Rent a car and end up in jail? The incredible Hertz affair
It sounds unbelievable and yet it really happened... Apparently Hertz was too easily reporting thefts of its cars, sending in [...]
United States of America
It sounds unbelievable, and yet it really happened--apparently Hertz. denounced too easily the thefts of their own cars, sending those who had regularly rented them to jail, just because of a bureaucratic mishap.
In this article:
It has happened to more than 200 customers, most in the United States. When a customer changed car or decided to prolong the freight, Hertz does not recorded transaction correctly, causing delays or data which did not match in the system. At that point, the car was neither returned to Hertz nor rented, so the company's denounced the theft, to the detriment of customers who were instead unaware of it.
Also undertaken was a class action Hertz account: 100 customers sued the car rental company for damages, having been unfairly arrested By law enforcement.
The CEO admitted the errors of levity made by society, pointing out, however, that they are cases sporadic, that is, about a hundred cases a year against millions of rentals worldwide, a small percentage but one that the company will nonetheless seek to undo with new company policies.
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"The reports of theft were withdrawn once the cars were found, yet these people were still taken into police custody, as contract termination or change was not recognized by the system at that time.
No customer should be subjected to this, Hertz will deal appropriately with people who have been affected, but we will obviously not engage with people who try to harm the company. We have changed our policies to avoid the possibility of that happening.
There were 100 people affected, compared to 15 million transactions per year, or 1/100th of the total. But again, this is not to make excuses, a customer should not have to go through this. We will do our best to quickly resolve this problem that has negatively affected our customers."Stephen Scherr, Hertz Administrator
Not only expired rentals, but also wrong license plates
The errors do not stop there. In fact, one couple had rented a car at the Houston airport that apparently had the Wrong license plates, matched another car that was reported stolen: theft reported by Hertz, which did not check the numbers during the pre-rental check.
The unfortunate people were stop by police with drawn weapons and taken to the station. Another case occurred in Beverly Hills, a director who was on his way to record a music video was stopped by police, handcuffed and taken to the station, his rental car reported stolen.
A rather bizarre, which features a company that has not fared very well in the recent period...
