Hertz.comReviews 344

You rent a HERTZ car in PALERMO AIRPORT, ITALY. You get even a free upgrade. For peace of mind you pay for full coverage, which means more than doubling the rental fee. You return the car intact, clean and exactly at the time as booked, at 7 a.m., office closed. You drop the keys in the box provided. You think they cannot surprise you with no hoax, because you've paid full coverage and moreover everything about the car is perfectly in order, but you're wrong. A month later they frame up a bogus 216.50 damage, saying that the parcel shelf was missing, something your full coverage doesn't cover. So they are going to charge your credit card accordingly.

Of course the so-called parcel shelf was there, but how can I prove it was? My overall question is, How can we protect ourselves against such blatant, trust-breaking misdemeanors? Next time they might say I didn't return the key or the lighter or whatever. Second question: Why Hertz people in Palermo (or any other car rental elsewhere, because there's always some surprise cheat from them around the world) do not understand that such a breach of trust is far more damaging their business than the 216.50 they're trying to steal from my card?

Now, I must say HERTZ took care of my claim. Following a detailed letter of mine the payment request was dropped on May 5 (five days to solve the case, I think it's fair). So, it was a good idea to try and grant the rental company the benefit of doubt, asking them for correction of whatever went wrong. In fact, some wrongdoings may be the product of local employees who just want to avoid responsibility for their faults or try to cheat you and their employer as well. So just write a circumstantial report and wait a few days for a satisfying answer from their supervisors, before proceeding with a proper claim.

(A parallel anecdote from an auto dealer, a friend of mine. On my telling him about this absurd HERTZ (Palermo) request, he said he was far from surprised, having routinely to pay an extra 400.00 cash tip per car to rental-car people, to be allowed to pick up from the lot of used cars the ones of his choice.)

Still, ten days later I got a second request from HERTZ for the same missing parcel shelf, as if their May 5 e-mail was of no consequence. I volunteered one more letter asking what went wrong in the process. Their answer didnt explain anything, but they said one more time that they were going to drop that damage claim for good. Hope so.

The problem is, unfortunately sometimes we really need to rent a car, so how are we going to shield ourselves from deception and inefficiency. Against the latter, Im afraid theres nothing much to do, but to presume that for a rental company, like for any other business, inefficiency is nonsense, so they are supposed to act against it on their own. Instead, hoaxes admit and require some countermeasures.

For one thing, Im sure my next camera will be a full-HD, Cloud-connected one in real time. I wont return the car without making sure its parked under a surveillance cam and after turning an uncut, couple of minute-long video of what everything, inside and outside, looks like. True, not everything can be filmed: they still might say that I smoked in the car, and actually smoke in it in order to prove that I did!

Best of all, I think fellow customers, traveling alone or with family members, who happen to return the car at the same time, particularly off office hours, might swap a comprehensive look at one other car and exchange their mail addresses just in case. A third-party eye-witness against the rental companys tricks is something so satisfying in prospect, that we shouldnt leave the parking lot without.

I give Hertz as a business two to three stars on this occasion, because they dropped this messy claim, which shouldn't have been forwarded to begin with.