Hertz is known for being an unethical and customer unfriendly company, plain and simple. Hertz has a history of having its customers arrested, accusing them of stealing cars when they didn’t. Hertz even had to pay $168 million for this behavior.
Even after that, there’s no shortage of Hertz behaving horribly, like calling the cops on a Puerto Rican for not being American. A few days ago, I wrote about the latest example of Hertz’s questionable behavior. There’s now an update, as the company has issued an apology. Let’s recap the details, and then we’ll look at the apology.
Hertz employee angry after customer drives 25K miles
There’s a video going viral on social media, showing an interaction between a Hertz customer and an employee at a Hertz franchise location. Of course videos like this don’t tell the whole story, but it’s easy enough to figure out what’s going on, and it doesn’t seem like either side disagrees on the facts.
Long story short, it would appear that someone rented a Hertz car for a month, and the rental allowed unlimited miles. The man drove 25,000 miles on the car over the course of that month, and the agency wasn’t happy about it.
Given the number of miles driven, the Hertz representative stated that he would charge the man’s credit card an extra $10,000. As the interaction goes:
Hertz representative: “You need to leave, sir.”
Customer: “But you’re going to charge this to $10,000 to my credit?”
Hertz representative: “Yes.”
Customer: “When this literally, that’s not even allowed. I never signed…”
Hertz representative: “You show me where it says I can’t charge it.”
Customer: “Right here, it literally says I won’t get charged anything, it says miles allowed, free miles, it literally says to refer to this if there’s anything extra. I’ve never signed anything saying I can only go 100 miles a day, or anything like that, or that I would have to pay more.”
Hertz representative: “But you also never signed anything saying you were going to be allowed to drive 25,000 miles in a month.”
Customer: “No, unlimited is 100,000 miles.”
Hertz representative: “No it is not.”
The Hertz representative asked him to leave, and said that if he didn’t leave, he’d have the man arrested. But he also stated that he was going to charge the man $10,000, so it’s understandable the customer wanted to resolve that.
The renter is of course absolutely correct — if you rent a car with unlimited miles, then you should be able to drive unlimited miles. If the limit is actually 100 miles per day, or anything else, then the contract should just state that to begin with.
The Hertz representative’s logic is hilariously backwards. The customer pointed out the contract stated he could drive unlimited miles, and he didn’t sign anything agreeing to pay extra if he drove a lot of miles. The response was that he also didn’t sign anything saying he would be allowed to drive 25,000 miles in a month.
Lol, what? Maybe we have different definitions of “unlimited,” but I think he did actually sign a contract allowing him to drive that many miles.
I’ve looked through Hertz’s rental agreements, and there’s absolutely nothing that gives the company the right to charge you for miles if you have a rental that includes unlimited miles. Now, at least in the past, Hertz reserved the right to not rent to people who repeatedly put a large number of miles onto cars.
But there’s a big difference between retroactively charging someone an arbitrary amount for driving too much when there was no limit, vs. refusing to do business with people in the future (which is the company’s right). So the renter is 100% in the right, based on everything we know.
Hertz has now issued an apology over the incident
The Drive got a statement from Hertz regarding this incident, as follows:
“Customer satisfaction is our top priority at Hertz, and we sincerely regret this customer’s experience at one of our franchise locations. Per the terms of the contract, the customer will not be billed for mileage. Our franchisee is addressing the employee’s conduct and reinforcing our customer service standards and policies to ensure they are understood and followed consistently across our locations.”
We definitely all believe that customer satisfaction is the top priority at Hertz, right? Yeah, right after arresting customers. I’m happy that the company is “reinforcing the customer service standards” of not charging customers five figures for doing something that doesn’t violate the contract.
How did the renter drive 25K miles, though?!
Unrelated to the absurd behavior of the Hertz employee, I can’t help but wonder how on earth this guy drove 25,000 miles in a month?! That’s 833 miles per day, or an average of around 35 miles per hour, 24 hours per day, seven days per week. Or if you were to drive for 12 hours per day, it would be the equivalent of constantly going 70 miles per hour. This is like driving between New York and Los Angeles nine times. I really don’t understand?!
I can’t help but wonder if the car was used for some sort of commercial purposes, like as a ride share or food delivery service, or something? This would obviously violate the contract that exists with the rental car company, and it would presumably also mean that unauthorized people were driving the car.
However, the Hertz representative mentioned that the violation was that the man drove too many miles, rather than that he’s believed to have misused the rental for purposes it wasn’t intended for.
I’m just genuinely confused here. You absolutely should be able to drive as many miles as you want on an unlimited rental. But also, how on earth do you actually drive that much?!
Bottom line
A Hertz representative threatened to charge a customer $10K for driving an excessive number of miles, even though the rental included unlimited miles. It’s absurd to claim that there’s some arbitrary limit on miles, when the company markets unlimited miles on rentals. It would be easy to create some reasonable limit, or put something in the terms limiting the number of miles, but that’s not the case.
Hertz has now apologized over the incident, and will remind its franchise locations not to threaten to charge customers $10K for nothing. That’s reassuring.
All that being said, I am puzzled as to how someone managed to drive 25K miles in 30 days. If he used the car for purposes other than what they were intended, then there’s nothing wrong with trying to hold him accountable. However, that’s not what he was accused of.
What do you make of this Hertz unlimited miles rental situation?
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