Crazy, I had something that could have escalated to a wrongful arrest with Hertz less than a week ago.
Hertz initially gave me a car with a mechanical problem, so they swapped it out before we had even left the rental car lot.
The attendant at the gate assured me they had updated the paperwork.
They hadn’t. I was on the phone with support for hours trying to fix this. They never fixed it and I had to pay for someone else’s rental. They even told me that the car was not marked as stolen.
In addition, when I returned the car, the attendant looked at me pretty funny and said it was good I never got pulled over.
Nothing got done on this until I threatened to bring my company’s travel coordinator into the mix (I work at a large company that spends a lot on Hertz rentals every year).
Still waiting for a refund of the additional fees they charged for my “second rental car”. The way it was handled by Hertz customer service and the location manager was an absolute joke.
I’m not unique here either, after this experience I went on my company’s internal chat and found tons of stories similar to this.
There is either a big problem with the process at Hertz or a severe bug in their system that they aren’t acknowledging.
> Still waiting for a refund of the additional fees they charged for my “second rental car”. The way it was handled by Hertz customer service and the location manager was an absolute joke.
Went to rent a car with a company card from Hertz. For some reason the franchise decided they needed to do a credit check on me ("not a score, just a general check") personally, which I "failed" (had only been in the country two years).
"We're going to be unable to rent to you." (I started typing "sorry, sir, we're going to..." when I remembered at no point did they apologize).
Okay I say, figuring out a taxi to the Enterprise dealership, since my patience was already thin. "Just refund my prepaid rental and I'll be on my way."
"Prepaid rentals are not refundable."
"..."
Huh. Take someone's payment. They show up to rent the car. They have a valid credit card and ID. Refuse to rent to them. Refuse to refund them the rental amount?
That got sorted, but like you, not there. Nearly a week later with corporate. Who still acted like they were doing me a favor.
Is this US story? Sounds pretty damn ridiculous to me as European. But then again I use only rentals for my and my family's vacations, and simply going with cheapest offers in given category worked great for us in dozens of cases.
No shenanigans like mentioned, but I never used the big companies since they are more costly for 0 added value to us (and often have huge queues on the airports, not something I want to experience with 2 small kids).
This doesn’t bring me confidence. Just rented from Hertz yesterday and after waiting 30 minutes to even get to the counter I needed to wait another 30 minutes for them to locate the car I was supposed to be renting. They never located the car and swapped to a different car. I’m going to be paranoid that someone else’s rental is going to show up on my tab now. Not a good experience especially after a very long flight. Their process and operations is broken. It should not take more than an hour to rent a car when you’ve already reserved online and already have an account setup with them.
I normally rent with Enterprise or Sixt through Lyft with no issue but they did not have any available cars so I tried Hertz. It now doesn’t surprise me Hertz went into bankruptcy.
Someone rented though them, but put in my email address. I get this a lot, so I just ignored it. Then they got in a crash, and I got stuff from Sixt about it. Then a collector email me. That's when I said they always had the wrong email address and they left me alone, but still.
Awful customer service seems to be industry standard now. Companies have worked out that they can just entirely ignore any problems that aren't fixed by automated/scripted responses without cutting into their profits more than having proper customer support would.
Hopefully some startups will realize they can attract customers by paying for customer support staff with basic reading comprehension skills (and not incentivising them to close tickets as fast as possible without actually confirming issues are fixed), but I'm not holding my breath.
It’s become really frustrating. You used to be able to just talk to people to solve problems. Even Amazon in the 2000s was like this. Nowadays, it’s just nothing but “the computer says no”. I ordered a keyboard from Logitech’s own website, as I’m trying to avoid Amazon these days. The keyboard was marked as ready to ship and awaiting carrier for two to three weeks. I called several times because I was needing the keyboard, and I asked them to just cancel the order. They couldn’t because “it was already shipping”, but that status held for nearly three weeks. I asked if they could just call the shipping warehouse or some actual person who worked in that area to either pull the box back or actually have it shipped. I assumed it had just gotten kicked under a table or something. Logitech acted like I had just asked them to solve Schrodinger’s equation. It was flabbergasting that a product just enters into this purgatory state, and no one could talk to anyone or even verify what it’s actual state was.
In another case, UPS destroyed a suitcase and refused to pay their minimum insurance on it, claiming that they don’t pay insurance for boxes and the suitcase was a box. Their customer service refused and could not care less.
These big companies do not care. Customers are a statistic, and the companies are perfectly happy treating customers like shit if the statistics say it doesn’t matter much to their bottom line. It’s also why they just ignore regulations because they get hit with fines that are a pittance compared to their profits.
It’s gonna keep getting worse be like that for everything. Computer systems have turned every employee’s perspective into “not my problem”.
Same inventory purgatory issue happened to me about 6 months ago with Best Buy. Ordered an item for same-day delivery that was in stock at my local store, and they were unable to deliver the item for several weeks even though the item was clearly available. Had to buy the item at another store and then return the Best Buy item when it arrived weeks later.
I think a big part of the problem is consolidation and lack of competition. In an ideal market, if you had a bad experience like these you would stop using that company, and tell your friends to as well. But, in many industries there are at most a handful of companies to choose from, and as long as none of the other big companies have good customer support, they don't have any incentive to have good customer support. And a newcomer doesn't have much chance of competing unless it is extremely well funded, or is more niche.
Diffuse assets like reputation don't appear on the quarterly asset sheet. So the first time such a company has a bad quarter they'll be forced to pawn them off for cents on the dollar in the name of 'efficiency' ortheir funders will have a tantrum and coup the management.
The vc funding model is fundamentally incapable of respecting anything that isn't 'more control for investors and make line go up now'
I make it a rule never to leave the lot in a rented vehicle, from any company, without a printed copy of the rental agreement that matches the vehicle number and license plate, and that shows my name and the return time I expect.
Hertz’s customers shouldn’t have to be this careful, of course.
In addition to verifying the paperwork, I also take a full set of pictures before and after returning rental vehicles as evidence of the condition they are in.
Enterprise attempted to file a claim against my insurance for damage they stated happened while it was in my possession. In reality, I had returned the vehicle in pristine condition that morning and there was a minor hail storm that swept through the area that evening which damaged all the vehicles parked in the lot. It was pretty easy to see what had actually happened and I told them I was taking photographs and was prepared to sue them if they filed a fraudulent claim against my insurance. They backed down but I will never rent from that company again.
Weirdly enough, I've never had any problems with Hertz.
Take a video instead. It's faster and have a better coverage.
I always have do full 360 degrees inspection during pick up and return. Clockwise / counter clockwise, scanning top to bottom. Often narrating with what I'm currently seeing. Also giving often damaged areas a good attention (wheels, bumpers, etc)
I got double charged for a similar situation in summer of 2019. I had to swap out a car due to a mechanical issue half way through a trip at a different location than where I rented from.
I got charged 2x. Called 3 times and never could get an agent to fully understand my issue even after escalating to managers each time. I got promised a refund once but it never showed up. After over a month of fruitless calls I did a chargeback.
I will never use Hertz again. Criminally incompetent scumbags running that company. I suggest you send a final email for a paper trail and do a chargeback if they continue their incompetence.
I split time between cities where I don't need a car, and a town where I do. The plan was to rent when in the latter. Hertz was so horrible I wound up buying the one Subaru on the lot (after an interregnal Turo). Going into a dealership blind was literally less painful than dealing with their B.S.
Shitty customer service is pretty much the norm these days across all industries in my experience.
Even companies historically known for good customer service have realized its an unnecessary cost center. eg Amazon used to have great customer service at the click of a "Contact Us" link. Now you can still kinda get customer service but its 18 levels deep to contact someone who can do anything for you and 99.9% of the process of getting from realizing you need service to getting something done is a byzantine automated electronic process clearly designed to make people give up and go away to minimize actual customer service costs.
Not that this really excuses them, but if you search for "support" (in the product search box) you'll see a link that takes you to their CS flow or you'll see their phone number, depending on your interface.
This omnisearch box stuff is taking some time for me to get used to.
The process uses ancient terminal tech duct taped together and connected to dot matrix printers. This contraption is operated by inexperienced folks that are used to iPads.
Failure is all but inevitable, it’s a wounded things even work at all
> Nothing got done on this until I threatened to bring my company’s travel coordinator into the mix (I work at a large company that spends a lot on Hertz rentals every year).
their customers don't find this problem bad enough to stop doing business with them, (including your big company), so Hertz will continue doing what they have been doing.
adding any additional checklists , training, or quality control to their existing process would cost money, and so would reduce profits.
Much like enterprise software, Hertz's customers when it comes to the enterprise is not he person getting in the car. It takes a bit or some luck/unluck for someone who matters to get hosed and end the contract.
> Claimants of wrongful arrest suits before the bankruptcy are left fighting a shell company left behind to handle the remaining debts of Hertz.
^ This is the final paragraph, but I wish the story went into more detail about it.
The plaintiffs' lawyer alleges that there have been more than 300 cases of wrongfully arrested customers since 2015, and that most of those cases were subject to the bankruptcy proceedings.
So there are likely 150+ people who would ordinarily be able to seek recompense from the company -- but because it went through the bankruptcy process, now they get to wrestle with a shell company that has been crafted to protect Hertz as much as possible from financial liability.
Meanwhile, the company gets to carry on and -- as this lawsuit shows -- commit the same injustices after emerging from bankruptcy.
I think this would be fixed by allowing lawyers in legal cases to make 'unusual' requests (ie. that this be paid for by the new owner of the Hertz brand, not the original company). If the Jury agrees that it's a good plan, even if the ownership structure normally wouldn't mean that party has that liability, then the judge makes that order.
That could also cover cases like 'person X shields themselves with an LLP', or 'bob gave all his money away to Fred before declaring bankruptcy' (go after Fred instead).
It makes the law 'less strict' about exactly who needs to pay, and gives Jurys more room for whatever they think is 'fair'.
Offtopic, but perhaps illustrative: back when Hertz did very short term 'on demand' rentals the GPS system in the car was obviously faulty and I got a call from someone from Hertz asking when I was going to return then rental, in a disagreeable tone.
I told them I'd already returned it (usually locking the car at the return location terminates the rental). They didn't accept this and proceeded to tell me I should return it and the various consequences of not doing so. I told them again I'd returned it and suggested that their management unit was faulty which still didn't convince them. I then told them that there was a Hertz rental office right there and I'd put someone in the office on the phone who could confirm that I had indeed returned the car. They also rejected this.
At that point I told them that if they wanted their car they could find it where I told them it was and that they should fix their system and there was nothing else I could do for them. She made some vague threat and I got off the phone. I never heard anything about it again and was billed correctly.
That's not how it worked, it you could hire the car for an hour at a time, it was all done using your mobile phone and automation. There was no staff on location (but in my case there was a Hertz office there but they were not involved with the kind of rental I was doing).
many places don't work like that - ie you fly out early and the office is not opened yet. Happened to us many times, last time a week ago from Sicily, we were returning the car before 7am and rental office opened 8am. You have to leave keys in keybox and hope all will be fine (which it was)
About 20 years ago, early in my career, I got into an argument with corporate and a rental car agency over an extra day because the agent did not understand that the day begins at 12:00 am.
Since, then, I've had a paranoia that results in me, if I'm not directly handing off the car to a person, to take a picture of the car. I turn on meta data and the pic has the car, license plate, and enough of the drop off location in the background as scheduled. If there's any problems, I have the picture as backup.
It came into play last year. Avis called me and asked, "Where's our car?" I had changed the drop off location and date via the app. I called loss prevention, they confirmed the change, and I sent them the pic. The agent instantly changed his tune from aggressive to puzzled and quickly dropped any harassment. No idea if the car was ever found, but the pic instantly stopped Avis from bothering me any further.
For nearly ten years now, I have judiciously photographed every rental car I use. On pickup I take at least four photos of each quarter and anything I can find which could possibly be argued as damage. On drop off I also take photos of the car from four quarters.
I’ve had, especially in Europe, multiple incidents where prior damage is described as “too minor to note” on pickup, but the guy handling returns has a very different opinion.
This is very common with housing rentals, and not just in the US. You absolutely cannot trust their documentation of what is or isn't a prior issue. They WILL change their documentation to try to get that deposit back or such.
I learned this lesson as an 18 year old idiot first time renter with some friends. Luckily one of my roommates' siblings was a law student, and took on advocating for us for fun and learning. We got back 3x our deposit after it was clearly explained to the management company what liabilities they were creating.
100% this! Had this happen to me in Germany, a scratch on the bottom of the door suddenly became a “we need to repaint the entire door”. I had been warned about this “business model” before I went too. I’m convinced they scam tourists with this scam all over Germany.
Or charging you $1,100 for a windshield replacement for a crack. Apropos of anything else, I guarantee they're not replacing with OEM glass. Half the time probably charging you a windshield replacement for some epoxy resin or whatever the chip filler is.
It's often significantly easier to email a JPEG or two than attach a multi-gigabyte video clip with a codec that may not be compatible with the recipient's system.
It's also much easier to preview, zoom, and manipulate a single-frame photo to find points of interest, than comb through a shakycam video for them.
Why not obtain both, a full-length video for personal reference, and a few snapshots for attachments? That's been my M.O. lately.
> the agent did not understand that the day begins at 12:00 am.
But most car rentals aren't based upon calendar days, they are generally based upon 24-hour blocks that start and end at the time you drive the car out.
Also, buddy, 20 years is a long time to hang onto a grievance about possibly being charged one extra day... if that's the level of your suffering in life, consider yourself pretty lucky.
I take photos of everything too. It's super easy,and cannot possibly hurt!
(That being said, at least in my rental agreements, "day" starts 24 hrs after pickup time. I.e. If I picked car up at 09:23am, I'll get charged for 2nd day at 09:24am tomorrow...)
Thirty years ago I rent a wreck (anyone still know that company?). It was cheap but then I lost a hubcap or it was never on the car, I don't know. I was pressured to pay $50 on the spot but I managed to decline. I told them I need to think this over and will return to pay for the hubcap. I was trying to find out whether the hubcap really was this expensive. Then I talked to a friend and he told me to ignore it.
Back home in Switzerland I discovered a charge of $50 on my credit card statement. I called the credit card company and they asked me whether I signed it, and I said, no. This was my first successful chargeback ever.
I learnt to check the car carefully before taking it. By the way, the trunk got wet during rainy weather. I put plastic bags on the trunk floor because my things got wet from below. I told them and it was fine, just the missing hubcap was a problem.
People are slowly realizing that one of the actual roles of police in US society is to protect the interests of large corporations, wealthy people and those in entrenched positions of power. And not actually to serve/protect the population.
>People are slowly realizing that one of the actual roles of police in US society is to protect the interests of large corporations
I'd say protect the interests of capital, which just so happens to be something corporations have a lot of.
Think of it this way: grand larceny isn't dependent on the victim's net worth, so even if stealing $100 from a poor person has 1,000x impact on their life vs. stealing $100,000 from a wealthy person's private business, you can guarantee that the $100,000 will be what the police focus on.
Imagine this scenario: I report my car as stolen. The police find someone driving a car matching my report, but upon pulling them over, they claim it's not stolen and have all the appropriate paperwork, license and insurance. I expect the police would use some judgement and figure out maybe there's been an error or misunderstanding. Provided the driver identifies themselves, provides contact details and everything matches up, the police would almost certainly let them go and follow it up later.
Similarly in these cases, I assume the drivers of the "stolen" cars have the keys, some paperwork, email or other confirmation that they hired a car from Hertz and aren't driving or acting suspiciously. The cars won't have been hotwired, the police haven't been provided with any evidence of it being stolen. Provided the driver is compliant with the police investigation and there is no other cause for suspicion, there is no reason to arrest them at that point.
Why would a report by a company be treated as different to a report by Joe Bloggs? We had a similar scenario in the UK with the Post Office Scandal. The authorities seem to believe companies without question and give them the benefit of the doubt that they wouldn't to a private individual.
I don’t agree with your scenario. If the owner showed documentation that they owned the car, and the police found the car and were shown conflicting documentation, they would engage in some additional legwork, likely involving either roadside detention or arrest. If the car owner had been able to have a warrant put out on a specific person; there would definitely be an arrest.
The problem is Hertz’ “documentation” is bogus, not that the police pursue stolen cars. (Though, at this point, Hertz reports should be viewed more skeptically by the police.)
What's funny is that a few years ago there was a camera 'rental' company much like Uber, where you lent out your gear.
There was several issues, one of which was the great lengths they went to imply that your gear was insured, only to find out its not, because insurers considered it "unlawful taking" not theft or fraud, if it wasn't returned. It should be noted that "unlawful taking", despite the name, is not a crime or legal concept, but purely an insurance concept. As a result, somehow, they'd convince the police that this was a civil matter.
Yet somehow, refuse to return (or be accused of refusing to return rather) a vehicle gets you lit up for Grand Theft Auto, which is most certainly a crime.
I don’t understand, sorry. If you’re asking where stolen cars are investigated, I would say worldwide. Several hundred thousand are stolen annually in the US, where Hertz operates.
Even the people who would consider themselves fervently anti Marxist ideology at this point would have to recognize the role police play in the US's power structures. Say this out loud and people act like you're the literal reincarnation of Karl himself.
Requiring a duty to protect is extremely dangerous to society.
It elevates police above regular citizens.
Contrary to popular perception police have almost no powers beyond that of regular citizens. Citizens can make arrests, police differ in that they can do so even if they are not direct witnesses of a crime. Citizens can enter private property to save lives, and can break laws and regulations to do so as well. Police can only enter private property absent a threat to life or property if given permission either by the owner or courts.
They have qualified immunity, as do several other professions and citizens acting in extraordinary capacities such as good samaritans.
The law and public expectations should be that police are regular citizens with a regular job, bound by the same laws as everyone else.
Not that they are specially-designated protectors.
They only become specially-designated protectors when they take someone into custody—- and depriving someone of their freedom of movement is one of the few things regular citizens cannot realistically do.
Elevating them to have some special extraordinary status is, again, very dangerous. Many powers would be enabled by such a status which do not exist today that could be justified by granting them a “duty” to protect.
Additionally, just from a philosophical perspective doing so would be immoral. Regular citizens, with very few exceptions such as vessel captains, parents, spouses, and employers (in the context of being required to be provide a safe working environment and facilitate rescue of endangered employees) having a “duty” to protect anyone. It is unreasonable, to myself and many others, to levy such a duty on anyone except in extraordinary circumstances.
Airline captains have a duty to protect their passengers. This RIGHTLY grants them near-total, absolute, and unquestionable authority over the conduct of their crew and all souls on board. Giving or forcing a duty to protect to or on police would do the same.
That’s bad.
And because police are NOT extraordinary they don’t have a parental-like duty to protect their children (the public). Nor are we their spouses or employees.
As far as cynicism goes, they don’t protect the interests of large corporations that’s more the purview of politicians. Police are generally just enforcing the laws as written.
The court decision and the cases it references you yourself linked to goes over some of my points.
Many people respond with “but what about when the police…” but the egregious cases of misconduct from which they draw outrage are what are wrong and should be stopped— not an absence of some duty to protect.
> Contrary to popular perception police have almost no powers beyond that of regular citizens. Citizens can make arrests
Go make some citizens arrests or set yourself up as a detective investigating felony crimes as a private citizen and see what happens to you from the "real" police when they learn what you're doing...
Every time a mugger is tackled and held down to the ground, that is a citizen’s arrest.
You obviously don’t know anything about the matter because any citizen, anywhere in the entire country, can subdue anyone they observe in the act of committing a felony.
Police are different in that they are empowered to arrest suspects they have not directly observed committing a felony though legal procedures.
What you suggested, forming a vigilante private police force and going around arresting people, is ludicrous and arguing with someone with such an absurd position will be fruitless so I can only suggest you reread my comment and examine the matter using other references more closely.
9 times out of 10 it is a bad idea for an unarmed, ordinary citizen to go tackle a thief and hold them to the ground for any reason.
If a mugger takes my wallet then he's gonna run away with it, and I'm gonna be slowly going home by an alternate route.
When I worked as a clerk in a record store, we had strict orders to never pursue shoplifters or thieves of any stripe. It was the Loss Prevention Officer's job to track that stuff and it was clerks' job to notify law enforcement if we had to, but anyone stealing should be permitted to stroll right out our front doors unchallenged. It was way beyond our pay grade and we did not carry insurance.
One of my coworkers did scuffle with a thief outside, and IIRC, he was commended for his bravery, but it was also an opportunity for Loss Prevention to outline their directives to us about never doing that again.
Is "citizen arrest" rocket science or what's there not to understand? What you apparently don't understand though is that it will likely get you stabbed or shot but hey at least you're the hero now or something
“the duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large, and, absent a special relationship between the police and an individual, no specific legal duty exists”
None of this says the actual role is to protect the rich and corporations. They get the same non specific legal duty at all. They could just as easily ignore Hertz.
While I wouldn’t be surprised that the rich get more responsiveness out of the police, I’m sure there are rich people too who also get ignored. Just like when my father had his phone stolen and we found via find my and IP logs the physical address of the thief, police refused to go retrieve it and arrest the thief.
My father lives in a wealthy zip code, and stolen phones, car breaks ins, traffic violations are usually the main types of crime there. Was giving an example to solidly that they have can use discretion.
That's bizarre. One of the links gives more details within [1]:
> Hertz manages tens of millions of rentals each year, which makes these 30 or so stories exceptionally rare, but not any less bizarre. The recent claims don't explain how exactly these mix-ups happen, but some of the renters reported switching vehicles, upgrading cars, or reporting mechanical issues before being approached by the law. One driver returned a vehicle for a flat tire and was given another to drive instead, and when the company did not complete paperwork for the second vehicle, the car was reported stolen and the police got involved. Another driver was alerted to an expired registration on her rental but was ultimately arrested before she could even return the car a few days later. Francis Alexander, an attorney who is representing some of the falsely-accused renters, says that Hertz’s computer system has a “glitch” that has led to the company-wide pattern of reporting cars stolen.
On the one hand, I can imagine that with employees not filling out forms/screens right and then clocking out, the manager comes in the next day and a car is missing, how do they know it wasn't simply stolen? Better call the police. Especially since if you wait two weeks to "be sure" the car doesn't come back, your chances of recovering it presumably plummet.
On the other hand... employees mess up all the time, so it seems like there'd better be a damn solid reason to presume a vehicle stolen rather than just the regular employee mixup (like security cam footage). And the idea that a computer system could automatically alert police of supposedly stolen vehicles without needing a manager's triple-verification seems incredibly irresponsible and shocking.
I work for automakers' test and development programs. Most companies have a sign-out procedure that involves the keys kept in an automated kiosk that will not release them until you've done the paperwork and submitted a form, and your manager has clicked OK on the confirmation.
It's physically impossible to take the car without the system knowing who has it. If it has issues and you bring it back, guess what, you can't get the keys for the replacement until you've done the paperwork...
The fact that a company whose literal job is to keep track of cars, can't manage a similar level of rigor, blows my mind and smacks of negligence. If any harm befell these people beyond an hour's hassle and apologies all around, I wish them all success in the courts.
Some rental locations do something fairly similar. At the airports I've rented from, there's sort of a free-for-all on the floor itself, but then as you leave, your plate and paperwork are checked. Can't get over the severe-tire-damage strips until the system OKs you and the operator lowers the spikes. Why some locations lack a double-check, well, I suppose you'd have to ask them.
Ok, now imagine that everyone you're working with is on minimum wage, and there's often no manager on shift. Oh, and the technology is from the 90s, because a single technological uplift project will soak up a decade of their profits.
The reducing customer friction arms race means if you can create a process that gives them the keys earlier or more “easily” you win, so if that process has an edge case where one in few hundred thousand gets arrested that might be seen as a net win, not how id design it but others have different tradeoffs!
Yup, much as it was a pain in the ass, renting from Hertz at Dulles airport showed that they're quite capable of tracking things. Gates in and out with barriers, cameras, LPR systems. Guy handed us an ipad as we pulled up that already had the plate and info from our car. And similar on return.
I don't need every rental place to operate like a busy international airport, but they absolutely can track that effectively.
To be honest, two weeks or not, if a car is stolen it's probably gone forever. It's not like the police are going to assign a detective track down Hertz's stolen car. They stick it on the system and if it happens to pass an officer they'll stop it. The probelm is, the only way it'll ping an officer is if it's still being driven around the area with the same number plates - ie, the probability of it actually being stolen are minimal.
Nationwide, at least 60% of stolen vehicles are recovered. CA, which has a 90% overall recovery rate, breaks it down further that motorcycles have under a 60% recovery rate, commercial trucks have an 80% recovery rate, and everything else is over 94%.
I don't think the people impacted are renting motorcycles or commercial trucks...
Gonna go out on a limb as guess you're both right: the recovery rate's decent, but only because a pretty high percentage of stolen cars are simply abandoned (think: stealing cars for joy riding, which is pretty damn common in certain circles) and then found in that state, or used in some other crime or series of crimes and eventually swept up because the perpetrators get caught with the car while doing something else, not because the cops put much effort into actually finding the cars.
Considering the magnitude of property crimes I've seen them refuse to put any effort into whatsoever, I can't imagine they put special care into solving car thefts. Except when they can solve them basically by accident, which is literally the only way I've ever seen them solve a theft.
I'd bet that areas with the most stringent parking enforcement also have the highest stolen vehicle recovery rates. That seems more likely to me than the police actively seeking out and finding stolen vehicles.
Maybe the police need a special code for "stolen, but the registered owner is Hertz", that they'd treat as casually as a traffic stop for a burned out taillight, rather than the felony stop that a reported-stolen car usually gets.
Why would they ever do that when having the car reported as stolen gives them probable cause to search the vehicle and driver? Hertz is making what they perceive as their job easier.
Police wouldn’t want that. They want to get every chance they can get to add an arrest to their resume. It’s helps with promotion and pay. It doesn’t seem to matter if the arrest is later determined to be incorrect.
In many cities, arrests are tracked, as are successful prosecutions. But by a curious anomaly the number of dropped prosecutions is not, or those later released without charge. I guess that's not an important metric. Maybe to us, not to the PD.
imagine the interaction between an african american male who righteously believes that he has done nothing wrong and the police forces who righteously believe that he is driving a stolen vehicle
I recently rented a car for a few days from a good agency that will remain unnamed here.
I thoroughly inspected both the paperwork and the car before leaving the lot. The associate commended me on that. I took photos, noted minor damage, and asked questions. I was able to accept the first car they proposed to me.
I returned the vehicle early and the associate asked me if I'd cleared out all my belongings; I said "I think so" and he asked if there were any firearms in the trunk. I scoffed and then wondered why he'd been so specific.
Did they GPS-track the car to my visit to a sporting goods store? Was he judging solely by my somewhat tactical-looking attire? I don't know, but he did search the vehicle and returned carrying my rosary. That's a formidable weapon I wouldn't want to be separated from.
I once rented a car that was several months out of date on its registration. Fortunately for me it was only discovered by parking enforcement, not an actual arrest, so the rental company gets to pay that ticket apparently. But it was a pretty awful shock to me to find this out.
It’s weird that it’s only hertz… this bizarre saga has been going on now for some time, but I haven’t heard anything like this happen from one of the other big rental companies
I want to know when the police agencies will start charging companies for abusing the police services.
Having to engage and arrest people puts officers in harm's way every time they make a stop, and when it is literally because some company thinks it's a profitable move to externalizing onto the police the problem to solve their management failures.
I frequently travel to the front range and have had all manner of issues with the local big box car rental agencies. It's never the same issue twice but over 12 years of flying out there and renting cars at least once a year I can think of maybe two times where I didn't encounter some kind of issue. Earlier this spring, out of desperation more than anything else, I decided to rent from Sixt. Best customer service I've encountered from any car rental agency ever. Counter staff are friendly, knowledgeable, and move with a purpose. In an out in a fraction of the time it takes at any of the other local rental outfits, zero hassles. Worth checking out if they serve your area of interest.
I rack up 90+ days of car rentals a year and have never had a problem with Enterprise and the additional insurance.
If you're looking to rent a car and want to optimize for peace of mind and customer service over bare minimum cost, then I highly recommend going that route.
I also use Enterprise, though they are not wholly without errors of course.
A few years ago I had an Enterprise rental car in Hawaii.
Mid-rental, I got a phone call from a concerned Enterprise manager in Pennsylvania. Trying to figure out the status and location of a car of theirs, which their system showed I had rented.
I assured them that I had not visited Pennsylvania nor driven their car from PA to Hawaii; they were able to track down a data entry error by a frazzled agent that had led to this confused state of affairs.
Obviously I would never write about a client, especially after I signed an NDA, therefore I've never written anything about Hertz and I never will (not that Hertz was ever a client). But I have written about my experience with a company that I prefer to call SuperRentalCorp:
> Most of those cases were bundled into bankruptcy proceedings.
This seems incredibly odd to me. Bankruptcy proceedings would be about monetary compensation, but that feels like it would only be one part of the proceedings. Knowingly making a false report of theft would be a criminal proceeding, an entirely separate realm from bankruptcy courts.
Strictly speaking, you as a private litigant generally cannot make criminal charges - only the state does that. A civil suit is "these guys harmed me specifically and I want to be repaid", a criminal charge is "these guys are threats to society and should be thrown in jail". And the latter has a very high bar to meet for corporations, because corporations rarely have the capacity or mental state to actually meet that bar[0]. They are machines, after all.
In a civil suit, you are expected to be paid in money damages or maybe injunctions. Those damages are construed to be the same as, say, owing money to a bondholder. Going bankrupt lets you wipe out those obligations; so presumably those pending cases might also get wiped out. But that's also judge-dependent and fact-dependent, which is why they get wrapped up into the bankruptcy proceeding.
[0] This is also why civil torts are almost always strict-liability. If everything required intent, corporations would be above the law.
> [0] This is also why civil torts are almost always strict-liability. If everything required intent, corporations would be above the law.
because of the lack of investigatory powers (e.g. can't seize their documents, wiretap their communications, search their facilities, etc.) civil cases could generally never work against anyone if they had to show intent. If you get a judgement against you for a civil matter that requires intent you have really screwed up.
The thing I was pointing towards was more that businesses are very, very good at making torts look accidental, because corporations are fundamentally emotionless.
But the limited investigative powers afforded to civil torts are also a really, really big hurdle to proving intent.
True, and I suppose I could rephrase my cognitivie dissonance as not understanding (1) why there are only civil suits regarding Hertz's behavior, and (2) why the article so accepts this state of affairs that the absence of criminal charges only shows up tangentially.
> a criminal charge is "these guys are threats to society and should be thrown in jail". And the latter has a very high bar to meet for corporations, because corporations rarely have the capacity or mental state to actually meet that bar[0].
Let me get this straight. Corporations should require a higher bar, because they have no ethical sense?!
No, it's the opposite. Civil torts have a lower bar for judgment. This makes it easier to try corporations who often do not have a guilty mind - or any mind to begin with.
We recognize that accidentally hitting a pedestrian with your car is different than deliberately doing the same. Both of these would be considered vehicular manslaughter (assuming the victim died) but the latter could also be a murder charge.
I was a Hertz customer for 20 years, but the customer service went downhill about eight years ago and it’s never recovered. I always picked Hertz because it was the biggest, well, Hertz Hurts. I rented a car for a week, after a day I realized I didn’t need the car, so I returned it. I still got charged for the full week.
It was not a refund. I had reserved the car, but did not pay in advance. I paid when I brought the car back. Specifically they charged my card when I brought it back. In the past, I have been able to return early and they just take it back and turn around and rented back out. It was an absolute surprise and that $700 they were not willing to back away from. So they did lose a customer for life. I Rent-A-Car at least once a month, I use Enterprise now.
Maybe they couldn't rent it back out right away? After all if you didn't need it why do you think someone else did? Companies aren't at 100% capacity all the time. Anyway why is it their responsibility to find a new renter when you had already agreed to keep the car for a week?
Apropos of the principle of this, most car rental companies these days are above capacity most, if not all the time.
You're lucky to get your car class. You're lucky if you don't have to wait around for it, or for it to be cleaned (last rental I had, "hasn't been returned yet and should have". There was no suggestion that they call the renter, and after about 20 minutes of being ignored, I said to call me when it came in. It came in 2 1/2 hours later.)
What's more, this is entirely of their own making, because most of those companies, or franchises or whatever, have decided to sell as much of their rental stock while they can make good profits. Only person it sucks for is you.
The OP's complaint was about an incident from 8 years ago. Regardless, it sounds like a lot of the problems you've experienced stems from renters who fail to honor their original contract or rental agreement -- returning cars hours or days late, or early, just like the OP. Not really sure what you want the rental company to do when cars aren't coming back to them according to schedule.
I've never had a rental car company charge me for days I didn't use. It's not like they can't turn the car around and rent it again immediately. Who do you rent from?
This is such an American problem. I love visiting the US, but boy am I glad that I don't live there.
Everyone here in the comments is blaming Hertz, but really the problem is that the police are just arresting people willy-nilly without actually confirming the vehicle in question is really stolen. And even if they do stop to question someone, why are they pulling a gun on them, or even taking them back to the station before trying to de-escalate the situation?
This story just reeks of a series of serious societal failures.
Staff on minimum wage, dated systems and processes, overzealous police, insane court system (did you read the comments in that linked article? One poor man had to pay bail at 45k, lost his job, and a bunch of other fines!)
I just couldn't imagine any one of these things happening where I am from in Europe.
Police generally hate stolen car license plates. This means things are about to get serious. Most police departments wont even attempt a pull over with just one unit. But most scary for the cop they have no idea who this person is. In the US you want to take stolen cars seriously [guns out]:
A responsible course of action, given Hertz history of false accusations, would be to ignore “stolen” cars that belong to Hertz. It’s a lesser evil - even if it actually got stolen nothing bad will happen, Hertz is a wealthy company.
It can be as simple checking the registered owner of the car(Hertz), then checking the paperwork the renter has on hands and that should lower the suspicion and go from there.
The usual procedure is for the police dispatcher to check with the law enforcement agency that entered the license plate into the database.
In case of a rental car, a call to the local or corporate office of the rental company would also be appropriate, all the more so now that there’s wide publicity about the problem of false or out-of-date theft reports.
In some cases, that might’ve been true, but in others, I expect Hertz, when confronted with a rental agreement number, vehicle number, and customer’s name, would have been able to confirm that the agreement was current and valid, making it obvious that the theft report was mistaken or outdated.
I normally rent from National/Enterprise, and I cant tell you the last time I got a printed rental agreement. As they say, its all in the app these days.
The police aren't there to sort out paperwork issues. They aren't qualified for it. They're qualified to bring you to jail to await a bail hearing while they write a report about the incident. The rightful owner of the vehicle reported it stolen, there's not much else to do then clear yourself criminally and then restore yourself civilly.
That's not to say that the arrest and bail processes don't need a lot of work, but I'm not sure there's a better structural alternative. Also, in the case of the individual with high bail, I can't find a reference to that particular case. Do you have one?
I’d respectfully disagree. The courts have the last word, of course, but we don’t expect police officers to be unthinking automatons. “Round ’em all up and let the judge sort it out” doesn’t square with the Fourth Amendment.
A theft report isn’t a warrant. It might give an officer reasonable suspicion to stop the reported vehicle and detain its driver briefly to investigate, but to make an arrest, a higher standard must be met: the officer needs probable cause that the suspect has committed a crime.
If the driver claims to have rented the vehicle, I’d expect an officer at least to try to contact the rental car company to confirm the situation, or to ask his or her dispatcher to do so, especially now that the problem of false reports has become widely known.
> “Round ’em all up and let the judge sort it out” doesn’t square with the Fourth Amendment.
Why wouldn't it? The fourth amendment covers _unreasonable_ seizure.
> but to make an arrest, a higher standard must be met: the officer needs probable cause that the suspect has committed a crime.
The vehicle is reported stolen. You are found in possession of it. That's probable cause.
> I’d expect an officer at least to try to contact the rental car company to confirm the situation
How do you propose they do that? Check the paperwork? How do they know it's accurate and not forged? How do they know they've reached the appropriate agency? How do they know if the person they're contacting through the paperwork would have any authority of the reporting of the vehicles status?
You're expecting a lot to be available to an officer that just isn't. The best they could do is directly call the reporting party back and tell them that this person claims it isn't stolen and is a mistake on their end.. and if they say "it's not a mistake, it's definitely stolen?"
The police should do what at that point?
This is why we have courts with evidentiary standards and formal procedures that are defined in law. You cannot expect an officer in the field to be capable of maintaining those same standards.
In the typical rental model the cars are either owned by a holding company or by a franchisee. In the typical DMV model there isn't a lot of other information other than "reported stolen." It may have been reported to an entirely different agency Local Police, State Police, Highway Patrol that whatever agency happens to effect the traffic stop.
You're expecting a traffic cop to perform a pretty thorough investigation, using just a cellphone and mobile PC, on the side of the road, without adequate facilities to properly identify the party on the other end of the telephone or even properly review the details of the initial report.
If it was your car that was stolen, I'm not sure you'd want someone trying to "Kojak" their way through the case. I wouldn't. Likewise, if I was pulled over in a rental and told it was stolen, I'd accept that the few hours of inconvenience I would face over it would easily be remedied and I would never rent from them again.
The police are functionaries with qualified immunity and no actual duty to protect or serve you. This is established law in the US. You want these people doing the most minimal, simple, procedural thing they can do in any given situation and you want to get yourself into an actual court as quickly as you can.
>Lawyers for the customers say that the criminal theft reports are a way to recover lost inventory
If the "inventory" (the car) is "lost," then wouldn't that imply that the renter has a car that they shouldn't have? I.E. stolen it? Or at the very least not returned it when they should have?
As best I recall from previous times when this hit the news, Hertz's tracking was terrible, and customers had already returned the cars in question, or still had them but were paying for them.
These lawsuits allege that the cars were legitimately rented by customers, but Hertz screwed up the paperwork and then incorrectly reported them as stolen, and their customers suffered the consequences.
Hertz initially gave me a car with a mechanical problem, so they swapped it out before we had even left the rental car lot.
The attendant at the gate assured me they had updated the paperwork.
They hadn’t. I was on the phone with support for hours trying to fix this. They never fixed it and I had to pay for someone else’s rental. They even told me that the car was not marked as stolen.
In addition, when I returned the car, the attendant looked at me pretty funny and said it was good I never got pulled over.
Nothing got done on this until I threatened to bring my company’s travel coordinator into the mix (I work at a large company that spends a lot on Hertz rentals every year).
Still waiting for a refund of the additional fees they charged for my “second rental car”. The way it was handled by Hertz customer service and the location manager was an absolute joke.
I’m not unique here either, after this experience I went on my company’s internal chat and found tons of stories similar to this.
There is either a big problem with the process at Hertz or a severe bug in their system that they aren’t acknowledging.