Docrad

I have been a very loyal user of Hertz and a gold member, so naturally when my mother-in-law needed a rental car in Dallas I made her a reservation at Hertz. Since both she and I are also USAA members she would get a discount as well. She got her car for one week. Well it turns out she needed it longer so she extended for an addition week. She needed the car one more week but forgot to call in to extend it. Well the next thing she knows she is being arrested by the Southlake police for alleged car theft. My elderly mother-in-law getting arrested, what a nightmare. We tried calling Hertz's local office to no avail. I then tried to contact customer service and was told she needed to call in. How could she, she was sitting in a jail. We eventually bonded her out. And she never received a call from Hertz saying the car was overdue and that it needed to be returned, which seemed to me would have been the better way for a company with good customer service would have done . Now , thinking the case would be dropped, we thought we would just pay the overdue charges towing charges etc., we have not yet heard from Hertz, we also found out the prosecutor is talking about pressing charges. It seems to me that 1) Hertz should step up and tell us what they need and drop the charges or 2) the overzealous prosecutors office in Texas should realize this was misunderstanding not a crime. If this is the way they do business at Hertz, I am going to avoid them at all cost and make sure everybody I come in contact with know how much trouble hertz has caused my family.

The Doctor

ayg

Not justifying the arrest but at what point were you going to notify Hertz you were keeping the car for longer? The usually changes dramatically one day past the original return date and most would pick up another car just to avoid that rate change.

Who does Gold Customer service forward you to when you call asking about this occurance?

Hertz4me

seems to me story too good to be true, if your overdue by 1 week your not going to ge arrested by the police. They will sent out a letter demanding the car be returned, after several weeks overdue, somebody from hertz will try to call the customer before they do anything.

rentalguy

I think there is porbably more to the story. For the police to be involved, the following would have had to happen: 1) the phone number your mother in law gave HERTZ was either incorrect or they left messages to that number and didnt recieve a phone call back. 2) the credit card declined.

Having reported many vehicles "stolen" over the years, I can tell you the first thing the police ask us is: did you call the renter (how many times? is the ph# valid, did you leave a msg etc), is the card "valid", have you sent a demand letter to the address on file by registered mail? Only then will they even consider taking the report, and usually only if there has been no contact with the renter for over 2 weeks (unless there is suspected fraud). Now, granted Texas law enforcement may be different, and I dont think your mother in law deserved to be arrested, but I cant imagine the police would even take the report unless there was several attempts to contact the renter and the credit card declined. A week is a significant amount of time to be overdue, but unless the credit card declined (which I assume it was??) I dont think the police would have jumped on it, neither would Hertz. There has to be more to it. Rental companies dont make a habit of reporting every car that is overdue by a few days as stolen unless there were other issues at play.

Docrad

I wish it was too good to be true but my mother in law is being prosecuted for this. And no noone from hertz called. I think this is outrageous. The people at customer service kept trying to refer us to the legal department. Do you work for hertz because unless they solve this they will be losing many good customers for this horred way of treating customers.

Brick

I agree we are missing a real big piece of the story!

When I worked for Enterprise the time a car went overdue to the time we could actually report it stolen was about 3 weeks. Numerous phone calls had to be made to the home (and work or cell if known), we had to drive by the home and work addresses multiple times, send two certified letters, and etc were all required before we could even think about contacting the authorities. During this entire time, we're taking as much as we could from the credit card (which was always declined at the same time a car went overdue).

I'm sure Hertz is the same way. They just aren't going to say "Oh a car is overdue, let's call the police to report it stolen and then forget about it!"

skywalkerLAX

Is the OP probably switching "a week" with "a month" ?

Why would you "forget" to call for an extension when you remembered it the first time ? It's not really a minor thing to do...

Sorry, but I'm not buying this story as it's written here !

olivetti

Here in the UK, we report stolen as a last report, thats after we have proved to the police we have given renter plenty of opportunities to contact us, drive by's, 2 recorded letters and exhausted every other avenue and advised renter by letter we are 'withdrawing consent of use'.

Brick

Maybe your mother in law got a DUI and was too embarassed to admit it, hence the Hertz story...

Or she had warrants.