Rented a Hertz and got charged $90 a day for easy pass service whether I drove the car or not (I was camping for a week) and had no way of fighting the charges, some fine print tricked me. For such scams I vowed to never give my business to Hertz again. Ever.
IIRC this is a fee they charge you in order to have access to the vehicle's EZ pass, not for making actual trips across EZ pass bridges or the like. So if you're going to rent a car for a week and need to cross a bridge on one day, you have to enable the charge for the entire trip, or somehow prepay the charge via some website for the bridge. This is basically impossible for a tourist to figure out, of course, so they just profit from the complexity with an all-or-nothing system.
I'd love to see a campaign to coordinate small claims court claims against abusive companies.
It could really fuck a company's day up if several hundred to thousand people across the world decides to seek redress from a small claims court on the same day.
Now the company has to pay one of their lawyers ($$$) to show up, or the claim is a default judgement, which they have to pay.
So the lawyer shows up and says blah blah mandatory binding arbitration. The judge can interrupt and say "don't care, judgement against, pay the man". Or the opposite, in which case at least you cost them more than they cost you.
Which is why they probably take the default judgement and pay you.
At least in some courts, I would think filing a motion to dismiss would be enough, without swnding a lawyer to court... but I have never been theough that process before so I can't say for sure?
Still takes time, and arbitration isn't all that scary, ao forcing them to arbitrate can also be a costly endeavor for them.
I would think this is possible. I've often agreed with the other party's lawyer that oral arguments on MtDs are unnecessary and then we just let the judge rule "on the papers" without anyone having to be there in person. The judge can then just file a written order with his ruling.
Bear in mind that motions and discovery are highly frowned upon in Small Claims courts that I've litigated in. And 95% of the time the court will rule in favor of the bigger party if they bring a lawyer, just out of general hatred of courts for unrepresented litigants.
In most situations small claims court is generally self-represented, with claims for legal costs capped at a certain level dependent on the amount being claimed. For example, in NSW, Australia, there is a different cap for costs under $1000 vs $1000-$5k, and $5k-$20k. One might expect a judge to look poorly upon a large multinational sending a $2k/hr lawyer to a $500 hire car dispute.
If the arbitrator is specified as the American Arbitration Association, usually yes. See section R-9 of the AAA Consumer Rules.[1]
JAMS just updated their "minimum standards" for consumer arbitration as of May 1, 2024, and they now seem to allow for transfer to small claims court.[2]
The Supreme Court has repeatedly and willfully ignored the plain meaning of the statutes, congressional intent in writing the FAA, as well the standard rules of statutory interpretation effectively rewriting Title 9 into something it was never intended.
At this point fixing it requires congressional action.
It’s not overriding the legal system, it willfully sidestepping it. But obligating the contracted party to agree. The issue of course is that Hertz (in this case) can put whatever random requirements into the contract, and you can’t arbitrarily strike them. You still need/want their service.
That said, just because there’s an arbitration clause in the contract doesn’t mean you’re absolutely stuck. You can hire a lawyer and try to get out of it. They’re trying to keep you from doing something like that.
It still costs them to do this because they have to do the paperwork to handle it, the meetings to decide what to do, the confusion that will come from this, and the opportunity cost of these courses, as well as the bad publicity that will come from this announcement that the group doing this will of course release to social media.
Reminds me of the time I made the mistake of booking a Hertz rental through Expedia. My rental started on a daylight savings time changeover.
_Hertz_ messed up the rental dates on their end of the transaction (by multiple days, even) and would not allow me to modify or cancel the rental. I ended up disputing the charge with Expedia via an AmEx chargeback and lost.
This is a huge feature of CCs that most people don't recognize. You're paying an extra ~3% to credit card companies in exchange for the ability to dispute a charge. If a merchant (in this case Hertz) accepted cash, you would get an invoice in your hand that you could dispute on the spot and just simply not pay. The reverse would be true for Hertz who could try to sue you for not complying.
> But then don't you get that back as cashback and such?
Huh? You mean in the example scenario if I charge $500 for a car rental and get 2% cashback from my CC. I find out the car rental is charging me an extra $100 for gas that I never used. I'd complain because I'd lose out on the 2% * $100 difference for the $100 that my CC company gave me back as a result of the dispute charge?
> You're paying an extra ~3% to credit card companies in exchange for the ability to dispute a charge.
I was responding to this.
I also don't understand after re-reading where the "extra ~3%" comes from. If I go to the store and spend $100 on my CC, I'll get $2 cashback. I can pay the $100 off immediately with no interest for a savings of 2%. How are they getting 3% extra from me?
I know I get at least 2% back on all purchases and sometimes more depending on the card and category.
This is also why I brought up that usually I hear people who pay in cash get overcharged - they pay the full $100.
(leaving out how credit card fees require merchants to increase prices leading to even more expenses for cash buyers)
The "~" is important. Most merchants are incurring anywhere from 3~6% on charges made via CC. Likewise, your actual cashback varies (for example the highest I'm aware of is BoA's 2.65% cashback) and the average consumer is likely only getting about 1.5% cashback. So there is your delta.
FYI - For people who work in payments, they know it's not as simple as this, but the point is that there is a delta between the two, and it does help pay for both of the convenience AND the ability to dispute.
I thought your original post made it seem like only CC users get the extra 3~6% for the ability to dispute. My point in the thread was everyone pays it and it ends up being cheaper for the CC holder due to cashback.
"pays it" is relative. The merchant is generally charging 3~6% more than they would otherwise if they didn't use a CC. Said differently, assuming all other things equal, buying the same good for the same price from two identical stores, one who only accepts CCs and one who accepts cash, the one who accepts cash will profit more. Therefore they can, in theory, charge less for their good.
> being cheaper for the CC holder due to cashback
"cheaper" how? The spread is effectively paid for by the merchant (their processing fee is 99% of the time higher than the cashback bonus a consumer earns) which in turn goes to vendors (like credit card providers, payment processors, etc) who then allocate costs against things like customer service for charge disputes.
EDIT: The spread is the original ~3% I'm referring to, which would be an average 1.5% cashback against a 4.5% payment processing charge for a delta of 3%. In many cases this is lower (or null) but you get the point.
If both customers are shopping at the same store, and one pays in card and one pays in cash, the card holder pays less due to cashback. I agree the prices will be higher than at a store that does not accept credit cards due to not having to pay the fees.
The only way I see the extra 3% for cardholders is because they are "forced" to shop in card-accepting establishments which will have higher costs to cover fees while the cash user can choose the cheaper cash vendor.
> The only way I see the extra 3% for cardholders is because they are "forced" to shop in card-accepting establishments which will have higher costs to cover fees while the cash user can choose the cheaper cash vendor.
Correct. And my point is that this 3% tax gives you the feature to dispute the charge.
They'd end up doing something like you pay $2000 in cash upfront and then you get the unused portion back at the end, and GDP would lower significantly because most people can't afford to give businesses a line of credit like this.
Sure, but collections for something they have no justifiable reason to collect on? To be clear, what I'm suggesting is (a) hypothetical to understand the business rationale and (b) is under the premise that what is on the bill matches the service you retained. In my theoretical scenario, the onus is on the merchant to prove they've provided the service you've paid for.
The reason car rentals provide the convenience of charging your credit card without the immediate authority of you reviewing the charges is a feature of credit cards over cash, and a benefit to consumers. The other feature is that you can dispute those said charges if the merchant is also charging you for services/goods you never received (e.g., gas for an EV).
My understanding is you can get sent to collections for basically any reason and debt collectors will hound you without regard to whether it is something you should be obligated to pay or not
Yeah, this is mostly a fiction, much like the idea that if someone steals from you, your tax dollars fund the police, and you can call them and they'll do anything meaningful.
It's a belief held by people who don't actually try to use these systems. Major credit card companies aren't in the business of consumer protection.
Many times I've tried to do chargebacks, only to be denied by the card issuer with some unsubstantiated claim by the vendor that they held up their end of the transaction. No recourse short of spending four or five figures on a lawyer and a lawsuit. As a result, if they cheat you out of less than $5k, they win.
avis does the same thing: they ask you if you want the ez pass to be activated and if you say yes, they put abbreviations in the fine print that indicate you agreed to their ridiculously priced "unlimited tolls" package, even though there are other cheaper ez pass related services, and because you sign the rental agreement in order to get the keys, you don't have a leg to stand on if you dispute it later. because the charge is abbreviated, it took 20 minutes between the invoice and their website to even decipher what the charges were for. if hertz and enterprise are doing it, must be an industry-wide scam.
I went to the US last year on business, and rented a car out of the airport.
Not only they could not tell me in advance how much it was going to cost, but also everything in the final invoice was abbreviated and laid out in a nonsensical way. I tried summing the values in every possible way, and it never got to the total they charged.
I'd be absolutely pissed if it was my money.
Funnily enough, rented from the same company in Germany, and the experience was completely different. Clear value, fees, easy to understand invoice.
Hadn’t rented from Hertz in many years until last week. Made sure to fill the tank back up as high as it would go just in case. Get thru security at the airport and already had a $26 charge for fuel. Still working on getting this fixed. Funny how they can charge within 5-7 minutes but they take 5-7 business days to process a refund.
Good luck. I’m fighting them from the beginning of April because they failed to check the car in properly (I asked for a receipt and they said they couldn’t print one at the return, despite being in the receipt line). I got charged for the next renters days, late fees, recovery fees, and tolls accrued by them. They agreed to refund (which still hasn’t happened) and a few days later they charged me for not returning the car full (it was).
Fortunately for us it’s just a credit card charge that’s being disputed. For friends of ours they reported the car stolen and filed a police report.
This doesn’t seem like how a legitimate business operates, but more like a syndicate. While I understand individual locations are franchises, they have eerily similar catastrophic failures that seem to regularly occur.
This is probably important context to include when you make this recommendation (from your other comment):
> Ultimately they sent me a bill for the cost of the rental minus the gas and threatened to take me to collections if I didn't pay it.
This is the always-necessary reminder that credit card chargebacks do not in fact relieve you of the duty to pay for services that you did receive. A chargeback may be necessary to get the merchant's attention, but you do need to be careful to actually pay them the correct amount in the end.
It's funny you should say that, because OP actually tells a more complete version of the story here [0]. Hertz did send them a new bill with a threat to send it to collections if it weren't paid.
Maybe still a win in the end because the incorrect charge was removed, but I get really uncomfortable with how casually people recommend chargebacks on this forum. They're not intended to get you out of charges that the other party can prove you did agree to pay.
Bundled with a bunch of charges that were, in fact owed. OP disputed the whole charge (probably because that was the only option), but it's important to know that Hertz did come after him for the rest of the money.
Right: as you say there probably was no other option -- OP was in a bind because all the charges are packaged together. There wasn't really a neat solution to this, except how OP played it, which could have ended up going badly wrong.
I got a $80 bill from Hertz for returning a compact car without gas. I had returned the car with a full tank of gas though!
There is no way to resolve this on the phone, so I filled out their online form to dispute the charge.
After not hearing from Hertz for 2 days, I disputed the charge with my credit card. The credit card instantly refunded the entire cost of the rental.
Within 12 hours of the refund, I got an email from Hertz saying they were sorry about the accidental charge and that they'd give me a free one day rental.
Ultimately they sent me a bill for the cost of the rental minus the gas and threatened to take me to collections if I didn't pay it.
This is a simple case where it's pretty easy to prove that they made a mistake, but I once got charged for skip the pump, despite a) i had filled in the tank, b) the tank was not even full when I picked the car. Lucky enough I always keep the pump receipts and they ended refunding me, but I'm left to wonder how many people get charged those fees and can't get them reversed
Every single time I rent a car in Vegas. No matter what company, I get dinged for gas. Keep all my receipts and make a video showing the gauge while dropping off the car.
I have had nothing but bad experiences with Hertz. Unfortunately the corporate rate we get is very low so I'm stuck with them, but it seems like there is always something that goes wrong. I drove out of their facility, had a low tire pressure indicator on, brought it back and they wanted me to sign something saying I was responsible for damage to their tire.
As much as services like Turo and Getaround have their own gotchas[0], this sort of thing is why I try to use them instead of the legacy car rental companies, when possible. I've had nothing but good experiences with Turo (15 or so rentals, ranging from a single day to a 2-week rental). With the legacy rental companies, the best experiences are barely mediocre.
[0] One big one is that credit cards that offer insurance for rental cars won't cover services like these.
The only EV I’ve rented from Turo was the opposite experience. They gave me the car at 75%, they capped charging at 90% in settings, then they charged me for bringing it back at 70% (which was just past their threshold but considering I could only charge it to 90% that should be the baseline).
That must be pretty location dependent. When I've used it the prices were usually dramatically lower, especially if you want something specific like AWD.
When people suggest owning an EV for daily use and renting a gas car for occasional long trips, this is exactly why that's not a attractive idea for most people. Even in the best case scenario, renting a car is a time-consuming hassle and you have to navigate high pressure tactics on buying upgrades, fuel, insurance, etc.
I don't own any car and exclusively rent from one of a few companies (probably all owned by Hertz). I've heard a lot of horror stories, but really haven't ever run into a problem, to such an extent that buying another car has not crossed my mind in any serious way in the last 6 years since my last one died. So anecdotally, I'd highly recommend this, because owning a car is a massive pain in the ass logistically and financially, and I'm happy to not have one. Sometimes (maybe one rare time every two years) I need a rental for the same short time on a weekend that everyone else does, and that's a bit inconvenient, but couldn't bother to care so much.
The only thing I'm relatively cautious with is suspiciously high deposits/credit authorizations.
When I run the numbers, it would literally take years for the amount I spend renting to surpass the amount I'd spend on just the sales tax or insurance for a hypothetical viable car. It turns out that owning a car is like owning a McMansion, such that you end up inflating your lifestyle to fill the space or depend on the car.
> Even in the best case scenario, renting a car is a time-consuming hassle
No that’s the worst case scenario.
> you have to navigate high pressure tactics on buying upgrades, fuel, insurance, etc.
No you don’t. In the US, the major reputable companies allow you to register your DL and insurance, pick your default fuel preference. 20 minutes prior the reservation you get a list of available cars and proceed directly to the car. You then scan a QR code at the exit, maybe you show your DL to a guy at the gate, who is in no position to sell anything. This is for almost all airport locations and many corporate locations.
Even when you see an agent..
High pressure tactics? That’s impossible, they have no leverage. It’s not like buying a hot new car or something. The insurance is usually worthless to you so you aren’t losing anything by walking away. Just say no? A simple no always works. Carry a credit card with primary rental insurance. I have had a sales person try to give some bullshit song and dance even when I politely tell them I have primary insurance on my card. It’s a simple “no, not interested.” What are they going to do?
Rented from enterprise last month. I booked a Sports Car Rental (Dodge Challenger or Similar). I got there and they only had a miata. Certainly a cool car. But it's too small for me. I needed a Dodge Challenger or similar. So I ended up with the slowest truck imaginable with no fuel in it. They wouldn't give me my company's corp. rate even though I had my work badge and this rental was for a work training in DC. Oh! and I brought my own EZ pass, but somehow the enterprise car somehow still charged me for tolls. But not without the extra convenience fee. Rental car companies here suck.
Sorry I have plenty of issues with car rental companies but dude - if you need a car of a certain size, rent that size, not "sports car". And book through your company's travel service, with the proper company code, no counter agent knows what your company badge is, and they certainly don't care that you're going to a work-related training. E-Z Passes are, unfortunately, usually tied to a specific license plate. For example, the Maryland and Virginia E-Z Passes require you to log into your account and enter the rental car's plates. It's understandable one might not realize that, but at the same time, that's EZ Pass setting those rules, not Enterprise.
This is an area where the governments are short-sighted and it's very hard to blame individual renters. Many of these states have no option to pay cash tolls anymore. Further, not everyone in a rental (often in a strange place) knows they will use a toll road, so you really can't blame people for failing to register ahead of time (either the plates or via E-Z Pass) -- plus the fact that you don't know the plates until you're physically at the car, it's not like you can pre-register a week in advance, even if you wanted to. You'd think by now some of these transportation authorities would set up some payment system with Google & Apple Pay as a cashless alternative for people without an EZ Pass.
> it's not like you can pre-register a week in advance
True, although you usually have a 48 hour window to post register.
Not saying this is the most consumer friendly setup, but the fees are avoidable.
> Further, not everyone in a rental (often in a strange place) knows they will use a toll road
When I end up in a such a state I reflexively register (actually use a checklist, can take care of this in the hotel room in the evening for instance) regardless of whether I plan to use a toll road or not. There’s no guesswork to this other than knowing what states I’ll be in.
Always make sure the rental car either does not have a transponder or that it is closed in its shielded box.
If you’re dealing with an agent always make sure every add on service is declined.
> Google & Apple Pay as a cashless alternative for people without an EZ Pass.
Yes, technically they are avoidable, but it sounds like you are an outlier - doubtful that lots of people spend precious travel time (especially if with family/kids) registering on government web sites. Very doubtful that many people have checklists for this purpose.
> But how would that work with open road tolling?
For one, both companies also operate GPS services so perhaps it could all be integrated. Or just have one or two lanes available for people to slow down and tap to pay (still benefit from no staffing the toll booth). Or you could have a pull-off area right after the tollbooth with QR codes to pay by PayPal, Venmo, etc.
Ah the weak HN trope to anyone giving sound advice when all you care about is “winning” an argument.
This also veered the topic into ad hominem completely unnecessarily.
> doubtful that lots of people spend precious travel time (especially if with family/kids)
Sheesh. That website takes literally less than a minute to complete for a link that I found in less than a 10 second search. I have family/kids, so no, try again.
When I arrive at the airport and I see long lines of families waiting for up to an hour at the Thrifty/Dollar/Fox counter so that maybe they could save a few bucks (often not) while I am walking directly to the lot from a flight to pick up the car - perhaps I may be an outlier, but I certainly know something about saving “precious” time and false economies.
30 seconds to fill out a web form is a complete nothingburger.
> Very doubtful that many people have checklists for this purpose.
I have a checklist for traveling. This is one item. Do you not understand the “list” part, it’s not a whole list just for tolls.
Ironically, before I had a family I wouldn’t often bother. Having a family/kids makes lists a tremendous stress reliever.
> still benefit from no staffing the toll booth
> pull-off area right after the tollbooth
Open road (overhead) tolling has no toll booths. Some states are entirely toll booth free outside of bridges and others are following. The cost savings of eliminating toll booth infrastructure entirely is substantial because it’s not just the booths, it greatly simplifies hundreds of interchanges.
There's a physical structure which exists for the purpose of supporting the infrastructure and electronics necessary to collect tolls from the people who drive under it, right? That's a tollbooth.
As far as the rest, I wasn't trying to even make an argument, let alone win it. Just an observation that few people register their rental cars with out-of-state toll web sites. You sound like a very organized person, kudos, many people would like to run their lives as efficiently as you do. I certainly can't get from this page https://www.paturnpike.com/e-zpass/rental-vehicles to a completed, registered account in 30 seconds - it often takes me that long just to find my wallet and pull out the necessary credit card, let alone type it in.
> There's a physical structure which exists for the purpose of supporting the infrastructure and electronics necessary
No, not really. In addition to the overhead gantry there’s a small off road utility cabinet and some solar panels. Most of the mainline NYS thruway for instance now has no toll booths. The tolling system is literally just a stantion/gantry like those holding up the road signs over the main highway. There’s no slowing down, and if you’re not paying attention you might not even notice it. There is no infrastructure for anyone to pull over or slow down, there are no dedicated access lanes. In some cases the toll points are not proximal to any interchanges. All of that has been permanently removed. Hence “open road tolling”.
As far as a pull off area? There are rest stops (some manned) and cell phone lots.
You realize once you put in that one “special” lane you’ve created a massive chokepoint (This hybrid has in fact been the status quo for years in many areas, getting away from it is the point)? It’s all or nothing really.
I’ll admit the PA site is relatively unfriendly steaming pile. The NY one is much faster. Some states have a 14 day registration period (like IL), which should be the norm IMHO.
Finally, a tag is less and less onerous. Virtually every toll state on the east accepts Ezpass. You don’t need a Sunpass or whatever anymore.
Other thing many don’t do but should. Spend a minute or two making a walk around video with detail shots for damage. This is a small inconvenience over trusting the last check in guy. I prefer not having to get insurance involved if I can avoid it. It’s a $40000 piece of equipment I just took possession of (I do think the idea that this fundamentally can be an absolutely hassle free experience is some first world thinking - this is not a defense of the sliminess of the business, but still, let’s be reasonable, it’s too easy to just get the keys to a newish car. That said, I support existing and some further state level consumer protections).
> and I brought my own EZ pass, but somehow the enterprise car somehow still charged me for tolls.
If they charged for tolls that can only mean they got billed by tolling agency, often by plate reader. I mean it kind of sucks but if your ezpass doesn’t work not sure how that makes the rental company responsible.
My typical car renting experience is that I pull out my phone, launch the app, walk to where it tells me the car is, and then get in the car and drive away. That’s for short term rentals that aren’t priced for multi-day things, but going up to ten minutes of overhead for a week rental is still only a minor annoyance. I have never encountered any sort of high pressure sales for rentals, and all of my negative car rental experiences have been at airports and not in scenarios where owning my own vehicle would have let me avoid the rental.
> When people suggest owning an EV for daily use and renting a gas car for occasional long trips, this is exactly why that's not a attractive idea for most people.
Sounds like a plug-in hybrid might be a great car for you. I have one and it works pretty well.
Aside from charging to put gas in an EV, the amounts they are charging seem really high. How could filling a sedan with gas cost $200 to $400? That’s like 10x what the actual gas costs retail at the pump.
You're paying for convenience. The deal they make with you up front is that you get to not worry about the tank, but in return you pay a super inflated rate for the gas. Plus you pay for a full tank, even if you return it at 3/4 and it only takes a few gallons to fill it.
I get that some people just don't have the time (or executive function?) to deal with refilling before return on some trips, or they're so rich that they just don't care, but otherwise I just do not get why anyone would accept this option.
A lot of car rentals go on a corporate tab. When high-impact employees are traveling, their time is very valuable. An extra 20 minutes for the employee to spend with the customer on the last day could easily be worth $150 to their employer. Some businesses are happy to pay inflated prices for gas just in case their employee needs that extra 20 minutes onsite before returning to the airport.
Actually the deal, typically, is that if you buy a full tank up front, the per-gallon price is at par or even a bit cheaper than local gas stations, so you save money and gain convenience (that's the pitch). By contrast, if you don't buy gas up front, and don't return the car full, that's when they charge you an enormous per-gallon price. That price is highly profitable and also makes the "up-front" option seem more appealing.
(Just take 10 minutes and return the car full, and don't worry about any of this)
If you check what rental companies charge for gas when you pick up a car, they typically list something like $12/gallon here if you don't prepay, and something like $5-7/gallon if you "buy the tank". This vs maybe $3-4/gal at the nearest station.
Sadly I think most car rental companies are filled with fine print hell.
The one that has bitten me a few times is the minimum miles fee. Rent a car at the airport because it’s cheaper than an Uber. Drive to a friends house and the vehicle never is used until return. Since it is bellow some threshold, 30 miles or so, you get charged a $15-25 fee unless you had shown a receipt for gas.
I got bit by the opposite where one of my rentals had a maximum miles limit. I use a corporate code that usually includes unlimited mileage but this location didn't offer that. They had a limit of 300km unless you paid extra and since I skip the counter and go directly to the garage to pick a car, I wasn't aware of that. It was only when they emailed me the receipt later that I saw the extra charges.
I've also heard people tell similarly bizarre stories (e.g., a non-smoker getting billed a smoking cleaning fee) about Hertz. Given their well publicized financial troubles, I kinda assume they're doing this systematically? I wonder what it would take for some AGs to get involved and send people to jail.
Hertz told me I would be charged if the car wasn't returned charged, I asked how much and they couldn't say. I was also confused because it wasn't clear how to charge at the airport and that was very inconvenient, I'd rather charge the night before near my hotel. No answer but they said its fine to return it 85% charged. I went out to get the car and the guy said I needed to return it 80% charged. I got in and it was less than 80% charged... wonderful experience.
One thing I learned really quickly renting in Europe is to take pictures of the rental before driving off. Last time I rented a car there was a huge scratch on the side that wasn’t included in their pickup form. When I returned the car they were ready to bill me for it until I showed the picture and their response was: “OK, no worries then, all is good”. From the reviews I’ve been reading people often get charged this way and I’m wondering how many people end up paying for the same damage.
I just had this in Hawaii (Big Island). Dollar car rental dude checks my car when I return it and decided some scratch on the fender was new (I'm pretty sure it was not). I had full insurance and I told him he can figure it out with the insurance company, that I was in rush to catch my flight, and he can do whatever he wants. They didn't do anything. They're just looking for some sucker they can charge extra on some random thing.
I've had a lot of rental car experiences. Usually it's fine. Taking photos sounds like a good idea.
I wonder if this depends on the Hertz franchise location? I've rented EVs from Hertz at the Fort Lauderdale airport twice and had a great experience with things costing just what I expected. It was a great way to learn about EVs: my new car is a Volvo C40 mostly because I had such a good experience with a Polestar from Hertz.
I don't think "twice" is enough to be considered data in support of any point when we're talking about millions of total rentals. Even if they screw this up (intentionally or otherwise) with 10% of all rentals, you're still unlikely to have a problem with only two experiences.
Of course there must be. Rental agencies do incur cost to missing gas, car damage, etc, and they must track incident cost accrued vs incidental cost billed to customer. If B < A, someone gets their ass chewed out. To avoid that, they commit fraud and spread the incidental cost on everyone.
Mercedes Benz will keep charging you for subscription to their GPS service after you sell the car, because "you signed up for the full length of the contract". How is that legal?
Why wait for the class action, especially when the claim is plenty small enough to fit into a small claims court?
They exist for a reason.
If enough people use them, it'll end up costing the company far more than a class action, and you'll get more back too because Lawyers won't suck up 50% of the payment.
I think you have to go to forced arbitration instead of small claims. That process usually starts with paying a roughly $1000 fee to open the arbitration.
Theft is physically taking your money against your will. Unless they are grabbing cash out of your wallet, or physically grabbing and swiping your card, it's not theft.
Fraud is you giving them your money under false pretenses. They falsely claim a service has been provided to you, and are charging you for it, per the agreement that you've entered.
Theft is trivial to prove and cops take you straight to jail for it. Fraud is a lot harder, because by the time it gets to the courts, they need to dig through the weeds and determine if it is deception, or just a disagreement about a contract.
(It's, uh, also called theft of services when you do it against a service provider. You may want to get in touch with your local legislative body about the unfair nature of this sort of asymmetry, but you'll be wasting your breath.)
I make sure the car is fully checked in when I drop off and I get a recipe and verify before I leave that all is good.
Last year they tried to charge me for a tiny chip in the window that I hadn’t seen before. They tried to force me to fill out a form admitting fault for insurance but refused. Nothing came of it and have rented since no problem.
User and/or software errors are the likely cause. It could have been a bad UX that led to bad input, or staff that wasn't very trained/diligent, or a bug that added the gas charge anyways (and didn't prevent it on EVs).
Half of the stories about billing for unused gas are clearly just theft. Why do consumers have no recourse against companies that steal from them? If I made charges to someone's card for services that weren't rendered, I'd probably go to jail.
Something like this happened to me - I'd rented one of their cars with no return date because I hadn't fully planned out a multi-week trip in the eastern USA. The staff member said this was fine; they'd put in a return date of a week or two and then keep pushing it back.
Five weeks later I returned the car and flew back home to Australia. Found letters that had been posted saying that the car hadn't been returned and was considered stolen.
For some of these cases, it was arguably worse. It turns out that when Hertz gets back a vehicle they'd reported as stolen, they might "forget" to tell the cops that.
They'd rented a car for a fixed period, and were arrested and jailed for driving a stolen vehicle. They've shown police the lease agreement from Hertz showing they were authorised to drive the vehicle but police either couldn't or wouldn't verify the information with Hertz.
If being arrested and jailed for this wasn't bad enough, in some cases Hertz managers were slow to respond to police requests for information - so people have sat in jail for extended periods.
I rented a car from Hertz at SFO. After my trip I tried to file my expense report and found I didn’t have a charge on my credit card and it wasn’t listed in my Hertz account. Looking at the paperwork, I saw they rented it to someone else.
Thankfully I had no interactions with the police while driving that car.
False accusations and convictions ruin people's lives. I'm not sure why these companies are not mandated to pay people's current income and expected income growth over the course of their working lives because it'll probably be hard for these people to ever find a job again.
For instance, if I make $500k today, the company should be obligated to pay me this amount every year plus additional compounding interest on that amount in order to account for inflation and expected salary growth over the remainder of my working life.
The company should be forced to put this money aside in a trust immediately so I do not have to worry about the company going bankrupt. Company resources and equity ought to be garnished, if necessary, in order to accomplish this.
It's frustrating and bizarre to me that people are allowed to ruin others' lives and then they do not have to bear the full consequences of their actions. Surely, if one is found to have ruined someone's life, the least our justice system can do is obligate them to repay in full?
Wouldn't that incentivize people to try to get companies to "ruin their lives"? If someone had a way to get a well paying income, then get a big company to do the bare minimum that counts as "ruining their lives", they live the rest of their lives comfortably without having to get a job.
I think that, in theory, compensating people for life-ruining is obviously the right thing to do. The issue is that it relies on people to be perfect and never try to abuse the system, and if we can assume that, then we can just get rid of law enforcement and become a communist utopia.
What is practical is making these companies far more liable than they currently are, though. It is unacceptable that they have no penalties for destroying someone's future.
Insurance industry already has a lot of experience dealing with fraud of the similar type, and yet insurance companies still like the insurance business.
This line of thinking just sounds like being afraid of the mythical welfare queen and other policies enacted to protect wealth for rare occurrences.
It sounds good to make all these measures to make sure the scummiest people can't do their scams but most of the time you end up punishing people who need the protection the most by locking them out of the protection for not being able to legally navigate all the box checking.
Punish scammers harshly when caught, make it some exponential number of any profit gained, and open them up to audits in the past to figure out that exponential number. Opening it up to criminal liability and elimination of certain settlements without admitting guilt seem like it might help too.
As a general rule, people stealing or otherwise breaking the law via companies get cut way more slack than random individuals.
Like, Wells Fargo set up millions of fraudulent accounts for its customers, and zero people went to jail.
Even if you accept the premise that upper level management somehow didn't know, a certain level of negligence should absolutely lead to prison time when the impact is this is large.
Another classic example is from the 2007–2008 financial crisis, for which there were only two people who were actually charged for their wrong doing:
Kareem Serageldin got a 30 month sentence, and Lee Farkas got 30 years but only served 9 and was released because of his "susceptibility to COVID-19 while incarcerated at the Coleman low-security prison in Wildwood" [0][1].
No prison time but one was prosecuted and sentenced to home confinement and community service...
>A former top Wells Fargo executive avoided prison time for her role in the bank’s sham accounts scandal, after a federal judge on Friday instead sentenced her to six months of home confinement and three years of probation. She was also ordered to pay a $100,000 fine and perform 120 hours of community service.
Was this the person in HR, who, when the good hearted Wells Fargo’s employees reported the ethical violation, had them terminated?
I don’t understand why everyone in their HR department wasn’t immediately terminated and thrown into prison, and forced to pay the salaries of anyone who was fired.
I wonder about this constantly. Why is there such a legal power imbalance between people and companies, especially large companies? If a company wants to charge me extra they just do it, they don't have to provide proof of anything. If I want to resolve the issue I have to call them or my credit card company, neither is simple and has something like a 75% chance of being successful (IME) even if I'm completely right.
On two separate occasions a company has charged me for something and after I've made multiple calls and escalations (which of course can only happen during certain hours) they finally refunded me by saying "we'll make a one-time exception as a favor to you" even though they were literally stealing from me. In one case they only finally did it after I contacted the attorney general.
Honestly I don't even really care if it was a mistake (which are usually systemic issues) vs intentional, it is theft. In one example Comcast charged me a late fee even though I had autopay set up and they just missed running the charge. I wonder how many people just didn't notice.
I've long thought the only solution to these issues is to levy fines (or jail time if intentional theft) large enough to discourage the behavior. If it is still happening, keep raising the fines until it stops.
It goes beyond just stealing some money. They can ruin your credit rating by claiming you didn't pay your bills even when they are incorrect. I was wondering this same thing recently after being charged for something for an extra month after cancelling. Chasing them to get the money back was a lot of hassle but if the situation were reversed they can screw my life for years.
The question shouldn't be "why" because the answer is obvious: Companies have more money and more people and more time and therefore more power than you as an individual. The solution also already exists: The government should be giving individuals free lawyers to go after companies who violate their rights. We have this system in my country where there is a people's lawyer that can choose to take up cases that seem deserving. Then we also have certain government sponsored union-like associations whose job it is to sue companies who commit wage theft and they are good at it.
After all when some random person steals from you, you generally also don't have to sue them and hope a court decides in your favor. That is all the job of the government (=police). Private individuals should not have to waste their time in the legal system to defend laws that the government created.
For a lot of simple and obvious things the formula should be to call and report a "disagreement". The government employee who took the call [immediately] calls to hear the company side of the story and orders it to correct it's behavior or may chose to issue a fine. The issue is resolved in 5-20 minutes. A different fine tailored for the size of the company for not responding fast enough. If the company disagrees with the verdict they may take the government agency to court. This should mostly happen if the issue is arguably not simple and obvious enough. If the customer disagrees the court is also there to figure out the mess.
> Private individuals should not have to waste their time in the legal system to defend laws that the government created.
Government should not make a mockery of it self by creating laws that it doesn't intend to enforce or is incapable of.
> We have this system in my country where there is a people's lawyer that can choose to take up cases that seem deserving
We also have this in the US, actually we have many (state attorney generals, federal FTC and CFPB, and so on). Unfortunately (similar to our cops with crime), they're only going to bother to do anything if a company is blatantly screwing over somewhere between hundreds and thousands of people, or if the person complaining is a wealthy political donor or otherwise a friend of an elected official.
I think this boils down to the existence of megacorps. IMHO a state should just not allow corporations to grow beyond a certain marketcap level.
I see no real world benefit to allow such companies to exist, it creates "too big to fail" schemes, inefficient structures, and overall companies that are able to compete with literally small states or countries in terms of capital /legal / lobby power.
Beyond a certain marketcap, a company should not be allowed to grow anymore and just forced to split in multiple entities.
I'm surprising myself a bit, but I think I agree. I think these types of problems are inherent in companies of a certain size. When you reach a point where there is so much structure that you can only progress via metrics those metrics will inherently start to only serve themselves instead of the original goal they were attempting to be a proxy for.
When you think about it, the "winner takes all" martingale is already forbidden in most states of law.
Two companies are not allowed to merge if their total market share would past 30%, because that would allow a monopoly and thus total control over the price of goods. A winner cannot just buyout his previous opponents indefinitely.
Similarly, a company cannot (at least where I live) sell at a loss. That would allow a company with more capital to lower prices at an impossible level until competition dies out, and then increase prices back when concurrents are wiped out.
These regulations are different of course, but the overall idea is similar: a company should not be able to press its advantage exponentially. And I think the marketcap is but a forgotten rule in these regulations.
Once a company reaches a monstrous level of market cap, it is too diversified to fail, and can press its legal / lobbying leverage on some of its subbusinesses at an unfair level against competitors. If you're a search engine company, competition against Google is not just competing against an other player in the search space. You're competing against the legal and lobbying power of 10 companies.
And that's not even mentioning state supremacy concerns. I vote for my government. They may not be always want I want them to, but hey, that democracy. I don't vote for mega corps governance. I don't want them to have bargaining power over my state or country.
> I've long thought the only solution to these issues is to levy fines (or jail time if intentional theft) large enough to discourage the behavior. If it is still happening, keep raising the fines until it stops.
We need a corporate death penalty and three strike laws - where three is scaled to the customer base or total monetary damages or whatever. Upon death, any and all assets (including shares of the company, in case of restructuring) go to employee salaries until the company can be wound down.
Or just remove the limited liability. In sense of not going after assets, but at least that any fines or prison sentences apply to anyone who had at least single stock at the time. Company you own commits fraud, you go to prison. Simple and effective to force stock owners to police board and thus employees in the end.
It's not companies that do this kind of stuff, it's people working at companies. You just jail/fine those people and all the chain of command up to the CEO. That would be an incentive to establish good procedures and not to steal on customers.
It actually is companies that do this stuff, in that if the company had sufficient monitoring and oversight in place the people working at the company wouldn't be able to do it.
That would of course require them to strive to provide the best product or service they can rather than towards maximizing their profit, though.
With all of the pitch fork and torches being gathered, who is at fault to point the gather crowd to go after? Is it Hertz for accepting faulty software, or the software devs for designing such broken code and passing it off as production ready? Where was this program made? How many boats will be required to ferry the gathering crowd to the offshored lands?
Also, at what point do police stop accepting "stolen" car reports from Hertz? This is such a failure on so many levels, why is Hertz the only ones receiving the hate?
> who is at fault to point the gather crowd to go after?
Ultimately I'll point the fault at the district attorney, as they are the ones who decide what is prosecuted and what is not.
They take unsubstantiated allegations from hertz and put people to jail, but at the same time don't lift a finger to prosecute the clearly guilty corporations for fraud. So yes, while mistakes are made all around, the ultimate guilty party is the district attorney.
Have there been any convictions in any of these false cases due to poorly written software? I get being arrested and detained in jail for any length of time is total bullshit. Unless these people cannot post bail after being arraigned, that should be the end of it. Once a defense attorney challenges the case, the DA should be dropping charges. If the DA continues to prosecute, what jury is convicting? So this "going to jail" sounds like it's getting conflated from held until arraignment versus serving time after being found guilty
"Ultimately I'll point the fault at the district attorney,"
For it to be the DA's fault, lots of other things have failed first. So I don't really see how the DA is that relevant. If devs failed by making software that doesn't work in a way that the company using it cannot keep track of their inventory in a way that makes it look like their customers have not returned items in a way that looks like it has been stolen so that they can make a report to the police who cannot properly investigate which results in someone being arrested but never charged does not make any sense for a DA to receive any blame in this situation at all. (jeebus that must be the longest sentence I've ever typed).
> So I don't really see how the DA is that relevant.
Because only they are the one with the power to actually act on this and pursue charges. They are supposed to validate the facts before proceeding, but here they just take the word of hertz without any evidence (since hertz's systems are messed up as you say so they don't have any idea what's where) and run with it, accusing innocent people.
The DA is the one with the power to tell hertz to produce credible evidence or go pound sand. But they don't.
so by all of this, you are implying that DAs are taking these cases to trial and winning. this is where I am not familiar. what jury has heard one of these cases and convicted? what DA has brought a case to trial. where is this happening. you seem to have some form of awareness that this is the case. share it so we can all see where this is happening.
> Why do consumers have no recourse against companies that steal from them?
Stuff like this is easy to charge back with your credit card company.
But in this case, the article makes it clear that the people were able to get the charges reversed by talking to Hertz. It wasn't necessarily convenient, but the funds were returned when a human saw the mistake.
> If I made charges to someone's card for services that weren't rendered, I'd probably go to jail.
If you entered into an agreement with someone to do business and then accidentally charged them the wrong amount, you would not go to jail. That's what happened here, as annoying as it is.
I know this is HN and we're supposed to get our pitchforks out any time a company makes a mistake, but your analogy doesn't hold. Legally, intentional theft is a higher bar than a mistake. You're right that you'd be in trouble if you just started charging random people's credit cards fraudulently, but you're not going to jail if you're doing business with someone and you occasionally make a mistake about the amount when it's time to bill them. (FYI: Billing mistakes happen all the time at scale)
If you could prove that someone in Hertz was diabolically masterminding a scheme to knowingly milk money from customers by charging EV drivers for gas, you could have a case. But if Hertz is just accidentally charging a couple people here and there for gas (as appears to be the case from the article) then that's not "stealing". It's just a mistake.
> Stuff like this is easy to charge back with your credit card company.
That's not actually true. This sort of "oh, you never have to pay for services not rendered" is mostly just a fiction. I've had multiple issues with major credit card issuers who refused to persist chargebacks when vendors screwed me.
The other issue is that, even if you successfully chargeback against a vendor, oftentimes that vendor is a monopoly or duopoloy, and they will terminate your account and ban any new accounts using the same name or card number, and you'll be screwed.
> The other issue is that, even if you successfully chargeback against a vendor, oftentimes that vendor is a monopoly or duopoloy, and they will terminate your account and ban any new accounts using the same name or card number, and you'll be screwed.
Did you tell that (by letter) to your district or state attorney?
Other than the "they have the right to refuse service" that sibling mentioned, umm... that's not what state or district attorneys do. In fact district attorneys prosecute crimes.
> Stuff like this is easy to charge back with your credit card company.
Hah. Your card company will accept the dispute, Hertz will provide them with the rental contract you signed and say "he agreed to pay it!", and your card company will close the dispute without ever even following up with you.
> But in this case, the article makes it clear that the people were able to get the charges reversed by talking to Hertz. It wasn't necessarily convenient, but the funds were returned when a human saw the mistake.
Actually the article makes it clear that they had to go round and round in circles with bot-like support reps who probably haven't ever seen a Tesla in whatever slum they can afford.
> If you entered into an agreement with someone to do business and then accidentally charged them the wrong amount, you would not go to jail.
It's not accidental when you keep doing it until the news gets involved. BTW, how can they even charge a fuel fee without a human being involved to... you know... fuel it? Shouldn't that human have noticed that there was no gas tank? Hmm... Almost like it wasn't accidental.
Class action is often prohibited through terms that force you to act solely and also they require arbitration. This sort of thing should be banned and made retroactive.
It can get extremely expensive before anything is done. And in fact the high price of it can keep it going, when it’s benefitting those with lobbying power
Just take a look at wage theft and federal police theft stats compared with all other forms of robbery in the US - it’s out of control but the only thing that seems to get actioned on is the small shoplifting issue, not the vastly worse forms of theft (per dollar value)
When they've made approximately nine digits off of it. After all, they need to be able to keep some of their ill-gotten profits, the lawyers need at least 7 digits (more often 8), the class representatives need perhaps 5-6 digits, and everyone else (who was fleeced out of 3 digits) gets 1 digit.
While I generally agree with your premise, the problem is that when companies realize they can make more money through "old big company incompetence", at best it means they have no incentive to improve, and at worst in means they can maliciously overcharge and then just blame it on "incompetence".
I really think government needs to enact laws that make companies compensate people for their time when they have to deal with bureaucratic nightmares like this. Right now companies just get to externalize the costs of their fucks ups onto everyone else.
I remember, back in the last century, a TV station did a test, where they went to a whole bunch of supermarkets, and brought stuff. Some was on sale, some was not.
What they found, was that every (100%) error in price went to the favor of the company. Not one single error was in favor of the customer.
Often, the stores were good about correcting the error, but the cashier could never do it. They always had to go to the service counter.
Massachusetts regulation addresses this particular misincentive with a "one item (per customer day) is $10 off" when a food store/department scanner/checkout price isn't the lowest of advertised/display/sticker/scanner price. My own supermarket experience is of a clear sign posted by the cashier, and of hassle varying from the cashier handling it routinely and quickly, to trick question "So you want ${scanned - correct} back?", to waiting for a manager type and initialing/signing something simple.
At least locally pricing errors are always decided in favor of the customer. Of course you have to notice it but you're always entitled to the lowest advertised price on any item.
I think you are misunderstanding the comment you replied to. They are saying that whenever a customer at a grocery store checkout was charged an incorrect price, the price was always higher than the advertised price, never lower.
Yes, customers that notice it can have it corrected to the accurate, lower price. But the problem is that whenever there were "whoopsies", it's hard to just believe it was just a bug or well-intentioned mistake when there were never mistakes that would have resulted in a lower price.
My favorite is the new "digital coupon" version where just having the loyalty card isn't enough - you also have to have the app, add the coupon to your account, and HOPEFULLY by the time you reach the register that coupon has "posted" and the register applies it for you lol.
Yep compensation for time must be required. Insurance companies, particularly in healthcare (Aetna especially), love subjecting customers to repeated calls with hour long wait times. They hope to just exhaust you from getting a claim honored.
Yes. This is why I find Hanlon's Razor annoying (" Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"), as it doesn't consider the higher order effect of what happens when the malicious are aware of the adage and willing to pretend to be incompetent.
One obvious example: OneTrust cookie banners. They're nearly all misconfigured to have the "Reject Cookies" button greyed out or missing (or a link to a little minigame) and the "Accept Cookies" button prominent. Are all companies simply so incompetent? Is OneTrust (easy; no, it's correct on their own website). Or are they deliberately and maliciously breaking the law and when challenged will just do the wide-eyed "oh gosh, I'm such a silly-billy clutz with these things tee-hee"
Agreed. Also worth noting that Hanlon’s razor was not originally intended to be interpreted as a philosophical idea in the same way as Occam’s:
> The term ‘Hanlon’s Razor’ and its accompanying phrase originally came from an individual named Robert. J. Hanlon from Scranton, Pennsylvania as a submission for a book of jokes and aphorisms, published in 1980 by Arthur Bloch.
No. Theft requires intent. If we accept that it's incompetence and no one actually intended to apply the fee to an electric vehicle then it is not theft.
If no one intended to apply the fee to an electric vehicle, then why was the fee applied to an electric vehicle? Moreover why did it happen numerous times? And why was support not immediately like "oh crap lemme fix that"?
It's not a question of ignorance, it's a question of intent.
If you walk into Walmart and intentionally walk out with a banana without paying, you can't get out of prosecution by claiming that you didn't know it was illegal to do that.
If, on the other hand, you accidentally neglect to scan the banana at the self checkout then it is a valid defense to say that you thought you'd already scanned it in and you must have gotten confused by all the other items you were handling.
The problem is that this opens up an obvious vulnerability - underfund the department that's supposed to ensure compliance so that you effectively end up breaking the law at scale and yet retain this plausible deniability.
The only way out is to reverse the situation - companies should have even less leniency. You can't expect a single person to know the specifics of every law or to pay attention 100% of the time, but you can absolutely expect a company to be able to hire the necessary manpower to ensure near-bulletproof compliance.
> It's not a question of ignorance, it's a question of intent.
> If you walk into Walmart and intentionally walk out with a banana without paying, you can't get out of prosecution by claiming that you didn't know it was illegal to do that.
> If, on the other hand, you accidentally neglect to scan the banana at the self checkout then it is a valid defense to say that you thought you'd already scanned it in and you must have gotten confused by all the other items you were handling.
Call me old fashioned, but I'm not going to take legal advice from TikTok personalities, especially when the claim sounds like one of those scarebait articles newspapers print on a bad news day.
Big company incompetence exists because, paradoxically, it's more profitable.
The solution is making it less profitable, or better yet treating the business like you'd treat a human. Put a derogatory report on their credit and make sure they can't get any kind of credit (often even including pre-paid rent) for 7 years....
