn't me. I feel that 1.) if I did nothing, something would be more likely to come of it, and 2.) this was the far easier path than having to go back and make an explanation in the future.

Unfortunately I will have to deal with Hertz in the future as my work travel takes me to a lot of small airports and sometimes Hertz is the sole option - and I mean sole real option when the alternative is the town has 2 taxicabs, driven by a husband and wife who don't drive after 6pm or on weekends, and if you're really really lucky you could promise the hotel front desk $10 and they come and pick you up in their personal car.

Appreciate the advice and feedback from the group here on FT as always.

rhwbullhead

I've walked away with the fob before. I'd do this in LAS all the time. I'd pick my vehicle, lock it (this is the key difference I guess), and go to the gold desk to get the damage form so I can fill it out at my leisure instead of feeling rushed trying to do it at the exit gate. (Interestingly, some gold desks in other airports wouldn't give me the form. PHL and ATL told me I have to do that all at the gate). When adding drivers, sometimes I've just done it at gold desk if there's no one there (plus I can see if contract has right price. I've had them screw up price in LAS and then I have to drive back around and go to gold desk to fix the mess up).

On another note, I had no idea there was a way to scan in the app like OP did. Obviously this was a big mess but I also agree that the OP needs to straighten it out with Hertz least they wind up on the DNR list. They might not want to use Hertz again after that experience, but in personally would not want to be on any DNR list. Never know if Hertz, thrifty or dollar might be only rental available or only reasonably priced rental available at some point in the future.