18 ms·

Hertz bug leads to people being erroneously arrested and jailed

358 points by ryanmarsh 7y ago

kaendfinger 7y ago
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.
- cle 7y ago
  There were multiple failures here, and not just with Hertz. How on Earth did someone spend 2 weeks in jail on this? This was a bug so they clearly had no evidence except their word. The actions of the police here warrant just as much scrutiny and reflection as Hertz. Looking for heads to roll isn’t productive IMO, it’ll just end with scapegoats. I’m more interested in systemic changes to keep this from happening again. Although I do think it would be worthwhile to see if anyone tried to cover this up.
  - solarkraft 7y ago
    > Looking for heads to roll isn’t productive IMO, it’ll just end with scapegoats Rolling heads are effective deterrents. People should be really afraid of such a bug hapening in their system.
    - timthorn 7y ago
      Rolling heads lead to slopey shoulders. If the consequence of a mistake is so severe, people tend to shift blame rather than look for root cause. Look at the safety culture amongst pilots vs doctors for an example.
      - barry-cotter 7y ago
        What safety culture among doctors? More seriously when pilots mess up they’re not around to strenuously defend themselves while a doctor who never killed anyone never practiced.
        timthorn 7y ago
        That's my point: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/from-a-blame-culture-to-a-learning-culture https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/from-a-blame-culture-...
      - _iyig 7y ago
        Pilots are held directly and immediately accountable every moment when they’re in the air. If don’t fly safe, their heads will roll not due to any laws of man, except maybe one Sir Isaac Newton. Perhaps if doctors were held so directly accountable, there would be fewer incidents of medical malpractice.
        CogitoCogito 7y ago
        > Perhaps if doctors were held so directly accountable, there would be fewer incidents of medical malpractice. What do you mean by "directly accountable"? Doctors do get sued for malpractice regularly and that sounds pretty direct. Also how do you define an "incident of malpractice"? Many lawsuits are entirely frivolous so the definition cannot be initiated lawsuits. Also the lawsuits can be very expensive and representationally damaging, so the definition can't even be lawsuits that ended in settlements (since that can make sense regardless of validity). So frankly the situation seems much more complicated to even measure than many let on. Ignoring that those issues, if doctors were held to higher account for the mistakes they make, you probably would expect some drop in malpractice (however you measure it). However you should also expect fewer doctors to do risky procedures. The overall result would not necessarily clearly be a net win for society even if malpractice were to drop. Incentives are complicated.
    - TallGuyShort 7y ago
      The whole article is about proverbial heads rolling over car theft. There turned out to be no theft and innocent heads rolled. Doing the same thing to some poor Hertz clerk isn't justice.
    - imtringued 7y ago
      It's actually the opposite. Rare but harsh punishment doesn't deter crime a lot. However frequent but light punishments are very effective. After someone goes to prison for 10 years that person is already used to prison. You can no longer change the behaviour of such a person through further deterrents.
- mirimir 7y ago
  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
  - Johnny555 7y ago
    If I spend 2 weeks (or even 2 hours) in prison due to someone's false accusation, I'd also want to press for criminal charges.
    - mirimir 7y ago
      I get that. I'd feel that way too. But consider medical malpractice. Even when a surgeon screws up, and the patient is disabled for life, there are rarely criminal charges. And this is lots more indefinite than that. I mean, you're going to put some employee in jail because they screwed up paperwork?
      - brohee 7y ago
        Yes? Why the hell not, it's pretty obvious that such paperwork has life and death consequences (it's only a matter of time before a customer is shot during his arrest, because the cop "feared for his life"). We put people in jail for drinking too much when that leads to bad consequences, why not for sloppy paperwork that get someone falsely imprisoned or killed?
        mirimir 7y ago
        Intent matters a lot re criminal charges.
        Johnny555 7y ago
        As does negligence. If I'm target shooting from my house to a target across a busy road, if I accidentally shoot someone, I'd expect to go to jail even if it was a simple mistake.
minouye 7y ago
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.
- z3t4 7y ago
  Seems like all he had to do was to show the receipt, the cops called the rental place, cleared the stolen car alert. The car rental should probably be charged for falsify reporting the car as stolen. And as the police said, you could probably ask for a year of free rental for the inconvenience. The police has to take some precaution because they risk their lives walking up to a stolen car, thus the not so friendly tone and hand-cups.
  - ithkuil 7y ago
    There would be no story to tell had the cops been able to just call Hertz in a reasonable time. Instead apparently it took ages to go through the meanders of phone support.
  - mikeash 7y ago
    A year of free rental, hah! “It’s cool, we probably won’t get you falsely arrested while you use this.”
  - thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
    "free rentals for a year" ha! he/she better be getting a multi-million dollar settlement!
- in3d 7y ago
  I don’t think there is a more certain way of losing a customer for life than getting them arrested.
- koolba 7y ago
  That experience is terrible but it reads like a twenty paragraph commentary padding an instant pot recipe.
mnm1 7y ago
Hertz should face criminal charges for this. They ruin people's lives and have the audacity to play it off as a computer glitch? How incredibly fucked up. Of course the cops could investigate first before arresting people but no one expects anything from the police. At least they haven't shot anyone yet. I guess none of these renters was black.
- TomK32 7y ago
  The cops are the ones investigating, and I'm sure the number of actually stolen rental cars is far greater and comes along with identity theft. But at Hertz some human should do a thorough check.
  - cbluth 7y ago
    And then go to jail.
    - simonh 7y ago
      The person doing the check should go to jail?
      - harry8 7y ago
        The person who didn't. You can't set up a system like this and have no personal accountability. Can't find a person who is responsible, the CEO will do nicely. A lot of games would smarten up if the CEO went to jail for this kind of human-less "system failure." A corporation is its people. The people are responsible for committing crimes. Refusing to check should not be any kind of defence.
        Joakal 7y ago
        In Australia, there are company registered cars. If it runs a speed camera, the company must either pay a lot or cough up the "guilty" party who would pay less but get demerits too. The Australian solution to Hertz is give out company fines until they produce who did the false report. No need to go after the CEO or related. It's not like Hertz is suddenly going bankrupt to dodge the pitful fines. If the potential damage is more than the company can afford, then by all means, they should go after those running the company.
TomK32 7y ago
Isn't it a crime to accuse someone falsely? How much time will the computer spend in prison for that?
- ahje 7y ago
  None. The question of liability for automated crime reports is an interesting one, though. One would assume there is a person responsible for the operation of the computer in question.
- beeskneecaps 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    I've seen this 'Uncle Bob' mentioned several times on HN. Who is he?
    - fabioborellini 7y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_C._Martin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_C._Martin
    - dorfsmay 7y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_C._Martin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_C._Martin
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - skrebbel 7y ago
      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.
scraplab 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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 7y ago
      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 7y ago
        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.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
densone 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
pfortuny 7y ago
Paper paper paper paper. Keep paper records with you at all times when renting something.
- mk89 7y ago
  It's generally a good advice. However, how do you do with companies like car2go etc, which are fully digital?
  - mjevans 7y ago
    Don't get it unless you can get a paper receipt on their letterhead from their office. Just not worth it.
  - xiphias2 7y ago
    Can't it issue digital signatures that have to be accepted by the police and government as evidence?
  - Cthulhu_ 7y ago
    You should still get the records in the webapp / mobile app, and possibly (I don't know this service) e-mail receipts?
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    I recently read of some hapless tourists who rented a car, parted it at a trailhead in the Santa Cruz mountains and when they got back from their hike it wouldn't start because it couldn't contact the mothership. Seriously should be a felony to posses a device designed to remotely shut down an automobile.
  - pfortuny 7y ago
    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.
Causality1 7y ago
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.
jarofgreen 7y ago
> 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_ 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    > 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.
hertzthrowaway 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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.
titzer 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
loup-vaillant 7y ago
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 7y ago
  Arrests data hints about the probability of future arrests and similar troubles with the law.
  - loup-vaillant 7y ago
    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.
kurthr 7y ago
Private equity still helping out after all these years... 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 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/hertz-will-sell-1-billion-...
aburan28 7y ago
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
Paianni 7y ago
This Hertz to read.
ralala 7y ago
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.
yholio 7y ago
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.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  You keep using the word "rational" where I think you mean "conscious".
- warmwaffles 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    Even if the incidence of car crashes was 1/10th of the current figure?
    - warmwaffles 7y ago
      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.
js2 7y ago
> 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?
rdsubhas 7y ago
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
jfoster 7y ago
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.
Digit-Al 7y ago
All these horror stories. Sounds like renting from them really, really Hertz ;-)
throwbobaway313 7y ago
Americans care a lot more about paying salaries to soldiers, cops and prison guards than we do about taking care of our fellow man and treating each other with decency.
xfitm3 7y ago
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.
mikeash 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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.
    - 7y ago
duxup 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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.
- 7402 7y ago
  This is one reason I always opt for a printed-out rental contract when I rent a car and they ask, "Do you want us to email you the rental agreement, or do you want a paper copy?"
miguelmota 7y ago
What a way to ruin a vacation trip. Will be avoiding Hertz from now on.
mannykannot 7y ago
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.
rukittenme 7y ago
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).
- kevin_b_er 7y ago
  The corporation, through a lot of political greed, is itself a person. Jail the corporate person for its crimes against another person. If a corporation gets rights as a person, it should be held and jailed like a person for its crimes.
- FireBeyond 7y ago
  > 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 7y ago
    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.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jak92 7y ago
My City of seven square miles as part of a general obligation bond they have issued is spending $2 million to put in 30 cameras throughout the City. The police and local politicians feel that most visible way to fight crime is to pull people over for any and all violations flagged by ALPR this will happen more and more. Did I mention that the City is a heavily visited tourist City? Expect more armed stops by police on "stolen" cars as well. Sadly there is zero thought given to privacy "protections" either for the data.
habosa 7y ago
I rent cars pretty frequently. Hertz is a disaster. Mean, dishonest, and proud of it. Once when I had evidence of their mistake on paper the clerk stared at the ceiling and said "I'm not looking at that" like some kind of toddler. Use National/Enterprise. Same price, 100x better service.
- snarf21 7y ago
  I used National once in Atlanta and vowed to never use anyone else even at a higher price. Great user experience and helpful people.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  I think that Hertz had a good reputation about 20 years ago when I started regularly traveling for business. Of course, it could have just been that the firm had a contract with them while I was young and credulous. Anyway, Hertz squandered any reputation they might have had long ago. I haven't used anyone other than Enterprise in many years.
thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
The checkout process for Hertz is extremely slimy. While, I was filling out the form, the checkbox with a childseat didn't mention any kind of fee, so I assumed it was free. At the end of the form (which takes about 20m to fill out), it says "some fee may apply". When I got to the rental agency, it turns out that "some fee may apply" was 100$!! 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.
c3534l 7y ago
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.

358 points by ryanmarsh 7y ago

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.

cle 7y ago
There were multiple failures here, and not just with Hertz. How on Earth did someone spend 2 weeks in jail on this? This was a bug so they clearly had no evidence except their word. The actions of the police here warrant just as much scrutiny and reflection as Hertz. Looking for heads to roll isn’t productive IMO, it’ll just end with scapegoats. I’m more interested in systemic changes to keep this from happening again. Although I do think it would be worthwhile to see if anyone tried to cover this up.
- solarkraft 7y ago
  > Looking for heads to roll isn’t productive IMO, it’ll just end with scapegoats Rolling heads are effective deterrents. People should be really afraid of such a bug hapening in their system.
  - timthorn 7y ago
    Rolling heads lead to slopey shoulders. If the consequence of a mistake is so severe, people tend to shift blame rather than look for root cause. Look at the safety culture amongst pilots vs doctors for an example.
    - barry-cotter 7y ago
      What safety culture among doctors? More seriously when pilots mess up they’re not around to strenuously defend themselves while a doctor who never killed anyone never practiced.
      - timthorn 7y ago
        That's my point: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/from-a-blame-culture-to-a-learning-culture https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/from-a-blame-culture-...
    - _iyig 7y ago
      Pilots are held directly and immediately accountable every moment when they’re in the air. If don’t fly safe, their heads will roll not due to any laws of man, except maybe one Sir Isaac Newton. Perhaps if doctors were held so directly accountable, there would be fewer incidents of medical malpractice.
      - CogitoCogito 7y ago
        > Perhaps if doctors were held so directly accountable, there would be fewer incidents of medical malpractice. What do you mean by "directly accountable"? Doctors do get sued for malpractice regularly and that sounds pretty direct. Also how do you define an "incident of malpractice"? Many lawsuits are entirely frivolous so the definition cannot be initiated lawsuits. Also the lawsuits can be very expensive and representationally damaging, so the definition can't even be lawsuits that ended in settlements (since that can make sense regardless of validity). So frankly the situation seems much more complicated to even measure than many let on. Ignoring that those issues, if doctors were held to higher account for the mistakes they make, you probably would expect some drop in malpractice (however you measure it). However you should also expect fewer doctors to do risky procedures. The overall result would not necessarily clearly be a net win for society even if malpractice were to drop. Incentives are complicated.
  - TallGuyShort 7y ago
    The whole article is about proverbial heads rolling over car theft. There turned out to be no theft and innocent heads rolled. Doing the same thing to some poor Hertz clerk isn't justice.
  - imtringued 7y ago
    It's actually the opposite. Rare but harsh punishment doesn't deter crime a lot. However frequent but light punishments are very effective. After someone goes to prison for 10 years that person is already used to prison. You can no longer change the behaviour of such a person through further deterrents.
mirimir 7y ago
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
- Johnny555 7y ago
  If I spend 2 weeks (or even 2 hours) in prison due to someone's false accusation, I'd also want to press for criminal charges.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    I get that. I'd feel that way too. But consider medical malpractice. Even when a surgeon screws up, and the patient is disabled for life, there are rarely criminal charges. And this is lots more indefinite than that. I mean, you're going to put some employee in jail because they screwed up paperwork?
    - brohee 7y ago
      Yes? Why the hell not, it's pretty obvious that such paperwork has life and death consequences (it's only a matter of time before a customer is shot during his arrest, because the cop "feared for his life"). We put people in jail for drinking too much when that leads to bad consequences, why not for sloppy paperwork that get someone falsely imprisoned or killed?
      - mirimir 7y ago
        Intent matters a lot re criminal charges.
        Johnny555 7y ago
        As does negligence. If I'm target shooting from my house to a target across a busy road, if I accidentally shoot someone, I'd expect to go to jail even if it was a simple mistake.

minouye 7y ago

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.

z3t4 7y ago
Seems like all he had to do was to show the receipt, the cops called the rental place, cleared the stolen car alert. The car rental should probably be charged for falsify reporting the car as stolen. And as the police said, you could probably ask for a year of free rental for the inconvenience. The police has to take some precaution because they risk their lives walking up to a stolen car, thus the not so friendly tone and hand-cups.
- ithkuil 7y ago
  There would be no story to tell had the cops been able to just call Hertz in a reasonable time. Instead apparently it took ages to go through the meanders of phone support.
- mikeash 7y ago
  A year of free rental, hah! “It’s cool, we probably won’t get you falsely arrested while you use this.”
- thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
  "free rentals for a year" ha! he/she better be getting a multi-million dollar settlement!
in3d 7y ago
I don’t think there is a more certain way of losing a customer for life than getting them arrested.
koolba 7y ago
That experience is terrible but it reads like a twenty paragraph commentary padding an instant pot recipe.

mnm1 7y ago

Hertz should face criminal charges for this. They ruin people's lives and have the audacity to play it off as a computer glitch? How incredibly fucked up. Of course the cops could investigate first before arresting people but no one expects anything from the police. At least they haven't shot anyone yet. I guess none of these renters was black.

TomK32 7y ago
The cops are the ones investigating, and I'm sure the number of actually stolen rental cars is far greater and comes along with identity theft. But at Hertz some human should do a thorough check.
- cbluth 7y ago
  And then go to jail.
  - simonh 7y ago
    The person doing the check should go to jail?
    - harry8 7y ago
      The person who didn't. You can't set up a system like this and have no personal accountability. Can't find a person who is responsible, the CEO will do nicely. A lot of games would smarten up if the CEO went to jail for this kind of human-less "system failure." A corporation is its people. The people are responsible for committing crimes. Refusing to check should not be any kind of defence.
      - Joakal 7y ago
        In Australia, there are company registered cars. If it runs a speed camera, the company must either pay a lot or cough up the "guilty" party who would pay less but get demerits too. The Australian solution to Hertz is give out company fines until they produce who did the false report. No need to go after the CEO or related. It's not like Hertz is suddenly going bankrupt to dodge the pitful fines. If the potential damage is more than the company can afford, then by all means, they should go after those running the company.

TomK32 7y ago

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

ahje 7y ago
None. The question of liability for automated crime reports is an interesting one, though. One would assume there is a person responsible for the operation of the computer in question.
beeskneecaps 7y ago
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 7y ago
  I've seen this 'Uncle Bob' mentioned several times on HN. Who is he?
  - fabioborellini 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_C._Martin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_C._Martin
  - dorfsmay 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_C._Martin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_C._Martin
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - skrebbel 7y ago
    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.

scraplab 7y ago

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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 7y ago
      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.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]

densone 7y ago

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 7y ago
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.

pfortuny 7y ago

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

mk89 7y ago
It's generally a good advice. However, how do you do with companies like car2go etc, which are fully digital?
- mjevans 7y ago
  Don't get it unless you can get a paper receipt on their letterhead from their office. Just not worth it.
- xiphias2 7y ago
  Can't it issue digital signatures that have to be accepted by the police and government as evidence?
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  You should still get the records in the webapp / mobile app, and possibly (I don't know this service) e-mail receipts?
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  I recently read of some hapless tourists who rented a car, parted it at a trailhead in the Santa Cruz mountains and when they got back from their hike it wouldn't start because it couldn't contact the mothership. Seriously should be a felony to posses a device designed to remotely shut down an automobile.
- pfortuny 7y ago
  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.

Causality1 7y ago

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.

jarofgreen 7y ago

> 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_ 7y ago
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 7y ago
  > 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.

hertzthrowaway 7y ago

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.

titzer 7y ago

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 7y ago
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.

loup-vaillant 7y ago

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 7y ago
Arrests data hints about the probability of future arrests and similar troubles with the law.
- loup-vaillant 7y ago
  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.

kurthr 7y ago

Private equity still helping out after all these years... 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 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/hertz-will-sell-1-billion-...

aburan28 7y ago

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

Paianni 7y ago

This Hertz to read.

ralala 7y ago

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.

yholio 7y ago

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.

_bxg1 7y ago
You keep using the word "rational" where I think you mean "conscious".
warmwaffles 7y ago
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 7y ago
  Even if the incidence of car crashes was 1/10th of the current figure?
  - warmwaffles 7y ago
    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.

js2 7y ago

> 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?

rdsubhas 7y ago

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

jfoster 7y ago

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.

Digit-Al 7y ago

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

throwbobaway313 7y ago

Americans care a lot more about paying salaries to soldiers, cops and prison guards than we do about taking care of our fellow man and treating each other with decency.

xfitm3 7y ago

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.

mikeash 7y ago

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
  - 7y ago

duxup 7y ago

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 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
7402 7y ago
This is one reason I always opt for a printed-out rental contract when I rent a car and they ask, "Do you want us to email you the rental agreement, or do you want a paper copy?"

miguelmota 7y ago

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

mannykannot 7y ago

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.

rukittenme 7y ago

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).

kevin_b_er 7y ago
The corporation, through a lot of political greed, is itself a person. Jail the corporate person for its crimes against another person. If a corporation gets rights as a person, it should be held and jailed like a person for its crimes.
FireBeyond 7y ago
> 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 7y ago
  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.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

jak92 7y ago

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.

habosa 7y ago

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.

snarf21 7y ago
I used National once in Atlanta and vowed to never use anyone else even at a higher price. Great user experience and helpful people.
jessaustin 7y ago
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.

thorwasdfasdf 7y ago

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.

c3534l 7y ago

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.