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.

  • reddig33@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    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.

    • skisnow@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      Also I’ve rented enough scratched, pitted and dented cars to know that no way are they spending that $650 on fixing them.

    • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
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      2 days ago

      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.

    • Iceman@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      But what if you turned the cost of doing business an opportunity for profit? All they know is squeeze.

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      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).

      • Übercomplicated@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        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.

        • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          They all end up costing roughly the same in the end. Enterprise is just more honest about it.

        • swelter_spark@reddthat.com
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          21 hours ago

          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.

    • JordanZ@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Wouldn’t surprise me if they just gave up on the one off customers and are banking on business travelers. The people that charge it to a company card and nobody is really paying attention. Accounting department is just gonna see another Hertz charge which is probably pretty normal.

      Most companies just pay whatever bills come in. For example, a random dude set up a fake company and was just sending invoices to Google and Facebook. He collected north of 100 million. Took them over 2 years to catch on.

        • JordanZ@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Submitting invoices for goods/services not rendered would constitute fraud. The companies paid them which was dumb but they weren’t entirely incompetent either. I simplified my original comment for brevity since I linked it but the relevant bits…

          … impersonated the Taiwan-based hardware manufacturer, Quanta Computer — with which both tech companies do business — by setting up a company in Latvia with the same name. Using myriad forged invoices, contracts, letters, corporate stamps, and general confusion created by the corporate doppelganger, they successfully bamboozled Google and Facebook into paying tens of million of dollars in fraudulent bills …

          Going back to Hertz. Companies already pay bills to them. As long as the fines are in the realm of normal rental costs I’d expect they’d go unnoticed for a decent while.