
Hertz bug leads to people being erroneously arrested and jailed - ryanmarsh
https://www.thedrive.com/news/27976/people-are-being-arrested-and-jailed-due-to-hertz-erroneously-reporting-rental-cars-stolen-report
======
hertzthrowaway
In my experience, Hertz has abysmal customer service. Getting a reasonable
person (or in certain cases a person at all) on the phone is near impossible.

Last time I tried to cancel a reservation on the phone with them, it took
almost an hour to convince the customer support that my reservation existed.
During the course of this hour, they insisted several times that the
reservation didn't exist. After about 20 minutes of this, I asked to speak to
a manager and was flat out denied. Since their policy does not allow hanging
up on a customer service call, I refused to get off the line until I was
escalated to a manager, so over the next 30 minutes the support person called
me several names, including "liar", "cheat", and told me to get off the phone
and find something better to do.

Finally, I was escalated to the manager who managed to find my reservation and
cancel it for me. Imagine my surprise a week later when I found out that my
reservation had in fact not been cancelled and I had been charged hundreds of
dollars regardless.

At this point I was fed up with their customer phone service, and resorted to
emails instead. The same scenario played out again, and it took dozens of
emails, credit card receipts, and 4 weeks of my time for them to finally
refund me my money.

The whole experience was rather eye opening in an awful and surreal sort of
way.

~~~
drewmol
This would have been an ideal situation for you to request your cc company
issue a charge back fwiw.

Edit: Learned about charge backs here on HN, I've contacted a cc company twice
to request one and in both cases the charging company promptly reached out and
resolved the dispute w/o actually needing to follow through.

~~~
CPLX
You’d be surprised. Most people formulate their love for chargebacks via
interactions with small sketchy merchants who are unresponsive or obstinate.
In those cases the CC companies are always on your side.

That rule doesn’t apply to giant sophisticated companies that process a lot of
transactions and have detailed rules, lengthy contracts or fare fules and so
on like airlines or car rental companies. The CC companies are going to give
them the benefit of the doubt in a different way.

~~~
areyousure
My experience agrees. I had a bad rental from Hertz, and American Express
rejected my chargeback three times.

The evidence Hertz provided was literally a letter that just said they
provided services for 5 days, even though they provided me with a detective
vehicle and charged me for 10 days.

I understand the point of contention on how much I should pay for a broken
car, but I don't understand why American Express can't check that the time
period is wrong. In the end, Hertz at least refunded the overcharged number of
days because it was so easy to convince anyone paying attention that it was
wrong ...

------
yholio
Oh, it's a computer bug, see, no biggie, we all get those, right? Those darn
computers, they sure are a handful.

I can't accept that. What happened here is that Hertz, as a rational and
responsible entity, reported lawfully rented cars as being stolen, knowingly
putting inocent customers in grave danger. It was not a computer that did it,
there was a rational decision to let this critical task run without human
supervision on a dodgy system with insuficient quality control.

What's next, Autocad glitch destroys sky scrapper? Windows Update sends
passenger jet to fiery death? As soon as you take the rational decision to let
life critical tasks run on software, you are vouching for the correctness of
that software and it's appropriateness for the task and you are responsible if
the software fails.

~~~
warmwaffles
This is precisely why I will never ever let a car auto pilot me and my family.
If I am going to die, it better be because of my negligence and not because
someone "oopsies" code.

~~~
AQuantized
Even if the incidence of car crashes was 1/10th of the current figure?

~~~
warmwaffles
Those 1/10th figures are in city areas. I'd like to see autopilot work out
where I live in rural areas where deer, hogs, and other critters on the road
are present and lines marking lanes are either faded or non existent.

Genuinely I would love to see it work. I think it is cool, but I won't use it.
I like driving and I like being in control of my destiny. Even if the risk is
higher. That's what makes us human.

~~~
jsight
I've grown up in rural areas, and I think that at some point, automated
driving can be even better in those scenarios than humans can be.

I have not seen any evidence of us being at that point today. Of course, the
focus of these companies right now is on intra-urban transit, for reasons that
make almost make sense from a revenue perspective.

~~~
warmwaffles
The one thing I want to see autopilot / assisted driving on is 18 wheelers.
I've seen too many people get hit by trucks after crossing the median because
the driver fell asleep.

------
minouye
Here's a first-hand account (I'm assuming it's related due to similarities):

[https://stevecheney.com/handcuffed-and-under-
surveillance/](https://stevecheney.com/handcuffed-and-under-surveillance/)

Sounds awful.

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
One interesting point here is that the commonly-repeated mantra of "don't talk
to police" would have likely resulted in this guy getting booked to jail,
ending up with a mugshot on a couple of mugshot extortion websites, and
generally getting his life upended.

~~~
mirimir
The "don't talk to police" mantra is for when you know that you've done
something wrong. So the main thing is that you don't want to lie about it,
because they're trained to detect lies, and to manipulate you into
contradicting yourself.

Otherwise, being polite and not escalating is the safest approach. Because
another aspect of traditional police training in the US is always out-
escalating suspects.

Edit: What can I say? It clearly worked for this guy. Perhaps because he looks
pretty harmless. But it's also worked for me. Because I also look pretty
harmless, I guess.

~~~
CaptainZapp
A very experienced criminal lawyer who used to be a federal prosecutor very
strongly disagrees with your assessment[1] & [2]

There's a whole collection of well reasoned opinions why you should really
shut the fuck up, when confronted with police[3]

[1] [https://www.popehat.com/2013/05/01/shut-up-i-explained-
mostl...](https://www.popehat.com/2013/05/01/shut-up-i-explained-mostly-
pointlessly/)

[2] [https://www.popehat.com/2011/12/01/reminder-oh-wont-you-
plea...](https://www.popehat.com/2011/12/01/reminder-oh-wont-you-please-shut-
up/)

[3] [https://www.popehat.com/tag/shut-up/](https://www.popehat.com/tag/shut-
up/)

~~~
dustingetz
attorney recommends approach resulting in attorney fees

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Attorney recommends approach that makes their job easy and results in happy
customer.

It's the same reason mechanics tell you do do preventive maintenance even
though they make way more money swapping out large components.

------
densone
This happened to me! I flew to jacksonville FL, and they gave me a car. upon
return they were all freaking out because the car was reported stolen. I was
like wtf, here’s the keys, and got to my plane. I would have been pissed if I
was arrested.

~~~
jeffcore
This happened to me too. I rented a Hertz vehicle while on a trip to San Diego
in 2005. I had to exchange the car at their airport location due to a flat
tire. Two days later while driving from Coronado to Imperial Beach, I was
stopped. About four additional officers showed up and had me exit the vehicle
at gun point and lay flat on the road, and that's when I was informed the car
had been reported stolen. Thankfully I wasn't arrested either, but spent about
an hour with the Coronado police on the side of the road getting this mess
resolved. I avoid renting whenever possible to this day.

------
scraplab
I drove a Hertz vehicle in Germany. Two weeks later, back home, I got a letter
from a German town/municipality with a speeding fine. Included is a photo from
the camera... the person in the photo is not me, and the timestamp is days
after my rental finished.

Thankfully, they resolved it with a couple of (very confused) phone calls.
Sounds like I got lucky.

~~~
sideshowb
I rented one in Italy. Two weeks later hertz charged me an admin fee for
passing my details to the police - apparently we'd been flashed by a speed
camera, no idea where.

Police never got in touch though, which makes me wonder if it was all a ruse.
I'm not exactly going to chase up the police to find out.

~~~
mschuster91
You should though, if you ever plan on visiting Europe again, before an EU-
wide notice is put out for you and you get arrested at the airport until you
pay the fine and costs...

~~~
HatchedLake721
It doesn’t work this way in EU, no one’s going to arrest you at the airport
for unpaid speeding ticket. All you will get is nuisance from debt collectors
and possible additional penalties.l, that’s it.

~~~
mschuster91
Of course you can be arrested. It's called Zwangsvollstreckung in Germany, and
they can even seize property from you ("Pfändung").

Thanks to an EU agreement this is also valid for traffic tickets now.

~~~
karambahh
Afaik, German authorities would have to issue a warrant to Europol to actually
have you arrested in another EU country. (And I don't see them actually
looking for you for a mere parking ticket...)

What EU countries start to do is sharing the license plates files between
countries.

I got a (non registered) letter in the mail 3 years ago from the federal
police force in Belgium with no easy way to pay the fine (related to a
speeding offense which I recognise I most likely did commit). Got them on the
phone once but it came to nothing. (If a belgian cop reads this: I'm more than
willing to pay :) ).

Interestingly, at the time, belgian plates caught speeding in France were not
contacted so the agreement or its technical implementation were not
reciprocal.

I also received a parking fine from Brussels city, which made payment simple &
efficient via a SEPA transfer.

Europe is far less integrated than US HN users seem to think. Countries are
sovereign, they simply choose to collaborate on parts of their legal
framework, parts which can be different on a country by country basis.

For instance, Schengen (freedom of movement for visa holders of a member
country, generally no border controls between them) is 22 EU countries PLUS
Switzerland, Norway & others. Members still have the ability to reinstate full
border controls if need be (was the case during the terrorist attacks in
France & Belgium in 2015/2016).

License plates schemes and vehicles insurances (ironically, insurance
certificate are called "green cards"...) are valid amongst the Council of
Europe members (basically all of geographical Europe, Russia & Turkey
included)

~~~
paganel
> What EU countries start to do is sharing the license plates files between
> countries.

Just wanted to add that this license plate integration is going at full speed.
My brother is a truck driver who carries stuff to Western Europe once every
2-3 weeks or so (we live in Romania). About a month ago he received a speeding
ticket from the French authorities, translated in Romanian and with a photo of
his face as he was driving the truck.

The interesting thing was that the fine was sent to his home/personal address,
even though the truck is owned by my brother's employer, not by my brother
directly. So on top of making the license plate/owner connection, it seems
that for stuff like trucks some traffic authorities also have information
about the private details of the drivers operating those trucks.

------
mikeash
The absolute impunity with which large corporations operate never ceases to
amaze me.

Let say that I, as an individual, report my car stolen when I’ve actually lent
it to someone, and then I do it again, and again, and dozens more times,
resulting in false arrests and jail time for law-abiding citizens.

I’m pretty sure this couldn’t happen. I’d end up in jail myself for filing
false police reports before I got anywhere close to double digits. But when
it’s a giant company, they make a statement about how it’s extremely rare and
continue on with business as usual.

It’s often said that “corporations are people,” legally speaking. This is
clearly wrong. Corporations occupy a much more privileged position than people
in the legal world!

~~~
dsfyu404ed
I'm going to be the last one to defend corporation (or any other large
faceless group) but your comment is preposterous.

>The absolute impunity with which large corporations operate never ceases to
amaze me.

Hertz is likely to wind up getting sued and settling. They are going to pay to
make this right. If they don't then the lawyers will have a field day.

>Let say that I, as an individual, report my car stolen when I’ve actually
lent it to someone, and then I do it again, and again, and dozens more times,
resulting in false arrests and jail time for law-abiding citizens.

If the bug was doing this only for a particular jurisdiction then it would be
ignored by cops like you weould be. If you had the geographic reach that hertz
does you could probably report 30 cars stolen.

~~~
mikeash
Gosh, they’re probably going to spend _hours’_ worth of revenue on
settlements, I guess that makes it alright then.

You’re right, if I spread out the reports, I probably could report 30 cars
stolen before I get found out. Then what happens when law enforcement finds
out? Are they going to ask me nicely to stop and let me spend a few hours’
wages settling with the victims? Hell no! I’ll probably spend the next ten
years being extradited from one state to another, assuming the Feds ever let
me go after convicting me for dozens of counts of interstate crime.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
If you made as much money per hour as Hertz does then it would likely only
cost you a few hours of wages too. It might even cost you less because not
being some "faceless corporation" is an advantage in court and you'd have more
bargaining power when negotiating settlements.

Hertz will probably wind up paying more than any normal individual would
because Hertz has far more money. You can't extract blood from a stone but
Hertz is no stone so the lawyers will sink their teeth in.

These people being arrested was likely not the result of intentional action or
negligence by Hertz. If they're anything like every other BigCo this is a
known low priority but that nobody expected could result in something like
this so it hasn't been fixed.

You keep trying to compare this to some malicious or comically negligent
individual filing police reports but that comparison is absurd because no
individual has the massive reach that Hertz does so no individual could file
30ish false police reports without noticing whereas a corporation where
everyone is just doing their job without seeing the bigger picture could do
that.

~~~
mikeash
You’re telling me that this is not negligence, but at the same time this was
probably a known problem they did nothing to fix? I don’t think those two
statements are compatible.

My whole point is that the comparison should not be absurd. Giant companies
get all the advantages of being treated as a single legal entity but with none
of the downsides. They’re giant machines for laundering responsibility. What’s
absurd is that you can falsely imprison people and get away with it clean
because “everyone is just doing their job.”

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>You’re telling me that this is not negligence, but at the same time this was
probably a known problem they did nothing to fix?

You're on a board called Hacker News and you don't understand the difference
between a known bug and establishing that bug as the root cause of bad things
that are actually happening in production. I think you're being willfully
ignorant for the sake of your own argument.

Everyone with a large code base has thousands of known bugs with low priority
because they are now known to be negatively affecting the system. There simply
are not the resources to fix all these bugs. Nobody knows which ones (if any)
are can actually cause bad things to happen until those bad things actually
happen and get traced back to one of the known, low priority bugs.

Simply put, they probably knew there was a bug, they didn't know that bug
could ever lead to people being falsely imprisoned until it actually happened.

>They’re giant machines for laundering responsibility.

I generally agree with that.

>What’s absurd is that you can falsely imprison people and get away with it
clean because “everyone is just doing their job.”

The cops bear some blame here too. Hertz didn't imprison anyone. Part of the
cop's job is to act as a filter for BS police reports. When you pull someone
over who claims to have legitimately rented the rental that should get you to
start asking further questions. Two organizations screwed up here.

~~~
mikeash
When you said “this is a known low priority” I thought you were referring to
the false police reports. I guess you were referring to a bug in a computer
system? I’m not talking about bugs. At some point, someone had to inform the
police that these cars were “stolen.” Either someone involved in that process
negligently failed to make damned well sure the car was really stolen before
making the report, or someone elsewhere in the company negligently failed to
design a process where people would do this.

Mistakes do happen. If this was a one-off, or even a two or three-off, I could
buy that. But at some point on your way to thirty false arrests, it stops
being a regular mistake and starts being negligence. You can blame a computer
glitch a couple of times, but after that it becomes _your_ fault for trusting
the known-glitchy computer.

------
TomK32
Isn't it a crime to accuse someone falsely? How much time will the computer
spend in prison for that?

~~~
beeskneecaps
Reminds me how uncle bob warned us that some day when the software industry is
regulated, git blame will send some sorry engineer to jail.

~~~
SenHeng
I've seen this 'Uncle Bob' mentioned several times on HN. Who is he?

~~~
skrebbel
A bit more context: He's an influential writer and speaker mostly in
enterprise dev circles. By HN standards his resume isn't spectacular: he's not
the founder of XYZ or the author of some famous open source project.

He's been a driving force in giving programmers in large organizations the
vocabulary and ammunition to win arguments that lets them write _proper_
software and not shitty software. If you find yourself writing Java in a bigco
IT department and you want to introduce stuff like test driven development,
code reviews, or whatever else is just proper engineering practices,
reading/watching some Uncle Bob is probably going to help you convince your
coworkers and bosses.

He has some rather controversial ideas (eg he believes that "flow"/"the zone"
is bad and programmers should never be in it), but you don't need to agree
with all of it to learn something useful.

------
mannykannot
There's a second story here:

"However, almost every time, erroneously charged renters are still fighting
the charges they received in court and all the fines that come along with
them."

These cases should have been resolved immediately. There's a growing
impression that once the criminal justice system gets hold of you, you are not
leaving without paying for something, whether real or not -- see also the
recent case of people falsely accused on account of NYC's bogus DNA testing.

------
jarofgreen
> However, almost every time, erroneously charged renters are still fighting
> the charges they received in court and all the fines that come along with
> them.

This surely is the bit that makes it unacceptable - mistakes happen, but if
they do I would expect Hertz to step up, apologise like hell, sort everything
out with the law, and pay a substantial "sorry" payment. How are these people
still in trouble? Is this a case of Hertz refusing to accept liability because
they are scared of law suits or something?

~~~
Cthulhu_
Hertz doesn't have to accept liability; they made a false accusation, there's
laws against / about that. It's trickier in a court when a company does it
though, there's probably alternative laws meaning companies get away with it.

I mean look at the DMCA and the thousands of invalid takedowns happening on
e.g. youtube. Different thing though because it's not a legal accusation,
people don't get arrested over it, etc.

~~~
op00to
> It's trickier in a court when a company does it though

A person had to call the police and declare the car stolen, right? That person
filed a false report if they were not 100% sure the car was not stolen.

Let's hope there's not a REST API for reporting stolen cars.

------
kaendfinger
Imagine if this happened to you, assuming this is true. The settlements should
be big and somebody at Hertz should go to prison for at least a medium amount
of time, effectively it’s filing a false police report.

~~~
mirimir
Whatever Hertz did or didn't do to let this happen (albeit rarely) is their
fault. So plaintiffs clearly have grounds to sue Hertz. Police departments
were also affected, so they arguably also have standing.

But criminal charges? Maybe if people were getting killed over it. Otherwise
it's just a civil matter.

Edit: fat fingers

~~~
harry8
Taking an action that deprives someone of their liberty for two weeks? Sounds
criminal to me. Doesn't to you? As has been pointed out there are multiple
failures including law enforcement.

~~~
kevin_b_er
Hertz inadvertently kidnapped someone for 2 weeks. I'm sure kidnapping is a
crime we can hold the Hertz executives up to.

------
loup-vaillant
Stuff like this is why I don't understand why a potential employer should
_ever_ have access to a candidate's arrest record. Arrests mean nothing. Only
convictions should be significant.

~~~
dennisgorelik
Arrests data hints about the probability of future arrests and similar
troubles with the law.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Of course it does. This information is very interesting for prospective (or
current) employers, clients etc… If they have easy access to this information,
it would be stupid of them to ignore it.

Which is _exactly_ why it should not be easily accessible. The false positive
rate is too high, and breaches the presumption of innocence. _(I 'm not saying
arrest records should not exist, though. It's very useful for the cops
themselves. I'm just saying that non-cops should not have easy access to such
files.)_

Alternatively, we could have a perfect police which never arrests innocent
people. But if we could have that, we wouldn't even need judges. Just have the
cops be street judges, and let them condemn or release people on the spot.

Obviously, this would give too much power to the police. Judicial errors would
soar through the roof. But this arrest record thing is exactly like that. By
arresting you, they can stain your record for a long time, possibly
permanently. The influence that has on your life afterwards is similar to a
full blown conviction's.

------
habosa
I rent cars pretty frequently. Hertz is a disaster. Mean, dishonest, and proud
of it.

Once when I had evidence of their mistake on paper the clerk stared at the
ceiling and said "I'm not looking at that" like some kind of toddler.

Use National/Enterprise. Same price, 100x better service.

~~~
jessaustin
I think that Hertz had a good reputation about 20 years ago when I started
regularly traveling for business. Of course, it could have just been that the
firm had a contract with them while I was young and credulous. Anyway, Hertz
squandered any reputation they might have had long ago. I haven't used anyone
other than Enterprise in many years.

------
duxup
A number of cops probabbly still still arrest you but last time I rented
rental cars come with a ton of paperwork with my name, the car identity, dates
times, and etc all over it.

You'd think it would be a pretty easy thing to say, yo look at all this. It
would seem unlikely an actual car thief would have a bunch of paperwork / make
a bunch of paperwork with their own information on it.

Granted most cops aren't super detectives but even the non curious types know
enough to ask the right questions even if only to help the suspected criminal
incriminate them-self, going down the path of what all that paperwork even is
would seem to work there too.

~~~
mikelward
The car was different in these cases. But yeah, you'd think any receipt from
Hertz with your name on it would be enough for the police to think twice
before arresting you.

~~~
duxup
I got pulled over because someone thought I was a guy who stole gas.

The cop actually (probabbly already doubting it) took me seriously when I said
"no man that wasn't me" and I pulled up my credit card app and showed him a
charge pending and he was all apologetic and said "yeah sorry about that". It
was a quick discussion, no big deal.

One of those crimes I think only a random rural-ish suburb tries to deal with
;)

But at least that was a case where the cop actually decided not to do anything
after I showed him something. Normally I wouldn't expect anything serious to
go that way as if a cop wants to arrest you... they're probabbly going to do
it no matter what you say, and talking (especially if it is serous) is not
going to help.

But the car thing ... like any paperwork seems like it should help / make the
cop wonder a bit.

------
titzer
When I was in New Zealand in 2017, I rented an SUV for two weeks. Except I
unknowingly screwed up the reservation and only booked one week, driving off
unaware of this problem. So about a week later they began trying to call my
cell, but didn't get through because I switched SIMs. I proceeded to drive
around New Zealand with no problems for the next week, blissfully unaware. On
the day before returning my car, I got pulled over for being over the speed
limit. The cop let me off with a warning. It wasn't until I got back to return
the rental that I realize that I was a full week late. Whoops.

Thank God it wasn't America, apparently.

~~~
Scoundreller
It’s less of a problem in America if you lawfully had the car in the first
place. Then it’s just breach of contract, not theft.

------
thorwasdfasdf
The checkout process for Hertz is extremely slimy. While, I was filling out
the form, the checkbox with a childseat didn't mention any kind of fee, so I
assumed it was free. At the end of the form (which takes about 20m to fill
out), it says "some fee may apply". When I got to the rental agency, it turns
out that "some fee may apply" was 100$!! I threatended them with a big 1 star
review on yelp, and they lowered it to a more reasonable 16$. needless to say,
i will never risk using hertz again. they've shown, they can't be trusted.

------
js2
> Hertz’s computer system has a “glitch” that has led to the company-wide
> pattern of reporting cars stolen.

The future I fear isn’t 1984 nor Brave New World; it’s Brazil, and it looks
like it’s already here.

I doubt I could file a false report and get away with it. Why aren’t the state
AGs holding Hertz accountable?

------
jfoster
Is it safe to presume that the renters didn't keep any of the rental
paperwork? It sounds like keeping the paperwork in the car could've resolved a
lot of this on the spot. Not that this should excuse Hertz, of course.

------
ralala
We rented a Hertz car in Las Vegas for a road trip for 3 weeks. Afterwards
they charged our credit card multiple hundred dollars for a navigation system,
which we didn't order and didn't have in our car. We complained and they
promised to refund it, but didn't do it for over a month. Finally we asked the
ADAC (German Car club) to resolve this for us.

------
Causality1
We have far too much interconnectivity between automatic computers and the
legal system. Computers should never be allowed to file legal paperwork by
themselves. We don't know that's exactly what happened in this case, but there
are thousands of other examples such as copyright trolling.

------
miguelmota
What a way to ruin a vacation trip. Will be avoiding Hertz from now on.

------
rukittenme
I see a lot of people hoping for someone to go to jail. Who should go?

How about the CEO who made a rational policy of reporting vehicles stolen that
aren't returned within a given time frame?

How about the engineers who created and approved a system with a software bug?
A piece of software that functioned correctly 99.99969% of the time. That's
slightly better than six sigma. How many of you can claim your uptime is that
good. 30 cases in 10 million!

How about the product manager who crafted a spec with a hole in its business
logic?

How about the front desk clerks who did not fill out the appropriate paperwork
after rental upgrades?

How about the stores' managers who actually called the police and filed the
reports in accordance with company policy?

How about the HR reps who didn't train employees to use the system correctly?

> Some of these were reported last year, and Hertz found itself paying tens of
> thousands of dollars in damages to victims in civil cases.

It seems the company _is_ being held _civilly_ liable. Which they should be!
If the police shoot innocent people based on accusations then you have a
POLICE problem not a Hertz problem (which, of course, never happened in this
case).

~~~
FireBeyond
> If the police shoot innocent people based on accusations then you have a
> POLICE problem not a Hertz problem (which, of course, never happened in this
> case).

However, some people spent two weeks in jail while Hertz "resolved" this with
the police.

~~~
rukittenme
Precisely. _Some_ people. Which means _other_ people didn't have to go to jail
because of better police protocols. People are released to await trial all the
time. The fact that they weren't says a lot about policing in some places in
America.

------
rdsubhas
They recently had a lawsuit of $32 million for a failed website redesign [1].

It's only appropriate to assume that people (at Hertz) who don't know how to
manage just their website, can least be expected to deliver underlying
critical systems.

1:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19737070](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19737070)

------
aburan28
I rented a Hertz car for about a week and called the customer support line to
extend it for two more days but instead I got a voice mail saying that this
car was reported to the police as stolen. This was after I was charged over
$220 for the extra two days. Thankfully I live across the street from the
Hertz and just returned it the next day

------
pfortuny
Paper paper paper paper.

Keep paper records with you at all times when renting something.

~~~
mk89
It's generally a good advice. However, how do you do with companies like
car2go etc, which are fully digital?

~~~
pfortuny
Print whatever they send. Print it: it is worth the effort: you will not
convince the police with a phone but you might with a paper.

Digital is OK until you run out of battery or anyone refuses to accept your
phone as proof.

When you hire a car you are just hiring a several-thousand-dollars item from a
stranger. Either you take it seriously (and have a paper trail, hence) or you
do not understand the risks.

It is all about risks.

------
c3534l
I don't understand how someone can be arrested without first conducting an
investigation. They're just taking the word of Hertz that these people stole
these cars, and they're letting a corporation that is largely unaccountable to
the public call the shots of who gets arrested and who doesn't. So what if
Hertz says you stole your car? You need to gather proof first. Proof that
could never possibly materialize if all you have is Hertz's flawed record
keeping.

------
jak92
My City of seven square miles as part of a general obligation bond they have
issued is spending $2 million to put in 30 cameras throughout the City.

The police and local politicians feel that most visible way to fight crime is
to pull people over for any and all violations flagged by ALPR this will
happen more and more.

Did I mention that the City is a heavily visited tourist City?

Expect more armed stops by police on "stolen" cars as well.

Sadly there is zero thought given to privacy "protections" either for the
data.

------
kurthr
Private equity still helping out after all these years...

[https://www.marketwatch.com/story/hertz-will-
sell-1-billion-...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/hertz-will-
sell-1-billion-of-debt-in-first-big-step-to-patch-a-battered-balance-
sheet-2017-05-31)

------
xfitm3
It's scary to think this will happen more and more as we deepen our trust of
computers.

Our legal system sucks. Once you're in it you're assumed to be some kind of
dirtbag and to some degree you'll always be impacted.

------
Digit-Al
All these horror stories. Sounds like renting from them really, really Hertz
;-)

