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Hertz Charging a Tesla Renter for Gas Was Not an Isolated Incident

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Re: Hertz Charging a Tesla Renter for Gas Was Not an Isolated Incident

#121

Post by xyst »

SoftTalker wrote: post #92

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.

> high pressure tactics

front desk: “want to add fuel protection”

me: “no”

front desk: “Okay, sign rental agreement and sign here to indicate you declined protection. Here’s your keys. “

I would say a majority of the time it’s just a script they are told to recite.

Dealerships on the other hand is a whole new beast. I wish very much that dealerships in the US go away.

Unnecessary middlemen used to extract as much profit with no added value.

Car sells for MSRP, but you want MSRP + $2000 in “market adjustment fee” and “document fees”

Fuck off.

Re: Hertz Charging a Tesla Renter for Gas Was Not an Isolated Incident

#122

Post by dylan604 »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #88
DangitBobby wrote: post #2

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.

This is small potatoes. Hertz has been actually triggered false arrets of its own customers -some going to jail - due to poorly implemented software logic....[1] And no one at hertz is going to jail [2]. They are settling as usual. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hertz-claims-false-arrests/ [2] https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1140998674/hertz-false-accusa...

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?

Re: Hertz Charging a Tesla Renter for Gas Was Not an Isolated Incident

#123

Post by gdudeman »

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.

I never got my free rental.

Re: Hertz Charging a Tesla Renter for Gas Was Not an Isolated Incident

#124

Post by gdudeman »

coleca wrote: post #89

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.

I recommend disputing the charge with your credit card. My credit card refunded my Hertz bill in under five minutes of clicking online.

Re: Hertz Charging a Tesla Renter for Gas Was Not an Isolated Incident

#125

Post by lolinder »

db48x wrote: post #8
threeseed wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not theft. Rather just regular old big company incompetence. You're dealing with broken automated systems and an out-sourced customer support agent. Wait until LLMs arrive on the scene and further exacerbate the problem.

It is theft too. Theft caused by incompetence and out–sourced customer support is still theft.

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.

Re: Hertz Charging a Tesla Renter for Gas Was Not an Isolated Incident

#126

Post by jjav »

dylan604 wrote: post #122
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is small potatoes. Hertz has been actually triggered false arrets of its own customers -some going to jail - due to poorly implemented software logic....[1] And no one at hertz is going to jail [2]. They are settling as usual. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hertz-claims-false-arrests/ [2] https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1140998674/hertz-false-accusa...

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 rep…

> 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.

Re: Hertz Charging a Tesla Renter for Gas Was Not an Isolated Incident

#127

Post by throwaway2037 »

sneak wrote: post #104
Aurornis wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'…

> 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 monopo…

    > 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?

Re: Hertz Charging a Tesla Renter for Gas Was Not an Isolated Incident

#128

Post by lolinder »

Nextgrid wrote: post #66
threeseed wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not theft. Rather just regular old big company incompetence. You're dealing with broken automated systems and an out-sourced customer support agent. Wait until LLMs arrive on the scene and further exacerbate the problem.

Ignorance of the law isn't a valid excuse for individuals is it? So it shouldn't be for companies either.

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.

Theft requires intent.

Re: Hertz Charging a Tesla Renter for Gas Was Not an Isolated Incident

#129

Post by RileyJames »

jerbear4328 wrote: post #118
xvector wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

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 pe…

What you’re suggesting is fraud. There are already penalties for it.

While it might create an incentive, it’s a very high risk activity.

It also creates the right incentives for the company that it should:

A) not create policies that can result in ‘ruining a consumer’s life’ or at least do so knowing that it is a high risk, high cost activity.

B) know that if they choose to create such policies, they need to be adequately monitored for fraud and false positives.

That seems like a positive outcome.

Re: Hertz Charging a Tesla Renter for Gas Was Not an Isolated Incident

#130

Post by kevinob11 »

DangitBobby wrote: post #2

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.

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.

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