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Hertz to pay $168M to customers arrested due to Hertz’s false police reports

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Re: Hertz to pay $168M to customers arrested due to Hertz’s false police reports

#161

Post by ajross »

phpisthebest wrote: post #152
ajross wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying that Hertz deliberately targetted these people for some reason? No, that's ridiculous. Clearly this was a mistake. No one thinks Hertz was deliberately trying to punish its own customers. They just messed up and rolled out a feature with a buggy fraud detector.

you are too caught up on if Hertz did it deliberately, that is not the test. Reasonableness, / Reasonable person is the test. 1. Would a Reasonable person believe the system would lead to false reports 2. Were there any engineers or people internal to the company raising concerns that were ignored by managers / executives (I believe there likely was and there is more than enough probable cause for police to get a sea…

Those are all excellent questions! Where's the evidence for affirmative answers to any of them? The fact that you can construct a case in your head isn't very interesting to me. What we know about the real world tells us that the answers are probably "yes", "no", and "nothing criminal".

To be blunt: be real. No one at Hertz is going to jail over this. They fucked up, and have admitted so as part of this settlement. That's all the justice you're going to get. I'm sorry.

Re: Hertz to pay $168M to customers arrested due to Hertz’s false police reports

#162

Post by listenallyall »

CSMastermind wrote: post #149
geoelectric wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, I had Enterprise squarely in my head as the budget option compared to Hertz, who I always had down as the "pricey but better service" option (at least if you exercised the Gold program, etc.) Not sure if I'm strictly a victim of effective marketing, or if they flipped places in the last however many years, or what, but it's interesting to see your post and the replies that imply I've got it backwards.

If you formed that opinion years ago it might have been more true. In the 00s Hertz was indeed a top tier, best in class, rental company. They were sold the private equity then taken public in 2006 and the quality of the company declined dramatically over the 2010s. They changed their model to focus on partnership programs through airlines, hotels, and credit cards while offering low teaser rates for their rentals an…

Man, sometimes people are so desperate to advance a point of view, they end up a million miles off base. Carl Icahn didn't "force in" a new CEO, his old CEO was a freaking criminal who signed off on fraudulent earning reports. Yes, a change was warranted. He got paid over $10 million to walk, left Hertz with another $16 million in fines, and he himself ultimately settled with the SEC for just $2 million (and landed in the CEO role at Caesars Entertainment, which filed for bankruptcy under his watch, and then paid him $29 million to "emerge"). No, if you are a criminal CEO and a cheapskate, you don't get to blame Uncle Carl for making you do it.

https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2020-183

Re: Hertz to pay $168M to customers arrested due to Hertz’s false police reports

#163

Post by SpelingBeeChamp »

plorkyeran wrote: post #137
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> put the perpetrators in prison for all the damages that can't be moneyed-away? Unless it was done wilfully, this just perpetuates the American fetish for imprisonment. They should be fired. They should be fined. And they should be deeply investigated, to confirm there wasn’t intent.

They had an explicit policy of not retracting police reports after finding out they were false, so yes, it was done willfully.

I did not read that in the article.

Re: Hertz to pay $168M to customers arrested due to Hertz’s false police reports

#164

Post by SpelingBeeChamp »

shkkmo wrote: post #59
xwolfi wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the havoc they ve wreaked could have been avoided, if only the police itself, a public service, behaved appropriately. Declaring a car stolen by mistake shouldnt be the end of the world. One day someone with the same name as me committed an offense and I was wrongly given to the police of my country, and it took 5 minutes to clear me and nothing happened.

It Hertz didn't intend to ruin people's lives, they would withdraw the police reports when confronted with their mistakes. Instead, the company prohibits that because: > A Hertz spokesperson told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2020 that the company has no “mechanism” to withdraw reports and does not do so because “In the rare instances this happens, if you report a crime, and you later say it didn’t happen, then law en…

I just searched the Philadelphia Inquirer website for that phrase and was unable to find anything. I also searched Google for the phrase, both with and without quotes, and with/without the words “Philadelphia Inquirer,” and I haven’t found the original source.

Are you able to find the source of that quote? It’s so outrageous, and is so not something that a corporate spokesperson would say, that I wonder if it’s somehow been taken out of context. Or if it even happened.

Re: Hertz to pay $168M to customers arrested due to Hertz’s false police reports

#165

Post by RocketOne »

CSMastermind wrote: post #57

I travel quite a bit for both business and personal reasons. This means I'm driving a rental car for 100+ days a year. I've tried all the major rental brands and Hertz is a terrible experience even when they're not calling the police on you by mistake. Their systems don't work quite right, there's a bunch of hidden fees, and their customer service is lacking at best. I swear by Enterprise and purchasing the extra ins…

I dont rent often but definitely go with Enterprise when I do. They are the only one left in my city that offers unlimited mileage and my typical trip is 1800 km round trip so it matters.

Last trip Enterprise was fully booked so I did try Budget. Their office is so small that you actually have to arrive at our local airport and THEN call the attendant who comes in from her house to book out your car. That took almost an hour.

The return process is even sillier. Write your mileage on a poorly photocopied slip of paper, and drop it on her desk with the keys. No pics. No checkout inspection, just 'trust us not to charge you extra'.

Fortunately I took a ton of pictures including the odometer so when they couldnt do math and tried to charge me an extra 1000 km, I fought back with pics and got those charges dropped. That's the last time I use Budget.

Re: Hertz to pay $168M to customers arrested due to Hertz’s false police reports

#166

Post by twelve40 »

iso1631 wrote: post #113
CSMastermind wrote: post #57

I travel quite a bit for both business and personal reasons. This means I'm driving a rental car for 100+ days a year. I've tried all the major rental brands and Hertz is a terrible experience even when they're not calling the police on you by mistake. Their systems don't work quite right, there's a bunch of hidden fees, and their customer service is lacking at best. I swear by Enterprise and purchasing the extra ins…

We have an Enterprise deal with work so we get very good rates, especially when they drop a car off and pick up at my home or office However I was in one a few months ago and got a puncture on a dual carriageway. By the time I pulled over to a safe location the tyre was shredded. No problem, go into the boot to get the spare wheel out and I'll deal with it later. There was no spare wheel. Just some little device whic…

tfa is about people _going to jail_. That is so absurd I can barely believe it. and here we are, discussing $20 child seats and missing spares... priorities...

Re: Hertz to pay $168M to customers arrested due to Hertz’s false police reports

#167

Post by twelve40 »

jimmydddd wrote: post #126
nickvanw wrote: post #6

These stories are awful - this wasn't just an administrative headache for people, they served real time and has real consequences. Filing a false police report is a crime, it would be nice to see that enforced against the company in one way or another.

Agreed. The company is like yeah, we make some minor adminstrative mistakes. But the story says a woman spent 30 days in jail? Picture yourself in her shoes.

if something like that happened to me, i would make it my life's mission to work whatever legal means there are to hunt down every one of these "reporters". Going to jail for a fully paid rental in the States is so absurd, I can't believe it.

Re: Hertz to pay $168M to customers arrested due to Hertz’s false police reports

#168

Post by shkkmo »

SpelingBeeChamp wrote: post #164
shkkmo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It Hertz didn't intend to ruin people's lives, they would withdraw the police reports when confronted with their mistakes. Instead, the company prohibits that because: > A Hertz spokesperson told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2020 that the company has no “mechanism” to withdraw reports and does not do so because “In the rare instances this happens, if you report a crime, and you later say it didn’t happen, then law en…

I just searched the Philadelphia Inquirer website for that phrase and was unable to find anything. I also searched Google for the phrase, both with and without quotes, and with/without the words “Philadelphia Inquirer,” and I haven’t found the original source. Are you able to find the source of that quote? It’s so outrageous, and is so not something that a corporate spokesperson would say, that I wonder if it’s someh…

I doubt USA Today made that quote up, since it would open them to significant defamation liability. While I can't find an article with that exact quote, this article is from the right time period and does paraphrase a very similar sentiment as coming from Hertz: https://www.inquirer.com/business/retail/hertz-stolen-car-gr...

> Hertz has no mechanism to withdraw a criminal referral because, the company spokesperson said, it has to maintain a relationship of “integrity and responsibility” with law enforcement

Re: Hertz to pay $168M to customers arrested due to Hertz’s false police reports

#169

Post by shkkmo »

shkkmo wrote: post #168
SpelingBeeChamp wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just searched the Philadelphia Inquirer website for that phrase and was unable to find anything. I also searched Google for the phrase, both with and without quotes, and with/without the words “Philadelphia Inquirer,” and I haven’t found the original source. Are you able to find the source of that quote? It’s so outrageous, and is so not something that a corporate spokesperson would say, that I wonder if it’s someh…

I doubt USA Today made that quote up, since it would open them to significant defamation liability. While I can't find an article with that exact quote, this article is from the right time period and does paraphrase a very similar sentiment as coming from Hertz: https://www.inquirer.com/business/retail/hertz-stolen-car-gr... > Hertz has no mechanism to withdraw a criminal referral because, the company spokesperson sa…

Looks like there was an edit between August 4th and August 6th 2020 on the inquirer article:

Aug 4th: https://web.archive.org/web/20200804074215/https://www.inqui...

Aug 6th: https://web.archive.org/web/20200806004611/https://www.inqui...

The original version of the article did have the fuller quote:

> Hertz has no mechanism to withdraw a criminal referral because, the company spokesperson said, it has to maintain a relationship of “integrity and responsibility” with law enforcement.

> “In the rare instances this happens, if you report a crime, and you later say it didn’t happen, then law enforcement tends not to believe you if you retract it or say you were mistaken,” the spokesperson said. “Hertz’s continued good relationship with law enforcement is important.”

Re: Hertz to pay $168M to customers arrested due to Hertz’s false police reports

#170

Post by phpisthebest »

ajross wrote: post #161
phpisthebest wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are too caught up on if Hertz did it deliberately, that is not the test. Reasonableness, / Reasonable person is the test. 1. Would a Reasonable person believe the system would lead to false reports 2. Were there any engineers or people internal to the company raising concerns that were ignored by managers / executives (I believe there likely was and there is more than enough probable cause for police to get a sea…

Those are all excellent questions! Where's the evidence for affirmative answers to any of them? The fact that you can construct a case in your head isn't very interesting to me. What we know about the real world tells us that the answers are probably "yes", "no", and "nothing criminal". To be blunt: be real. No one at Hertz is going to jail over this. They fucked up, and have admitted so as part of this settlement. T…

>>What we know about the real world tells us that the answers are probably "yes", "no", and "nothing criminal".

your real world does not match mine, because in my world corp execs routinely ignore the advice of engineers, administrators, and developers when it comes to things like Security....

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