Customers are "outraged" over the results of the AI car return scanner.
New Hertz AI scanner charged one car renter $440 for a 1-inch tire scuff
Hertz AI Sparks Rental Rage: Customers Charged Hundreds for 'Dents and Damage That Weren't There'
Hertz’s New AI Inspection Scanner Could MakeCar Rentals More Expensive /
Last edited by desertrunner; 07-02-2025 at 10:23 AM.
I use Hertz almost exclusively and never had an issue.
But I take pictures at the start of anything and everything that isn’t normal, i.e. stretches and dents.
I’m beginning to wonder how Hertz is still in business the amount of shady crap they’re been doing from screwing with people reporting cars stolen that weren’t. I’ve even had my own issues when I rented a car and they fucking closed the rental 2 days early when I prepaid for a full week.
For what its worth- Over the last 30 years, I have rented several cars from various companies, but seems like Hertz was used the least. If I remember correctly, National Rent a Car seemed to be a pretty good company and treated me well.
"AI snanner" is a good reminder that there is still no real AI, just human written bots.
Hertz has unfortunately become a garbage company.
At one point, as recently as the early 2000s, Hertz and AVIS were the gold standard of rental car companies, with Enterprise/Alamo/National comprising the second tier, and the rest of them being the shit companies.
That's no longer the case. Hertz has become shady, unreliable, and in some cases scammy.
I actually just had an issue with a Hertz rental. I needed a 1-way rental for one day, as I had dropped off a car for a family member and needed a way to get BACK.
This was a Saturday, and Hertz was closing at noon. I got there shortly before closing, and the one guy working there seemed really eager to go home. He briskly walked to the car ahead of me, started it, and told me, "This is your car, have a great day!", then vanished.
Turned out the key fob of the car was corroded, and he knew it, but he wanted to get rid of the vehicle rather than bother fixing it, and it was perfect to do via a sucker with a 1-way rental! So he started it without my seeing (you can do so with this model by touching the broken key fob to the start button), so this way I'd have no idea until it was too late and they were closed for the weekend. Indeed, about 30 minutes later I figured out the bad news, and there was no way to lock the car. Awful.
Then when I returned it, somehow the assholes also charged me $39 for gas, despite my returning it full.
I called the manager on the following Monday and he clearly didn't give a shit. He offered my $39 back, as if that was doing me a favor, even though it was a mistaken charge. When I asked for more, he said "I'll see what I can do with corporate" and never got back to me.
What a fail.
Yea as a President’s member, easy to get, I’m concerned. My next rental is coming up in a few weeks and I’m going to photograph everything even minor wrong with the car.
Shouldn’t have to be this way but apparently it is,
What happened to the company OJ vouched for?
I'm a President's Circle member and it does very little for me. Maybe because I haven't been renting much from airports.Originally Posted by The Boz
Totally agree.I'm a President's Circle member and it does very little for me. Maybe because I haven't been renting much from airports.
Only real benefit is a better selection of vehicles at the airports that offer you a choice at pickup they call Ultimate Choice. The Presidents Circle area usually has more SUV’s and lower mileage vehicles in general. Also you earn points at a higher rate when paying for rentals.
Remember this guy?
I hit camera then video and walk around the car while it is warming up. Takes less than a minute. Been doing it for years.
I just realized I must have a crazy collection of these videos somewhere on my phone.
Sorry, but as much as it pains me to write this (and trust me, it REALLY pains me to write this), I'm on Hertz's side on this one.
This paragraph really did it for me:
What a bitch. And guess what? It appears she's not morally in the right, as Hertz sent the NY Post pictures demonstrating that she really did scrape the wheel:Hertz said that Paixao could have purchased the company’s in-house insurance policy prior to rental, which likely would have covered the damage. But Paixao told The Post that she could have had her own insurance cover it — but refused to submit the claim out of principle.
Paixao told The Post she declined Hertz’s optional insurance coverage at the time of rental.
“I believe I opted out of the additional insurance,” she said, adding that her coverage is through her employer. “Although it probably would have been covered, I did not want to submit it as I still believe their price gouging is ridiculous.”
BEFORE:
AFTER:
So what does she expect here? That she can damage the car and Hertz just has to eat it? She even has her own insurance through work which would've paid for this, but won't utilize it "out of principle" of the $440 being too high. What? $440 isn't a lot of money to fix a sizable scrape. It's not like they're charging $4400.
I'm sure Hertz fucks a lot of people (they even fucked me somewhat, in the story I told a few posts above, though it wasn't about damage). But this wasn't a good example of it.
BTW, this chick was renting the car with "her wife".
Also, she didn't rent through Hertz.
She rented through Dollar -- a known shitty company which operates under the Hertz umbrella. This is significant because these budget companies have been long known to provide a lower level of service.
Here's her email to them:
This email is very telling, and it's very clear she's full of shit.
Notice (especially from the second half) that she does NOT directly deny having made the scuff on the wheel. Instead, she complains about the price to fix the "minor scuff", and questions the validity of the photo provided (saying it might be from a different vehicle). She even suggests that the damage was caused by "driving over spikes and metal grating" to return the vehicle, even though this makes no sense for that kind of damage. Notice she does NOT attempt to claim that she inspected it herself upon return and saw no damage. That's because she doesn't want to directly lie and claim that it wasn't damaged during her time renting it.
She complains about the Atlanta AI system being "notorious" for ripping people off, but that isn't relevant here. What matters is whether or not SHE did the damage. Since a lot of the focus is on the $440 charge and not her actual innocence, I think it's highly likely she knew she did it, and hoped to get away with it (or be charged much less).
Even more obnoxious, she started complaining about "harrassment" because Hertz's automated system texted her about the damage (lol), and because they sent her an additional automated email offering her savings on the damage payment if she paid within a short period of time.
Ugh.
She seems like an entitled, dishonest, and unpleasant person. I hate customers like these, because when I have legitimate issues and try to complain, these are the type of people I'm grouped in with, and it's very tough sometimes to get them to see that I'm telling the truth.
I can tell you that never once in my life have I claimed that a few automated texts and emails from a company were "harassment". That's histrionic level nonsense.
Now, have I dented or scraped a rental car before, and gotten away with it?
Yes.
Did I feel guilty?
No.
Why?
Because the way rental companies (legally) charge you for damage is very shady. They basically double, triple, quadruple, and quintuple dip on damage charges. They also make a fortune on their bullshit "supplemental insurance". Let me explain how and why....
I'm sure you've picked up rental cars before and noticed deep scratches, scrapes, and dents. Typically the damage isn't major, but it's enough to where presumably the previous renters who caused the damage got charged. So if these people paid for the damage they caused, or if they had the rental company's (very expensive) insurance to cover it, why wasn't the car fixed?
That's where the shady part comes in. This type of damage never gets fixed. It's because rental companies know that future renters aren't going to care if the car has some minor dents, scrapes, and scratches, as long as it functions okay and they don't get charged for existing damage. Therefore, unlike your own personal car (where you'll usually want to fix noticeable scrapes/dents for aesthetic reasons), rental companies don't fix this stuff. They collect the money for the damage, and then don't fix it.
Multiply this by lots of rentals, and you'll see how they end up either collecting a fortune from people who cause minor damage, or collect that same fortune via people buying super-inflated insurance policies on such damage.
Prior to the late 1990s, damage to rental cars was an even-money proposition. Rental companies did not sell insurance policies, and when damage occurred, they typically fixed it and billed the customer. Then they realized they were leaving a HUGE income stream on the table (for reasons stated above), and they quickly changed course.
There is a legal concept called "immediate diminished value" -- essentially the difference in overall value of the car before and after an incident causing damage occurs. This can sometimes be used in lawsuits, where the person being sued for causing damage can argue that the car either had very low value to begin with (for example, you can't cause $5,000 of damage to a car worth $3,000), or that the damage was already on top of existing damage in the same area, and thus caused almost no decline in value.
For example, lets say there's a big dent on the passenger side front door on my car, near the handle, and I choose not to fix it. If you then make a second deep dent right next to it, the immediate diminished value is very low. That's because there was already a dent there (so you can't complain the car looks a lot worse), and fixing it would be nearly the same cost, being in the exact same area. Therefore, it would be unfair for me to charge you the full cost to fix that second dent, when the fix would also encompass the first dent which already existed.
Anyway, rental companies do not utilize immediate diminished value when determining what to charge you. Instead, they charge you the cost of what it would be to fix the damage you caused, regardless of other factors. The only thing they won't do is charge you beyond the full value of the car (as that would be illegal).
Rental cars do NOT have real world diminished value from dents and scrapes, for the reasons I mentioned. Therefore, they make a ton by charging people for them, and not fixing.
The AI system sucks because you can no longer get away with returning a car with small scrapes and dents. There have indeed been times I've returned cars (especially at airports) where they are so rushed and deal with so many cars that they barely inspect, and therefore you usually get away with such damage.
But you can't really complain about it, as it's catching real damage. All you can do is avoid companies which use such a system.
It is important to ALWAYS inspect your car when you get it, take pictures, and have them note it somewhere before you leave the lot. I do this every time. It's even more important to do this if it's a 1-way rental, as there might be a different level of inspection from one location to another.
The difference between me and this entitled lesbian? If I scraped the wheel and the AI system caught it, I would either pay up or put it through my credit card's insurance program. I wouldn't act like I'm the victim.
I do believe her regarding the gas thing. This has happened twice to me with Hertz in the past 3 years. Both times they quickly backed down and refunded me, so presumably their system makes intentional errors and steals from people this way.
Here is a story I posted 8 years ago about an Enterprise employee who blew me on the first date in 2001, begged to see me again, but got offended by my insulting their shitty insurance:
In 2001 I met a girl from a chat room who worked at Enterprise. She was just newly divorced from her high school sweetheart, and had never done anything with any guy before other than him.
I drove out to meet her, we messed around in a parking lot in a closed strip mall. She blew me, we messed around some more, and she was very happy with the evening and kept begging me to see her again. She was also incredibly easy to please because apparently her husband didn't know what the fuck he was doing all those years.
We had plans for the following Friday, but sometime during the week, I offhandedly mentioned on the phone what a scam car rental insurance supplementals were. Keep in mind the insurance was only like $9 at the time, but even at that price it's a huge ripoff. Nowadays it's just LOL how they sell you awful $25-$40 per day packages.
She kept insisting to me that it was a great deal for the customer, that I didn't know what I was talking about, and was getting increasingly agitated with me for disagreeing.
Finally I got annoyed and said, "Okay... $9 per day. Multiply that by 365, and you're looking at like $3300/year. That's the yearly rate you're paying, and all you're getting for it is collision coverage, and nothing else (this was before they offered other insurance). Would you ever buy a car insurance policy covering only collision for $3300/year?"
She got really pissed at me, told me I was an asshole, said she didn't want to see me again, and hung up.
I'm guessing she probably went back to her husband after that.
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