A “longtime” Hertz customer says he is “done” with the car rental company after he claimed that the AI-powered damage detection system improperly flagged a nonexistent mark on the vehicle — even though video that he filmed immediately afterward appeared to back up his claim.
When angry customers sought to dispute the claim, they were unable to immediately reach a customer service rep.
“The link they send you does NOT allow you to submit a dispute. Calling customer support? Useless. They said they can’t do anything, even when I told them I have clear video evidence of the car being undamaged at the exact time the damage was claimed,” one customer said.
They’ll go bankrupt again after enough people refuse to stop using their services.
Refuse to stop?
When all you customers leave: Hertz donut?
It could have been worse. This is a shout out to not use Hertz.
Hertz will pay $168 million to customers it falsely accused of stealing its cars
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1140998674/hertz-false-accusation-stealing-cars-settlement
They also own
- Dollar
- Thrifty
- Firefly
Whoa, I didn’t see the first time around that they double downed even after losing many cases. Sounds like it was intentional.
I used to be a weekly Hertz customer and I noped right on out after this started happening.
Hertz keeps failing again and again with their automated systems. Only within the past few years did they finally settle with 364 customers that were falsely accused/arrested for stealing their cars.
They have an automated system for generating police reports on stolen cars, but there were many instances of customers falsely reported when they had actually called in to extend the rental, or if they had rented a car which had previously been flagged as stolen (but not corrected in their system).
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1140998674/hertz-false-accusation-stealing-cars-settlement
I had Hertz call me because I had the same name as a supposed car thief 5 states away. 😂
hertz just sounds like herpes,
Well he’s certainly mobile.
The funny part is The Hertz was in Indiana I am in NY and they tracked the car to Florida. My name is so common there are 24 of us in the local medical systems in a very small city. I have to use my middle initial, and Jr to be found immediately, and I am not related at all to the other 23. I hope they called 5000 of us. 😂
Sorry to hear that John Doe.
Correction… John D. Doe Jr
Chargeback. Credit card companies won’t accept that BS and a chargeback is for the entire amount.
You would probably only get a partial charge back. You still got it as a rental, so that isn’t eligible for a charge back.
Oh it certainly is if he was charged for damage that didn’t occur. I’ve been on the other end of chargeback disputes defending companies. A chargeback is absolutely warranted here and he can prove it. He’ll win.
isn’t AI fantastic. Hertz could probably downsize at least 1/2 a worker or so pr location, and all it cost are 100k++ in investments and terrible customer experiences. But it’s AI!11!!
100k isn’t enough for even one software developer, let alone the team it would take to build and implement this into their system.
No matter how the inspection is performed, it should not be done without the customer present.
Also if the car is moved after the customer returned it, the damage could have happened while the car is moved. Or for other reasons after the customer returned the car.I don’t see how an AI scanning or even a human evaluation at a later point in time can be legally binding?
I bet this shitshow doesn’t happen in EU, because I don’t think it would be legal here without the customer present.
It might. I rented a car for one day in Belgium from. A week after I got back to the US I got a letter saying I had badly scraped the rims and was being charged $1500. I emailed them and challenged it, and they said, “oh that was a paperwork error on our part, don’t pay it.” Not sure what would have happened if they had tried to fight me.
Could even just be their policy to try that all the time (or some random % of the time) and just back down any time a customer pushes back. Which is fucked up, but they might have never actually fought you on it because it was just meant to get free money from those who wouldn’t push back and just pay it.
Every type of insurance company does that BS. Always fight it. When they push back, fight even harder.
And the less regulation, the more this shit happens and people don’t have the time or energy to fight it. Probably never happens on their corporate accounts, because then it’s retained corporate law firm vs retained corporate law firm.
But standard retail customers? Even if only 10% don’t fight back, huge profits, and the CEO can buy a bigger jet.
Reminds me of this
“Alternative revenue streams”
Weird. This sound awfully like fraud. Cause if I was tell companies to bogus charges, I would get charged.
What, we all should do is incorporate and use corporations to scam other corporations. It’s just a civil matter than.
definitely sounds like these rental companies are trying to scam people, if they scam enough people, and most dont try to fight it, they profit from it.
Maybe they can make the claim, but I doubt it is legally binding for the customer.
The difference being that just making the claim may be illegal in EU.
We have way stronger consumer protection than USA, and as you state, you received the claim in USA.
I use rental cars at work all the time Herz has pissed me off so much that I simply refuse to use them, even if my employer is paying.
In fact, most rental car companies have pissed me off… But SIXXT has pissed me off the least, and at times they’ve even managed to pleasantly surprise me.
might as well pay for local taxis, uber/lfyt or rideshares instead of this mess, even if they arnt that great.
When i travelled a lot domestically for work i also found sixxt to be the least hassle
+1 for Sixxt. Also I recently tried Turo for the 1st time, it was great. It does take longer to return the car though because you gotta take a bunch of pics of the car through the app. You can get more interesting cars at better prices though.
I don’t understand the point of this. Minor scratches and dings are a cost of doing business. Driving away your customers over a nickel or dime will leave you in bankruptcy. It’s bizarre.
But what if you turned the cost of doing business an opportunity for profit? All they know is squeeze.
Also I’ve rented enough scratched, pitted and dented cars to know that no way are they spending that $650 on fixing them.
Wouldn’t surprise me if they just gave up on the one off customers and are banking on business travelers. The people that charge it to a company card and nobody is really paying attention. Accounting department is just gonna see another Hertz charge which is probably pretty normal.
Most companies just pay whatever bills come in. For example, a random dude set up a fake company and was just sending invoices to Google and Facebook. He collected north of 100 million. Took them over 2 years to catch on.
Is that even illegal?
Submitting invoices for goods/services not rendered would constitute fraud. The companies paid them which was dumb but they weren’t entirely incompetent either. I simplified my original comment for brevity since I linked it but the relevant bits…
… impersonated the Taiwan-based hardware manufacturer, Quanta Computer — with which both tech companies do business — by setting up a company in Latvia with the same name. Using myriad forged invoices, contracts, letters, corporate stamps, and general confusion created by the corporate doppelganger, they successfully bamboozled Google and Facebook into paying tens of million of dollars in fraudulent bills …
Going back to Hertz. Companies already pay bills to them. As long as the fines are in the realm of normal rental costs I’d expect they’d go unnoticed for a decent while.
Ah, if they’re pretending to be a company they legitimately do business with, definitely illegal.
I don’t know, this would probably create an actionable issue with my company.
Hertz went bankrupt during the pandemic and came out of it 4 years ago.
There just isn’t enough real competition in car rentals. There are lots of brands, like Alamo, Enterprise, National Car Rental, Hertz, Dollar, Thrifty, Firefly, Budget, Avis, etc. But, that’s just 3 companies. Avis Budget Group ($CAR), Hertz Global ($HTZ) and Enterprise (private).
Admittedly, I’ve had great experiences with Enterprise in the US. It blows my mind how expensive it is, but I’ve never had any issues like what OP posted.
They all end up costing roughly the same in the end. Enterprise is just more honest about it.
The point is to make money. Specifically to make a lot of money this year and get a bonus. Bankruptcy will be a problem for the next CEO.
All the car rental companies suck but Hertz is undoubtedly the worst. They have refused to extend my rental twice, when I refused to exchange cars they were like “it’s okay, we know where you are, we can just come and get it”. They frequently have errors checking the car in after return, creating a customer service nightmare to get a receipt. The last time I returned a car I demanded a paper receipt in order to avoid this, they told me to go to the service desk. After waiting in line with all the people waiting to receive their rentals, the customer service rep told me that they “couldn’t find the car” that I literally just returned. After 30 minutes of waiting they still hadn’t figured it out so I just left. Got the receipt the next day, but I have never used Hertz again. Fuck them right to hell.
These companies are all scams. Expedia advertised cancellations and not needing a credit card. When we tried to get the car we rented from the rental company they said we needed a credit card. Expedia refused to let us cancel or give a refund or even give us that amount in store credit.
Don’t use Expedia. Horrible service. Even if you wanna blame this on me for whatever reason, the fact that they refused to give us store credit for the money we already gave them (not even a refund) shows they won’t care about your problems either.
I had a rental car after I lost mine in an accident, it was a rental through hertz. They tried to charge me a late fee onto my credit card, my insurance agent called them out on it and I didn’t have to pay.
This isn’t an AI problem. It’s an accountability sink.
I wouldn’t bother chasing Hertz. I would send an email and issue a charge back. Then they will cal me.
Unfortunately, they will just send you to collections.
They can’t on a charge back
And I will just change my number.
Imagine hooking this clanker up and have it start billing your customers automatically.
It’s not a bad idea but maybe run it offline for a while and then compare its findings against your current system’s… And then decide to roll it out?
I’d love to know how many false defects it has identified over a period, versus their previous systems. The article really only has a few incidents with half a million cars in their fleet globally… But then was this system only rolled out in that Houston store?
I have so many questions that I’m sure have unhinged answers, but I will be gleefully buggered before the daily mail will do any investigation outside of some social media posts, good day.
Hell yeah for using “clanker” as an AI slur lmao
I hope to be lined up against the wall first when they take over. Get it over with early 👍
