A “longtime” Hertz customer says he is “done” with the car rental company after he claimed that the AI-powered damage detection system improperly flagged a nonexistent mark on the vehicle — even though video that he filmed immediately afterward appeared to back up his claim.
When angry customers sought to dispute the claim, they were unable to immediately reach a customer service rep.
“The link they send you does NOT allow you to submit a dispute. Calling customer support? Useless. They said they can’t do anything, even when I told them I have clear video evidence of the car being undamaged at the exact time the damage was claimed,” one customer said.
I had a rental car after I lost mine in an accident, it was a rental through hertz. They tried to charge me a late fee onto my credit card even though I returned the car on time, my insurance agent called them out on it and I didn’t have to pay.
Hertz keeps failing again and again with their automated systems. Only within the past few years did they finally settle with 364 customers that were falsely accused/arrested for stealing their cars.
They have an automated system for generating police reports on stolen cars, but there were many instances of customers falsely reported when they had actually called in to extend the rental, or if they had rented a car which had previously been flagged as stolen (but not corrected in their system).
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1140998674/hertz-false-accusation-stealing-cars-settlement
This isn’t an AI problem. It’s an accountability sink.
I wouldn’t bother chasing Hertz. I would send an email and issue a charge back. Then they will cal me.
Unfortunately, they will just send you to collections.
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And I will just change my number.
I don’t understand the point of this. Minor scratches and dings are a cost of doing business. Driving away your customers over a nickel or dime will leave you in bankruptcy. It’s bizarre.
But what if you turned the cost of doing business an opportunity for profit? All they know is squeeze.
Hertz went bankrupt during the pandemic and came out of it 4 years ago.
There just isn’t enough real competition in car rentals. There are lots of brands, like Alamo, Enterprise, National Car Rental, Hertz, Dollar, Thrifty, Firefly, Budget, Avis, etc. But, that’s just 3 companies. Avis Budget Group ($CAR), Hertz Global ($HTZ) and Enterprise (private).
There are some other alternatives like Turo
Admittedly, I’ve had great experiences with Enterprise in the US. It blows my mind how expensive it is, but I’ve never had any issues like what OP posted.
They all end up costing roughly the same in the end. Enterprise is just more honest about it.
Enterprise used to be the best by far, but ever 2020 or so, prices are way up, their cars are all old clunkers, and most of their employees are very young and don’t know what they’re doing.
Also I’ve rented enough scratched, pitted and dented cars to know that no way are they spending that $650 on fixing them.
The point is to make money. Specifically to make a lot of money this year and get a bonus. Bankruptcy will be a problem for the next CEO.
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Is that even illegal?
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Ah, if they’re pretending to be a company they legitimately do business with, definitely illegal.
I don’t know, this would probably create an actionable issue with my company.
isn’t AI fantastic. Hertz could probably downsize at least 1/2 a worker or so pr location, and all it cost are 100k++ in investments and terrible customer experiences. But it’s AI!11!!
100k isn’t enough for even one software developer, let alone the team it would take to build and implement this into their system.
Hah, this is very similar to AI based smoking detection scam in hotels which is advertised as guaranteed revenue increase via smoking fees.
HA,
At some point these companies gotta feel the pain. If they deliver a bad product, just don’t pay them. They need us to give them money
If I earned a car rental company I would take out billboards with this story on them.
Chargeback. Credit card companies won’t accept that BS and a chargeback is for the entire amount.
You would probably only get a partial charge back. You still got it as a rental, so that isn’t eligible for a charge back.
Oh it certainly is if he was charged for damage that didn’t occur. I’ve been on the other end of chargeback disputes defending companies. A chargeback is absolutely warranted here and he can prove it. He’ll win.
It seems that every corporation in the US has openly turned into a con that’s openly fleecing its “customers”. There are no straight transactions to be found any more.
And inevitably, this will percolate into all the other regions so that the rest of the planet’s shareholders can enjoy this new bounty.
Except of, and that’s really weird, Amazon. Known for being shady in pretty much every other respect, they are weirdly still quite customer oriented.
Their customers are the sellers, and the sellers are getting fleeced just fine.
The buyers are a product they provide to the sellers.
Not quite, they sell a lot of stuff themselves as well.
It’s mindblowing the sheer VOLUME of Amazon Basics items there are, as someone who worked in their supply chain.
They have an easy tap on what sells, by virtue of running the marketplace.
Find a popular product, make an Amazon Basics version of it, undercut their best vendors, bam! Easy money. And leave the vendors swinging in the breeze with backstock they can’t move any more.
And they own the warehouses. Why not stock them with their own product in preference of vendors?
Sure. But they are often copies of best selling products from third party sellers, again throwing them under the bus.
I didn’t say they were nice lol
Retail has one of the lowest barriers to entry of any industry, as well as the lowest barrier to churn. Amazon may appear to have a near-monopoly, but it’s a fragile one.
Replicating their infrastructure isn’t that easy though.
That’s certainly true. If Amazon starts going after customers, things can change very quickly.
As someone who got fucked over so hard by Amazon that I am now boycotting them and every single subsidiary for life, this is false. They have always been shit, but their customer service has become so thoroughly enshittified that if you actually have a problem, you might as well just accept whatever loss you’ve fallen for.
At least we have agencies that will watch for these kinds of scams and bad-faith practices and bring accountability to shady businesses, such as the Federal Consumer Prote- oh, wait, I’m being told that was entirely dismantled for some reason.
You mean, the Federal Anti-Business Agency? Yeah, can’t have this sort of thing.
You’ve just described capitalism
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We can’t hate on it when the market is regulated and competitive.
Of course we can.
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They’ll go bankrupt again after enough people refuse to stop using their services.
Refuse to stop?
I had Hertz call me because I had the same name as a supposed car thief 5 states away. 😂
hertz just sounds like herpes,
Well he’s certainly mobile.
The funny part is The Hertz was in Indiana I am in NY and they tracked the car to Florida. My name is so common there are 24 of us in the local medical systems in a very small city. I have to use my middle initial, and Jr to be found immediately, and I am not related at all to the other 23. I hope they called 5000 of us. 😂
Sorry to hear that John Doe.
Correction… John D. Doe Jr
if this happens to me and I cannot reach an agent immediately to reverse it, they get a chargeback and I never rent from them again. simple.
I had fradulent Doordash orders on my card once. They were deliveries in NYC, and I’ve never been farther east than Ohio. I disputed them, Doordash said “here’s pics of the food being delivered” and the card said “hey, can’t argue that.” I showed them that I wasn’t the one who placed the order and that I was literally a thousand miles away. Didn’t matter. Picture of a paper sack on a doorstep trumped facts.
Card Companies suck. I hate them all with a passion and treat them as the necessary evil they are.
Then that is when you charge back. It’s an easy process.
He said the card company sided with DD. I guess at that point you can try and go to Visa/MC/Whomever directly but I honestly don’t know if they will even work with you or just insist it’s someone further down streams problem
At that point you call your member of Congress.
Im fairly certain I can scientifically prove calling your congressperson is less effective than stepping into your closet, closing the door and yelling “I’m upset!”
Donate abut 1500$ to them and they will listen to you.
For changing their vote on a bill backed by lobbyists, maybe. But they have entire constituent services offices dedicated to helping voters out of just this kind of situation. Consumer protection is a common area they intervene in.
This happened because your visa claim should have been ‘stolen card details/fraud’ but it was put through as ‘food not delivered’ instead. Either your card issuer didn’t understand what was needed, or else it was poorly described to them. And you can’t claim twice on the same transaction.
I told them exactly what happened. That I didn’t authorize the purchase and that my card data had been stolen. I was clear about the circumstances.
What company was it? I’m considering switching cards, and I want to make sure I avoid them like the plague.
The only thing that scares a horrible corporation is another horrible corporation.
Also 3D printers and early morning walks on lonely city streets.
The couple times I’ve attempted a chargeback, my credit card company has sided with the business. The last time, we’d bought Switch controllers on sale from Walmart’s website, but they were sold by a third party and the stick click button didn’t work on them. We didn’t notice for a couple months because we’d only used them for games that didn’t use the stick click. We sent them to Nintendo for repair and they were returned unrepaired because they were counterfeit. We tried contacting Walmart 3 separate times after the seller failed to engage, after which point the return window was closed and the Walmart rep told me to dispute because their hands were tied.
So I did, and sent the product listing, my communication history with Walmart customer service, and the letter we received from Nintendo proving they were counterfeit. The credit card company reinstated the charge. I called them to ask why, and was told they asked Walmart to prove that the order had been fulfilled, and when they sent their evidence the chargeback was automatically canceled. I asked them to reopen it, and they did, and the supervisor told me that because the order was fulfilled and too much time had passed (probably around 6 months by then) there was nothing they could do.
Do not trust your credit card company to rectify malfeasance. The math is not on your side when they weigh the cost of pissing you off as an individual consumer versus the cost of pissing off a large business. They do not have your back.
This is one reason I still keep my Amex. Amex always sides with it’s customers in charge backs, until definitive proof otherwise from the vendor comes.
Charge backs were fun while they lasted. Can’t let people have a single crumb of redress against being defrauded.
Instead of going after Steam for NSFW content, payment processors need to crack down on AI customer service traps. If your company doesn’t have a meaningful way of getting a hold of an actual human and disputing a charge, your company should be shut off from the payment processor networks. After all, the process of a chargeback normally asks if you’ve first exhausted their customer service options to resolve the dispute. Companies that don’t have any meaningful customer service simply shouldn’t be eligible for Visa/Mastercard payments. The chargeback risk is just too high.
The real “win” for Hertz here is that they can outsource their “accountability” to the machine. Associates love to say “I wish I could help you, but the system does X”, “We can’t override the system”
It’s all bullshit… Hertz put the system in themselves and could include as many overrides or as much control as they please. This is a transparent, customer-hostile money grab. They KNOW that many people won’t contest these charges. They KNOW it’s an extra revenue source.
If you want to see something similar to this scumbaggery, there’s a new “vape/smoke” detector marketed towards hotels. It says RIGHT IN THEIR sales material “Unlock a new revenue stream!”
Companies aren’t doing this to make things more fair or efficient. They are doing it to siphon money out of the customer’s pocket, and they are praying you either don’t notice or just accept it.
Really disgusting and makes me wish we had some of the same consumer protections as the EU.
One of the problems is having our current “swindler in chief” at the White House is it’s emboldening companies to do this type of shenanigan. After all, if the president runs various scummy businesses, why can’t anyone else? The fish is rotting from the head down.
This is the new business paradigm. They no longer care about offering a quality customer experience. Now it’s all about extracting as much profit, while serving up as little as possible in exchange. The satisfaction of the customer is irrelevant.
