9 ms·

Hertz is still having rental car customers wrongfully arrested, lawsuit claims

206 points by mikece 4y ago

wubbert 4y ago
>Lawyers for the customers say that the criminal theft reports are a way to recover lost inventory If the "inventory" (the car) is "lost," then wouldn't that imply that the renter has a car that they shouldn't have? I.E. stolen it? Or at the very least not returned it when they should have?
- macintux 4y ago
  As best I recall from previous times when this hit the news, Hertz's tracking was terrible, and customers had already returned the cars in question, or still had them but were paying for them. Update: see this other comment for more examples. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32966606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32966606
- jffry 4y ago
  These lawsuits allege that the cars were legitimately rented by customers, but Hertz screwed up the paperwork and then incorrectly reported them as stolen, and their customers suffered the consequences.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  maybe it is safer income for Hertz to err on the side of "yes it is stolen" even wrongfully
mjevans 4y ago
I didn't even know they'd filed for, and emerged as a new company from, bankruptcy.
crazygringo 4y ago
That's bizarre. One of the links gives more details within [1]: > Hertz manages tens of millions of rentals each year, which makes these 30 or so stories exceptionally rare, but not any less bizarre. The recent claims don't explain how exactly these mix-ups happen, but some of the renters reported switching vehicles, upgrading cars, or reporting mechanical issues before being approached by the law. One driver returned a vehicle for a flat tire and was given another to drive instead, and when the company did not complete paperwork for the second vehicle, the car was reported stolen and the police got involved. Another driver was alerted to an expired registration on her rental but was ultimately arrested before she could even return the car a few days later. Francis Alexander, an attorney who is representing some of the falsely-accused renters, says that Hertz’s computer system has a “glitch” that has led to the company-wide pattern of reporting cars stolen. On the one hand, I can imagine that with employees not filling out forms/screens right and then clocking out, the manager comes in the next day and a car is missing, how do they know it wasn't simply stolen? Better call the police. Especially since if you wait two weeks to "be sure" the car doesn't come back, your chances of recovering it presumably plummet. On the other hand... employees mess up all the time, so it seems like there'd better be a damn solid reason to presume a vehicle stolen rather than just the regular employee mixup (like security cam footage). And the idea that a computer system could automatically alert police of supposedly stolen vehicles without needing a manager's triple-verification seems incredibly irresponsible and shocking. [1] https://www.thedrive.com/news/27976/people-are-being-arrested-and-jailed-due-to-hertz-erroneously-reporting-rental-cars-stolen-report https://www.thedrive.com/news/27976/people-are-being-arreste...
- axiolite 4y ago
  > the manager comes in the next day and a car is missing, how do they know it wasn't simply stolen? Preferably by checking surveillance camera footage before calling the cops.
  - erichocean 4y ago
    This is the correct answer.
  - FireBeyond 4y ago
    Yup, much as it was a pain in the ass, renting from Hertz at Dulles airport showed that they're quite capable of tracking things. Gates in and out with barriers, cameras, LPR systems. Guy handed us an ipad as we pulled up that already had the plate and info from our car. And similar on return. I don't need every rental place to operate like a busy international airport, but they absolutely can track that effectively.
- SilverBirch 4y ago
  To be honest, two weeks or not, if a car is stolen it's probably gone forever. It's not like the police are going to assign a detective track down Hertz's stolen car. They stick it on the system and if it happens to pass an officer they'll stop it. The probelm is, the only way it'll ping an officer is if it's still being driven around the area with the same number plates - ie, the probability of it actually being stolen are minimal.
  - brigade 4y ago
    Nationwide, at least 60% of stolen vehicles are recovered. CA, which has a 90% overall recovery rate, breaks it down further that motorcycles have under a 60% recovery rate, commercial trucks have an 80% recovery rate, and everything else is over 94%. I don't think the people impacted are renting motorcycles or commercial trucks...
    - bink 4y ago
josephcsible 4y ago
Maybe the police need a special code for "stolen, but the registered owner is Hertz", that they'd treat as casually as a traffic stop for a burned out taillight, rather than the felony stop that a reported-stolen car usually gets.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  Why would they ever do that when having the car reported as stolen gives them probable cause to search the vehicle and driver? Hertz is making what they perceive as their job easier.
- iJohnDoe 4y ago
  Police wouldn’t want that. They want to get every chance they can get to add an arrest to their resume. It’s helps with promotion and pay. It doesn’t seem to matter if the arrest is later determined to be incorrect.
  - FireBeyond 4y ago
    In many cities, arrests are tracked, as are successful prosecutions. But by a curious anomaly the number of dropped prosecutions is not, or those later released without charge. I guess that's not an important metric. Maybe to us, not to the PD.
zac23or 4y ago
Someday, someone will be killed because of it. And Hertz will respond like the surprised Pikachu meme. People's lives are nothing to corporations.
- tinus_hn 4y ago
  If it doesn’t cost then anything, why would they care?
- gnu8 4y ago
  - drstewart 4y ago
  - Jabrov 4y ago
    lol wtf?
    - smegsicle 4y ago
      imagine the interaction between an african american male who righteously believes that he has done nothing wrong and the police forces who righteously believe that he is driving a stolen vehicle
- benjaminpv 4y ago
  I'm sure they'll treat the matter very seriously and profess that steps are being taken to prevent it happening again.
jopolous 4y ago
Crazy, I had something that could have escalated to a wrongful arrest with Hertz less than a week ago. Hertz initially gave me a car with a mechanical problem, so they swapped it out before we had even left the rental car lot. The attendant at the gate assured me they had updated the paperwork. They hadn’t. I was on the phone with support for hours trying to fix this. They never fixed it and I had to pay for someone else’s rental. They even told me that the car was not marked as stolen. In addition, when I returned the car, the attendant looked at me pretty funny and said it was good I never got pulled over. Nothing got done on this until I threatened to bring my company’s travel coordinator into the mix (I work at a large company that spends a lot on Hertz rentals every year). Still waiting for a refund of the additional fees they charged for my “second rental car”. The way it was handled by Hertz customer service and the location manager was an absolute joke. I’m not unique here either, after this experience I went on my company’s internal chat and found tons of stories similar to this. There is either a big problem with the process at Hertz or a severe bug in their system that they aren’t acknowledging.
- dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago
  > There is either a big problem with the process at Hertz or a severe bug in their system that they aren’t acknowledging. Or it's simply shitty customer service: "Hertz: where the customer always has criminal intent"
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > it's simply shitty customer service I split time between cities where I don't need a car, and a town where I do. The plan was to rent when in the latter. Hertz was so horrible I wound up buying the one Subaru on the lot (after an interregnal Turo). Going into a dealership blind was literally less painful than dealing with their B.S.
  - georgemcbay 4y ago
    Shitty customer service is pretty much the norm these days across all industries in my experience. Even companies historically known for good customer service have realized its an unnecessary cost center. eg Amazon used to have great customer service at the click of a "Contact Us" link. Now you can still kinda get customer service but its 18 levels deep to contact someone who can do anything for you and 99.9% of the process of getting from realizing you need service to getting something done is a byzantine automated electronic process clearly designed to make people give up and go away to minimize actual customer service costs.
m_antis89 4y ago
hahthey really lived up to their name in the end!!
walrus01 4y ago
People are slowly realizing that one of the actual roles of police in US society is to protect the interests of large corporations, wealthy people and those in entrenched positions of power. And not actually to serve/protect the population. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-po... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia https://www.barneslawllp.com/blog/police-not-required-protect https://www.barneslawllp.com/blog/police-not-required-protec...
- azinman2 4y ago
  From your own link: “the duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large, and, absent a special relationship between the police and an individual, no specific legal duty exists” None of this says the actual role is to protect the rich and corporations. They get the same non specific legal duty at all. They could just as easily ignore Hertz. While I wouldn’t be surprised that the rich get more responsiveness out of the police, I’m sure there are rich people too who also get ignored. Just like when my father had his phone stolen and we found via find my and IP logs the physical address of the thief, police refused to go retrieve it and arrest the thief.
  - Tostino 4y ago
    Different levels of wealth you and GP are talking about. Completely different.
    - azinman2 4y ago
      My father lives in a wealthy zip code, and stolen phones, car breaks ins, traffic violations are usually the main types of crime there. Was giving an example to solidly that they have can use discretion.
- rocket_surgeron 4y ago
  Requiring a duty to protect is extremely dangerous to society. It elevates police above regular citizens. Contrary to popular perception police have almost no powers beyond that of regular citizens. Citizens can make arrests, police differ in that they can do so even if they are not direct witnesses of a crime. Citizens can enter private property to save lives, and can break laws and regulations to do so as well. Police can only enter private property absent a threat to life or property if given permission either by the owner or courts. They have qualified immunity, as do several other professions and citizens acting in extraordinary capacities such as good samaritans. The law and public expectations should be that police are regular citizens with a regular job, bound by the same laws as everyone else. Not that they are specially-designated protectors. They only become specially-designated protectors when they take someone into custody—- and depriving someone of their freedom of movement is one of the few things regular citizens cannot realistically do. Elevating them to have some special extraordinary status is, again, very dangerous. Many powers would be enabled by such a status which do not exist today that could be justified by granting them a “duty” to protect. Additionally, just from a philosophical perspective doing so would be immoral. Regular citizens, with very few exceptions such as vessel captains, parents, spouses, and employers (in the context of being required to be provide a safe working environment and facilitate rescue of endangered employees) having a “duty” to protect anyone. It is unreasonable, to myself and many others, to levy such a duty on anyone except in extraordinary circumstances. Airline captains have a duty to protect their passengers. This RIGHTLY grants them near-total, absolute, and unquestionable authority over the conduct of their crew and all souls on board. Giving or forcing a duty to protect to or on police would do the same. That’s bad. And because police are NOT extraordinary they don’t have a parental-like duty to protect their children (the public). Nor are we their spouses or employees. As far as cynicism goes, they don’t protect the interests of large corporations that’s more the purview of politicians. Police are generally just enforcing the laws as written. The court decision and the cases it references you yourself linked to goes over some of my points. Many people respond with “but what about when the police…” but the egregious cases of misconduct from which they draw outrage are what are wrong and should be stopped— not an absence of some duty to protect.
asimpletune 4y ago
It’s weird that it’s only hertz… this bizarre saga has been going on now for some time, but I haven’t heard anything like this happen from one of the other big rental companies
dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago
Offtopic, but perhaps illustrative: back when Hertz did very short term 'on demand' rentals the GPS system in the car was obviously faulty and I got a call from someone from Hertz asking when I was going to return then rental, in a disagreeable tone. I told them I'd already returned it (usually locking the car at the return location terminates the rental). They didn't accept this and proceeded to tell me I should return it and the various consequences of not doing so. I told them again I'd returned it and suggested that their management unit was faulty which still didn't convince them. I then told them that there was a Hertz rental office right there and I'd put someone in the office on the phone who could confirm that I had indeed returned the car. They also rejected this. At that point I told them that if they wanted their car they could find it where I told them it was and that they should fix their system and there was nothing else I could do for them. She made some vague threat and I got off the phone. I never heard anything about it again and was billed correctly.
- bagels 4y ago
  Never return a rental car without getting a receipt for the return. The risk is just too great.
  - saiya-jin 4y ago
    many places don't work like that - ie you fly out early and the office is not opened yet. Happened to us many times, last time a week ago from Sicily, we were returning the car before 7am and rental office opened 8am. You have to leave keys in keybox and hope all will be fine (which it was)
  - dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago
    That's not how it worked, it you could hire the car for an hour at a time, it was all done using your mobile phone and automation. There was no staff on location (but in my case there was a Hertz office there but they were not involved with the kind of rental I was doing).
jawns 4y ago
> Claimants of wrongful arrest suits before the bankruptcy are left fighting a shell company left behind to handle the remaining debts of Hertz. ^ This is the final paragraph, but I wish the story went into more detail about it. The plaintiffs' lawyer alleges that there have been more than 300 cases of wrongfully arrested customers since 2015, and that most of those cases were subject to the bankruptcy proceedings. So there are likely 150+ people who would ordinarily be able to seek recompense from the company -- but because it went through the bankruptcy process, now they get to wrestle with a shell company that has been crafted to protect Hertz as much as possible from financial liability. Meanwhile, the company gets to carry on and -- as this lawsuit shows -- commit the same injustices after emerging from bankruptcy.
- fatneckbeardz 4y ago
  this has become standard practice in corporate America. It's done a lot with environmental damage: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/environmental-spinoffs-attempt-dump-liability-through-spin-bankruptcy https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/e...
- londons_explore 4y ago
  I think this would be fixed by allowing lawyers in legal cases to make 'unusual' requests (ie. that this be paid for by the new owner of the Hertz brand, not the original company). If the Jury agrees that it's a good plan, even if the ownership structure normally wouldn't mean that party has that liability, then the judge makes that order. That could also cover cases like 'person X shields themselves with an LLP', or 'bob gave all his money away to Fred before declaring bankruptcy' (go after Fred instead). It makes the law 'less strict' about exactly who needs to pay, and gives Jurys more room for whatever they think is 'fair'.
  - redeeman 4y ago
    this seems like it could quite easily cause some extremely gross situations
  - tarakat 4y ago
snapetom 4y ago
About 20 years ago, early in my career, I got into an argument with corporate and a rental car agency over an extra day because the agent did not understand that the day begins at 12:00 am. Since, then, I've had a paranoia that results in me, if I'm not directly handing off the car to a person, to take a picture of the car. I turn on meta data and the pic has the car, license plate, and enough of the drop off location in the background as scheduled. If there's any problems, I have the picture as backup. It came into play last year. Avis called me and asked, "Where's our car?" I had changed the drop off location and date via the app. I called loss prevention, they confirmed the change, and I sent them the pic. The agent instantly changed his tune from aggressive to puzzled and quickly dropped any harassment. No idea if the car was ever found, but the pic instantly stopped Avis from bothering me any further.
- listenallyall 4y ago
  > the agent did not understand that the day begins at 12:00 am. But most car rentals aren't based upon calendar days, they are generally based upon 24-hour blocks that start and end at the time you drive the car out. Also, buddy, 20 years is a long time to hang onto a grievance about possibly being charged one extra day... if that's the level of your suffering in life, consider yourself pretty lucky.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Yes, remembering things is a form of privilege.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    I don't know if anyone's ever told you, but calling people "buddy" while chastising them makes you sound like a cock.
    - listenallyall 4y ago
Overtonwindow 4y ago
I was a Hertz customer for 20 years, but the customer service went downhill about eight years ago and it’s never recovered. I always picked Hertz because it was the biggest, well, Hertz Hurts. I rented a car for a week, after a day I realized I didn’t need the car, so I returned it. I still got charged for the full week. Hertz…Hurts.
- listenallyall 4y ago
  Not really seeing why Hertz owes you a refund, you reserved the car for a full week.
  - treeman79 4y ago
    Because he will do business with others that are more flexible. Customer lost for life.
    - listenallyall 4y ago
      Lol, show me the US rental car company that refunds customers if they return the car early.
      - Overtonwindow 4y ago
        It was not a refund. I had reserved the car, but did not pay in advance. I paid when I brought the car back. Specifically they charged my card when I brought it back. In the past, I have been able to return early and they just take it back and turn around and rented back out. It was an absolute surprise and that $700 they were not willing to back away from. So they did lose a customer for life. I Rent-A-Car at least once a month, I use Enterprise now.
        Aloha 4y ago
        If you're renting from an airport location National is a little bit better.
        4y ago
MereInterest 4y ago
> Most of those cases were bundled into bankruptcy proceedings. This seems incredibly odd to me. Bankruptcy proceedings would be about monetary compensation, but that feels like it would only be one part of the proceedings. Knowingly making a false report of theft would be a criminal proceeding, an entirely separate realm from bankruptcy courts.
- bastawhiz 4y ago
  I suspect the state would be pursuing criminal charges, if any. I would expect the victims to separately file civil suits.
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  Strictly speaking, you as a private litigant generally cannot make criminal charges - only the state does that. A civil suit is "these guys harmed me specifically and I want to be repaid", a criminal charge is "these guys are threats to society and should be thrown in jail". And the latter has a very high bar to meet for corporations, because corporations rarely have the capacity or mental state to actually meet that bar[0]. They are machines, after all. In a civil suit, you are expected to be paid in money damages or maybe injunctions. Those damages are construed to be the same as, say, owing money to a bondholder. Going bankrupt lets you wipe out those obligations; so presumably those pending cases might also get wiped out. But that's also judge-dependent and fact-dependent, which is why they get wrapped up into the bankruptcy proceeding. [0] This is also why civil torts are almost always strict-liability. If everything required intent, corporations would be above the law.
  - nullc 4y ago
    > [0] This is also why civil torts are almost always strict-liability. If everything required intent, corporations would be above the law. because of the lack of investigatory powers (e.g. can't seize their documents, wiretap their communications, search their facilities, etc.) civil cases could generally never work against anyone if they had to show intent. If you get a judgement against you for a civil matter that requires intent you have really screwed up.
dapids 4y ago
Law enforcement should punish Hertz for using an emergency service (in a consistently poor manner) for a "clerical" error they caused. But they won't.
- toss1 4y ago
  THIS! I want to know when the police agencies will start charging companies for abusing the police services. Having to engage and arrest people puts officers in harm's way every time they make a stop, and when it is literally because some company thinks it's a profitable move to externalizing onto the police the problem to solve their management failures.
kmeisthax 4y ago
I once rented a car that was several months out of date on its registration. Fortunately for me it was only discovered by parking enforcement, not an actual arrest, so the rental company gets to pay that ticket apparently. But it was a pretty awful shock to me to find this out.
eckesicle 4y ago
This is such an American problem. I love visiting the US, but boy am I glad that I don't live there. Everyone here in the comments is blaming Hertz, but really the problem is that the police are just arresting people willy-nilly without actually confirming the vehicle in question is really stolen. And even if they do stop to question someone, why are they pulling a gun on them, or even taking them back to the station before trying to de-escalate the situation? This story just reeks of a series of serious societal failures. Staff on minimum wage, dated systems and processes, overzealous police, insane court system (did you read the comments in that linked article? One poor man had to pay bail at 45k, lost his job, and a bunch of other fines!) I just couldn't imagine any one of these things happening where I am from in Europe.
- mef 4y ago
  When the police see a car and run the plate and it comes back stolen, how should they “confirm the car is really stolen”?
  - rdlw 4y ago
    They should probably confirm the car is stolen when they mark it as stolen.
  - trasz 4y ago
    A responsible course of action, given Hertz history of false accusations, would be to ignore “stolen” cars that belong to Hertz. It’s a lesser evil - even if it actually got stolen nothing bad will happen, Hertz is a wealthy company.
  - wsh 4y ago
    The usual procedure is for the police dispatcher to check with the law enforcement agency that entered the license plate into the database. In case of a rental car, a call to the local or corporate office of the rental company would also be appropriate, all the more so now that there’s wide publicity about the problem of false or out-of-date theft reports.
    - 4y ago
stevespang 4y ago
CSMastermind 4y ago
I rack up 90+ days of car rentals a year and have never had a problem with Enterprise and the additional insurance. If you're looking to rent a car and want to optimize for peace of mind and customer service over bare minimum cost, then I highly recommend going that route.
- kylecordes 4y ago
  I also use Enterprise, though they are not wholly without errors of course. A few years ago I had an Enterprise rental car in Hawaii. Mid-rental, I got a phone call from a concerned Enterprise manager in Pennsylvania. Trying to figure out the status and location of a car of theirs, which their system showed I had rented. I assured them that I had not visited Pennsylvania nor driven their car from PA to Hawaii; they were able to track down a data entry error by a frazzled agent that had led to this confused state of affairs.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
forgetfreeman 4y ago
I frequently travel to the front range and have had all manner of issues with the local big box car rental agencies. It's never the same issue twice but over 12 years of flying out there and renting cars at least once a year I can think of maybe two times where I didn't encounter some kind of issue. Earlier this spring, out of desperation more than anything else, I decided to rent from Sixt. Best customer service I've encountered from any car rental agency ever. Counter staff are friendly, knowledgeable, and move with a purpose. In an out in a fraction of the time it takes at any of the other local rental outfits, zero hassles. Worth checking out if they serve your area of interest.
lkrubner 4y ago
Obviously I would never write about a client, especially after I signed an NDA, therefore I've never written anything about Hertz and I never will (not that Hertz was ever a client). But I have written about my experience with a company that I prefer to call SuperRentalCorp: http://www.smashcompany.com/business/why-are-large-companies-so-difficult-to-rescue-regarding-bad-internal-technology http://www.smashcompany.com/business/why-are-large-companies...
Eleison23 4y ago
I recently rented a car for a few days from a good agency that will remain unnamed here. I thoroughly inspected both the paperwork and the car before leaving the lot. The associate commended me on that. I took photos, noted minor damage, and asked questions. I was able to accept the first car they proposed to me. I returned the vehicle early and the associate asked me if I'd cleared out all my belongings; I said "I think so" and he asked if there were any firearms in the trunk. I scoffed and then wondered why he'd been so specific. Did they GPS-track the car to my visit to a sporting goods store? Was he judging solely by my somewhat tactical-looking attire? I don't know, but he did search the vehicle and returned carrying my rosary. That's a formidable weapon I wouldn't want to be separated from.

206 points by mikece 4y ago

>Lawyers for the customers say that the criminal theft reports are a way to recover lost inventory If the "inventory" (the car) is "lost," then wouldn't that imply that the renter has a car that they shouldn't have? I.E. stolen it? Or at the very least not returned it when they should have?

macintux 4y ago
As best I recall from previous times when this hit the news, Hertz's tracking was terrible, and customers had already returned the cars in question, or still had them but were paying for them. Update: see this other comment for more examples. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32966606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32966606
jffry 4y ago
These lawsuits allege that the cars were legitimately rented by customers, but Hertz screwed up the paperwork and then incorrectly reported them as stolen, and their customers suffered the consequences.
mistrial9 4y ago
maybe it is safer income for Hertz to err on the side of "yes it is stolen" even wrongfully

mjevans 4y ago

I didn't even know they'd filed for, and emerged as a new company from, bankruptcy.

crazygringo 4y ago

That's bizarre. One of the links gives more details within [1]: > Hertz manages tens of millions of rentals each year, which makes these 30 or so stories exceptionally rare, but not any less bizarre. The recent claims don't explain how exactly these mix-ups happen, but some of the renters reported switching vehicles, upgrading cars, or reporting mechanical issues before being approached by the law. One driver returned a vehicle for a flat tire and was given another to drive instead, and when the company did not complete paperwork for the second vehicle, the car was reported stolen and the police got involved. Another driver was alerted to an expired registration on her rental but was ultimately arrested before she could even return the car a few days later. Francis Alexander, an attorney who is representing some of the falsely-accused renters, says that Hertz’s computer system has a “glitch” that has led to the company-wide pattern of reporting cars stolen. On the one hand, I can imagine that with employees not filling out forms/screens right and then clocking out, the manager comes in the next day and a car is missing, how do they know it wasn't simply stolen? Better call the police. Especially since if you wait two weeks to "be sure" the car doesn't come back, your chances of recovering it presumably plummet. On the other hand... employees mess up all the time, so it seems like there'd better be a damn solid reason to presume a vehicle stolen rather than just the regular employee mixup (like security cam footage). And the idea that a computer system could automatically alert police of supposedly stolen vehicles without needing a manager's triple-verification seems incredibly irresponsible and shocking. [1] https://www.thedrive.com/news/27976/people-are-being-arrested-and-jailed-due-to-hertz-erroneously-reporting-rental-cars-stolen-report https://www.thedrive.com/news/27976/people-are-being-arreste...

axiolite 4y ago
> the manager comes in the next day and a car is missing, how do they know it wasn't simply stolen? Preferably by checking surveillance camera footage before calling the cops.
- erichocean 4y ago
  This is the correct answer.
- FireBeyond 4y ago
  Yup, much as it was a pain in the ass, renting from Hertz at Dulles airport showed that they're quite capable of tracking things. Gates in and out with barriers, cameras, LPR systems. Guy handed us an ipad as we pulled up that already had the plate and info from our car. And similar on return. I don't need every rental place to operate like a busy international airport, but they absolutely can track that effectively.
SilverBirch 4y ago
To be honest, two weeks or not, if a car is stolen it's probably gone forever. It's not like the police are going to assign a detective track down Hertz's stolen car. They stick it on the system and if it happens to pass an officer they'll stop it. The probelm is, the only way it'll ping an officer is if it's still being driven around the area with the same number plates - ie, the probability of it actually being stolen are minimal.
- brigade 4y ago
  Nationwide, at least 60% of stolen vehicles are recovered. CA, which has a 90% overall recovery rate, breaks it down further that motorcycles have under a 60% recovery rate, commercial trucks have an 80% recovery rate, and everything else is over 94%. I don't think the people impacted are renting motorcycles or commercial trucks...
  - bink 4y ago

josephcsible 4y ago

Maybe the police need a special code for "stolen, but the registered owner is Hertz", that they'd treat as casually as a traffic stop for a burned out taillight, rather than the felony stop that a reported-stolen car usually gets.

heavyset_go 4y ago
Why would they ever do that when having the car reported as stolen gives them probable cause to search the vehicle and driver? Hertz is making what they perceive as their job easier.
iJohnDoe 4y ago
Police wouldn’t want that. They want to get every chance they can get to add an arrest to their resume. It’s helps with promotion and pay. It doesn’t seem to matter if the arrest is later determined to be incorrect.
- FireBeyond 4y ago
  In many cities, arrests are tracked, as are successful prosecutions. But by a curious anomaly the number of dropped prosecutions is not, or those later released without charge. I guess that's not an important metric. Maybe to us, not to the PD.

zac23or 4y ago

Someday, someone will be killed because of it. And Hertz will respond like the surprised Pikachu meme. People's lives are nothing to corporations.

tinus_hn 4y ago
If it doesn’t cost then anything, why would they care?
gnu8 4y ago
- drstewart 4y ago
- Jabrov 4y ago
  lol wtf?
  - smegsicle 4y ago
    imagine the interaction between an african american male who righteously believes that he has done nothing wrong and the police forces who righteously believe that he is driving a stolen vehicle
benjaminpv 4y ago
I'm sure they'll treat the matter very seriously and profess that steps are being taken to prevent it happening again.

jopolous 4y ago

Crazy, I had something that could have escalated to a wrongful arrest with Hertz less than a week ago. Hertz initially gave me a car with a mechanical problem, so they swapped it out before we had even left the rental car lot. The attendant at the gate assured me they had updated the paperwork. They hadn’t. I was on the phone with support for hours trying to fix this. They never fixed it and I had to pay for someone else’s rental. They even told me that the car was not marked as stolen. In addition, when I returned the car, the attendant looked at me pretty funny and said it was good I never got pulled over. Nothing got done on this until I threatened to bring my company’s travel coordinator into the mix (I work at a large company that spends a lot on Hertz rentals every year). Still waiting for a refund of the additional fees they charged for my “second rental car”. The way it was handled by Hertz customer service and the location manager was an absolute joke. I’m not unique here either, after this experience I went on my company’s internal chat and found tons of stories similar to this. There is either a big problem with the process at Hertz or a severe bug in their system that they aren’t acknowledging.

dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago
> There is either a big problem with the process at Hertz or a severe bug in their system that they aren’t acknowledging. Or it's simply shitty customer service: "Hertz: where the customer always has criminal intent"
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > it's simply shitty customer service I split time between cities where I don't need a car, and a town where I do. The plan was to rent when in the latter. Hertz was so horrible I wound up buying the one Subaru on the lot (after an interregnal Turo). Going into a dealership blind was literally less painful than dealing with their B.S.
- georgemcbay 4y ago
  Shitty customer service is pretty much the norm these days across all industries in my experience. Even companies historically known for good customer service have realized its an unnecessary cost center. eg Amazon used to have great customer service at the click of a "Contact Us" link. Now you can still kinda get customer service but its 18 levels deep to contact someone who can do anything for you and 99.9% of the process of getting from realizing you need service to getting something done is a byzantine automated electronic process clearly designed to make people give up and go away to minimize actual customer service costs.

m_antis89 4y ago

hahthey really lived up to their name in the end!!

walrus01 4y ago

People are slowly realizing that one of the actual roles of police in US society is to protect the interests of large corporations, wealthy people and those in entrenched positions of power. And not actually to serve/protect the population. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-po... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia https://www.barneslawllp.com/blog/police-not-required-protect https://www.barneslawllp.com/blog/police-not-required-protec...

azinman2 4y ago
From your own link: “the duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large, and, absent a special relationship between the police and an individual, no specific legal duty exists” None of this says the actual role is to protect the rich and corporations. They get the same non specific legal duty at all. They could just as easily ignore Hertz. While I wouldn’t be surprised that the rich get more responsiveness out of the police, I’m sure there are rich people too who also get ignored. Just like when my father had his phone stolen and we found via find my and IP logs the physical address of the thief, police refused to go retrieve it and arrest the thief.
- Tostino 4y ago
  Different levels of wealth you and GP are talking about. Completely different.
  - azinman2 4y ago
    My father lives in a wealthy zip code, and stolen phones, car breaks ins, traffic violations are usually the main types of crime there. Was giving an example to solidly that they have can use discretion.
rocket_surgeron 4y ago
Requiring a duty to protect is extremely dangerous to society. It elevates police above regular citizens. Contrary to popular perception police have almost no powers beyond that of regular citizens. Citizens can make arrests, police differ in that they can do so even if they are not direct witnesses of a crime. Citizens can enter private property to save lives, and can break laws and regulations to do so as well. Police can only enter private property absent a threat to life or property if given permission either by the owner or courts. They have qualified immunity, as do several other professions and citizens acting in extraordinary capacities such as good samaritans. The law and public expectations should be that police are regular citizens with a regular job, bound by the same laws as everyone else. Not that they are specially-designated protectors. They only become specially-designated protectors when they take someone into custody—- and depriving someone of their freedom of movement is one of the few things regular citizens cannot realistically do. Elevating them to have some special extraordinary status is, again, very dangerous. Many powers would be enabled by such a status which do not exist today that could be justified by granting them a “duty” to protect. Additionally, just from a philosophical perspective doing so would be immoral. Regular citizens, with very few exceptions such as vessel captains, parents, spouses, and employers (in the context of being required to be provide a safe working environment and facilitate rescue of endangered employees) having a “duty” to protect anyone. It is unreasonable, to myself and many others, to levy such a duty on anyone except in extraordinary circumstances. Airline captains have a duty to protect their passengers. This RIGHTLY grants them near-total, absolute, and unquestionable authority over the conduct of their crew and all souls on board. Giving or forcing a duty to protect to or on police would do the same. That’s bad. And because police are NOT extraordinary they don’t have a parental-like duty to protect their children (the public). Nor are we their spouses or employees. As far as cynicism goes, they don’t protect the interests of large corporations that’s more the purview of politicians. Police are generally just enforcing the laws as written. The court decision and the cases it references you yourself linked to goes over some of my points. Many people respond with “but what about when the police…” but the egregious cases of misconduct from which they draw outrage are what are wrong and should be stopped— not an absence of some duty to protect.

asimpletune 4y ago

It’s weird that it’s only hertz… this bizarre saga has been going on now for some time, but I haven’t heard anything like this happen from one of the other big rental companies

dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago

Offtopic, but perhaps illustrative: back when Hertz did very short term 'on demand' rentals the GPS system in the car was obviously faulty and I got a call from someone from Hertz asking when I was going to return then rental, in a disagreeable tone. I told them I'd already returned it (usually locking the car at the return location terminates the rental). They didn't accept this and proceeded to tell me I should return it and the various consequences of not doing so. I told them again I'd returned it and suggested that their management unit was faulty which still didn't convince them. I then told them that there was a Hertz rental office right there and I'd put someone in the office on the phone who could confirm that I had indeed returned the car. They also rejected this. At that point I told them that if they wanted their car they could find it where I told them it was and that they should fix their system and there was nothing else I could do for them. She made some vague threat and I got off the phone. I never heard anything about it again and was billed correctly.

bagels 4y ago
Never return a rental car without getting a receipt for the return. The risk is just too great.
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  many places don't work like that - ie you fly out early and the office is not opened yet. Happened to us many times, last time a week ago from Sicily, we were returning the car before 7am and rental office opened 8am. You have to leave keys in keybox and hope all will be fine (which it was)
- dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago
  That's not how it worked, it you could hire the car for an hour at a time, it was all done using your mobile phone and automation. There was no staff on location (but in my case there was a Hertz office there but they were not involved with the kind of rental I was doing).

jawns 4y ago

> Claimants of wrongful arrest suits before the bankruptcy are left fighting a shell company left behind to handle the remaining debts of Hertz. ^ This is the final paragraph, but I wish the story went into more detail about it. The plaintiffs' lawyer alleges that there have been more than 300 cases of wrongfully arrested customers since 2015, and that most of those cases were subject to the bankruptcy proceedings. So there are likely 150+ people who would ordinarily be able to seek recompense from the company -- but because it went through the bankruptcy process, now they get to wrestle with a shell company that has been crafted to protect Hertz as much as possible from financial liability. Meanwhile, the company gets to carry on and -- as this lawsuit shows -- commit the same injustices after emerging from bankruptcy.

fatneckbeardz 4y ago
this has become standard practice in corporate America. It's done a lot with environmental damage: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/environmental-spinoffs-attempt-dump-liability-through-spin-bankruptcy https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/publications/e...
londons_explore 4y ago
I think this would be fixed by allowing lawyers in legal cases to make 'unusual' requests (ie. that this be paid for by the new owner of the Hertz brand, not the original company). If the Jury agrees that it's a good plan, even if the ownership structure normally wouldn't mean that party has that liability, then the judge makes that order. That could also cover cases like 'person X shields themselves with an LLP', or 'bob gave all his money away to Fred before declaring bankruptcy' (go after Fred instead). It makes the law 'less strict' about exactly who needs to pay, and gives Jurys more room for whatever they think is 'fair'.
- redeeman 4y ago
  this seems like it could quite easily cause some extremely gross situations
- tarakat 4y ago

snapetom 4y ago

About 20 years ago, early in my career, I got into an argument with corporate and a rental car agency over an extra day because the agent did not understand that the day begins at 12:00 am. Since, then, I've had a paranoia that results in me, if I'm not directly handing off the car to a person, to take a picture of the car. I turn on meta data and the pic has the car, license plate, and enough of the drop off location in the background as scheduled. If there's any problems, I have the picture as backup. It came into play last year. Avis called me and asked, "Where's our car?" I had changed the drop off location and date via the app. I called loss prevention, they confirmed the change, and I sent them the pic. The agent instantly changed his tune from aggressive to puzzled and quickly dropped any harassment. No idea if the car was ever found, but the pic instantly stopped Avis from bothering me any further.

listenallyall 4y ago
> the agent did not understand that the day begins at 12:00 am. But most car rentals aren't based upon calendar days, they are generally based upon 24-hour blocks that start and end at the time you drive the car out. Also, buddy, 20 years is a long time to hang onto a grievance about possibly being charged one extra day... if that's the level of your suffering in life, consider yourself pretty lucky.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Yes, remembering things is a form of privilege.
- googlryas 4y ago
  I don't know if anyone's ever told you, but calling people "buddy" while chastising them makes you sound like a cock.
  - listenallyall 4y ago

Overtonwindow 4y ago

I was a Hertz customer for 20 years, but the customer service went downhill about eight years ago and it’s never recovered. I always picked Hertz because it was the biggest, well, Hertz Hurts. I rented a car for a week, after a day I realized I didn’t need the car, so I returned it. I still got charged for the full week. Hertz…Hurts.

listenallyall 4y ago
Not really seeing why Hertz owes you a refund, you reserved the car for a full week.
- treeman79 4y ago
  Because he will do business with others that are more flexible. Customer lost for life.
  - listenallyall 4y ago
    Lol, show me the US rental car company that refunds customers if they return the car early.
    - Overtonwindow 4y ago
      It was not a refund. I had reserved the car, but did not pay in advance. I paid when I brought the car back. Specifically they charged my card when I brought it back. In the past, I have been able to return early and they just take it back and turn around and rented back out. It was an absolute surprise and that $700 they were not willing to back away from. So they did lose a customer for life. I Rent-A-Car at least once a month, I use Enterprise now.
      - Aloha 4y ago
        If you're renting from an airport location National is a little bit better.
      - 4y ago

MereInterest 4y ago

> Most of those cases were bundled into bankruptcy proceedings. This seems incredibly odd to me. Bankruptcy proceedings would be about monetary compensation, but that feels like it would only be one part of the proceedings. Knowingly making a false report of theft would be a criminal proceeding, an entirely separate realm from bankruptcy courts.

bastawhiz 4y ago
I suspect the state would be pursuing criminal charges, if any. I would expect the victims to separately file civil suits.
kmeisthax 4y ago
Strictly speaking, you as a private litigant generally cannot make criminal charges - only the state does that. A civil suit is "these guys harmed me specifically and I want to be repaid", a criminal charge is "these guys are threats to society and should be thrown in jail". And the latter has a very high bar to meet for corporations, because corporations rarely have the capacity or mental state to actually meet that bar[0]. They are machines, after all. In a civil suit, you are expected to be paid in money damages or maybe injunctions. Those damages are construed to be the same as, say, owing money to a bondholder. Going bankrupt lets you wipe out those obligations; so presumably those pending cases might also get wiped out. But that's also judge-dependent and fact-dependent, which is why they get wrapped up into the bankruptcy proceeding. [0] This is also why civil torts are almost always strict-liability. If everything required intent, corporations would be above the law.
- nullc 4y ago
  > [0] This is also why civil torts are almost always strict-liability. If everything required intent, corporations would be above the law. because of the lack of investigatory powers (e.g. can't seize their documents, wiretap their communications, search their facilities, etc.) civil cases could generally never work against anyone if they had to show intent. If you get a judgement against you for a civil matter that requires intent you have really screwed up.

dapids 4y ago

Law enforcement should punish Hertz for using an emergency service (in a consistently poor manner) for a "clerical" error they caused. But they won't.

toss1 4y ago
THIS! I want to know when the police agencies will start charging companies for abusing the police services. Having to engage and arrest people puts officers in harm's way every time they make a stop, and when it is literally because some company thinks it's a profitable move to externalizing onto the police the problem to solve their management failures.

kmeisthax 4y ago

I once rented a car that was several months out of date on its registration. Fortunately for me it was only discovered by parking enforcement, not an actual arrest, so the rental company gets to pay that ticket apparently. But it was a pretty awful shock to me to find this out.

eckesicle 4y ago

This is such an American problem. I love visiting the US, but boy am I glad that I don't live there. Everyone here in the comments is blaming Hertz, but really the problem is that the police are just arresting people willy-nilly without actually confirming the vehicle in question is really stolen. And even if they do stop to question someone, why are they pulling a gun on them, or even taking them back to the station before trying to de-escalate the situation? This story just reeks of a series of serious societal failures. Staff on minimum wage, dated systems and processes, overzealous police, insane court system (did you read the comments in that linked article? One poor man had to pay bail at 45k, lost his job, and a bunch of other fines!) I just couldn't imagine any one of these things happening where I am from in Europe.

mef 4y ago
When the police see a car and run the plate and it comes back stolen, how should they “confirm the car is really stolen”?
- rdlw 4y ago
  They should probably confirm the car is stolen when they mark it as stolen.
- trasz 4y ago
  A responsible course of action, given Hertz history of false accusations, would be to ignore “stolen” cars that belong to Hertz. It’s a lesser evil - even if it actually got stolen nothing bad will happen, Hertz is a wealthy company.
- wsh 4y ago
  The usual procedure is for the police dispatcher to check with the law enforcement agency that entered the license plate into the database. In case of a rental car, a call to the local or corporate office of the rental company would also be appropriate, all the more so now that there’s wide publicity about the problem of false or out-of-date theft reports.
  - 4y ago

stevespang 4y ago

CSMastermind 4y ago

I rack up 90+ days of car rentals a year and have never had a problem with Enterprise and the additional insurance. If you're looking to rent a car and want to optimize for peace of mind and customer service over bare minimum cost, then I highly recommend going that route.

kylecordes 4y ago
I also use Enterprise, though they are not wholly without errors of course. A few years ago I had an Enterprise rental car in Hawaii. Mid-rental, I got a phone call from a concerned Enterprise manager in Pennsylvania. Trying to figure out the status and location of a car of theirs, which their system showed I had rented. I assured them that I had not visited Pennsylvania nor driven their car from PA to Hawaii; they were able to track down a data entry error by a frazzled agent that had led to this confused state of affairs.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

forgetfreeman 4y ago

I frequently travel to the front range and have had all manner of issues with the local big box car rental agencies. It's never the same issue twice but over 12 years of flying out there and renting cars at least once a year I can think of maybe two times where I didn't encounter some kind of issue. Earlier this spring, out of desperation more than anything else, I decided to rent from Sixt. Best customer service I've encountered from any car rental agency ever. Counter staff are friendly, knowledgeable, and move with a purpose. In an out in a fraction of the time it takes at any of the other local rental outfits, zero hassles. Worth checking out if they serve your area of interest.

lkrubner 4y ago

Obviously I would never write about a client, especially after I signed an NDA, therefore I've never written anything about Hertz and I never will (not that Hertz was ever a client). But I have written about my experience with a company that I prefer to call SuperRentalCorp: http://www.smashcompany.com/business/why-are-large-companies-so-difficult-to-rescue-regarding-bad-internal-technology http://www.smashcompany.com/business/why-are-large-companies...

Eleison23 4y ago

I recently rented a car for a few days from a good agency that will remain unnamed here. I thoroughly inspected both the paperwork and the car before leaving the lot. The associate commended me on that. I took photos, noted minor damage, and asked questions. I was able to accept the first car they proposed to me. I returned the vehicle early and the associate asked me if I'd cleared out all my belongings; I said "I think so" and he asked if there were any firearms in the trunk. I scoffed and then wondered why he'd been so specific. Did they GPS-track the car to my visit to a sporting goods store? Was he judging solely by my somewhat tactical-looking attire? I don't know, but he did search the vehicle and returned carrying my rosary. That's a formidable weapon I wouldn't want to be separated from.