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.
Always interesting to see Hertz being ragged on (and for good reasons). Personally, used it a couple of times in Finland and had super smooth service, fresh cars and better prices than fully digital carshare when offers are on, maybe I am just lucky or local franchise does things better than overseas counterpart.
At some point these companies gotta feel the pain. If they deliver a bad product, just don’t pay them. They need us to give them money
They’ll go bankrupt again after enough people refuse to stop using their services.
Refuse to stop?
This festering AI dogshit covered in bottleflies will be the end of us.
I’ve asked AI to extrapolate humanity’s future from present trends
At least we get a big tasty burrito in the end
Joke’s on you, that’s just two rats in a small tent
At least the rats will be housed
deleted by creator
The only way to be sure.
All the car rental companies suck but Hertz is undoubtedly the worst. They have refused to extend my rental twice, when I refused to exchange cars they were like “it’s okay, we know where you are, we can just come and get it”. They frequently have errors checking the car in after return, creating a customer service nightmare to get a receipt. The last time I returned a car I demanded a paper receipt in order to avoid this, they told me to go to the service desk. After waiting in line with all the people waiting to receive their rentals, the customer service rep told me that they “couldn’t find the car” that I literally just returned. After 30 minutes of waiting they still hadn’t figured it out so I just left. Got the receipt the next day, but I have never used Hertz again. Fuck them right to hell.
The real “win” for Hertz here is that they can outsource their “accountability” to the machine. Associates love to say “I wish I could help you, but the system does X”, “We can’t override the system”
It’s all bullshit… Hertz put the system in themselves and could include as many overrides or as much control as they please. This is a transparent, customer-hostile money grab. They KNOW that many people won’t contest these charges. They KNOW it’s an extra revenue source.
If you want to see something similar to this scumbaggery, there’s a new “vape/smoke” detector marketed towards hotels. It says RIGHT IN THEIR sales material “Unlock a new revenue stream!”
Companies aren’t doing this to make things more fair or efficient. They are doing it to siphon money out of the customer’s pocket, and they are praying you either don’t notice or just accept it.
Really disgusting and makes me wish we had some of the same consumer protections as the EU.
One of the problems is having our current “swindler in chief” at the White House is it’s emboldening companies to do this type of shenanigan. After all, if the president runs various scummy businesses, why can’t anyone else? The fish is rotting from the head down.
This is the new business paradigm. They no longer care about offering a quality customer experience. Now it’s all about extracting as much profit, while serving up as little as possible in exchange. The satisfaction of the customer is irrelevant.
Hah, this is very similar to AI based smoking detection scam in hotels which is advertised as guaranteed revenue increase via smoking fees.
It seems that every corporation in the US has openly turned into a con that’s openly fleecing its “customers”. There are no straight transactions to be found any more.
And inevitably, this will percolate into all the other regions so that the rest of the planet’s shareholders can enjoy this new bounty.
Except of, and that’s really weird, Amazon. Known for being shady in pretty much every other respect, they are weirdly still quite customer oriented.
Their customers are the sellers, and the sellers are getting fleeced just fine.
The buyers are a product they provide to the sellers.
Not quite, they sell a lot of stuff themselves as well.
It’s mindblowing the sheer VOLUME of Amazon Basics items there are, as someone who worked in their supply chain.
They have an easy tap on what sells, by virtue of running the marketplace.
Find a popular product, make an Amazon Basics version of it, undercut their best vendors, bam! Easy money. And leave the vendors swinging in the breeze with backstock they can’t move any more.
And they own the warehouses. Why not stock them with their own product in preference of vendors?
Sure. But they are often copies of best selling products from third party sellers, again throwing them under the bus.
I didn’t say they were nice lol
Retail has one of the lowest barriers to entry of any industry, as well as the lowest barrier to churn. Amazon may appear to have a near-monopoly, but it’s a fragile one.
That’s certainly true. If Amazon starts going after customers, things can change very quickly.
You’ve just described capitalism
Late stage capitalism. We can’t hate on it when the market is regulated and competitive. When everything is captured by capital it breaks. It’s like…the heat death of the universe but in economic terms.
We can’t hate on it when the market is regulated and competitive.
Of course we can.
At least we have agencies that will watch for these kinds of scams and bad-faith practices and bring accountability to shady businesses, such as the Federal Consumer Prote- oh, wait, I’m being told that was entirely dismantled for some reason.
You mean, the Federal Anti-Business Agency? Yeah, can’t have this sort of thing.
Imagine hooking this clanker up and have it start billing your customers automatically.
It’s not a bad idea but maybe run it offline for a while and then compare its findings against your current system’s… And then decide to roll it out?
I’d love to know how many false defects it has identified over a period, versus their previous systems. The article really only has a few incidents with half a million cars in their fleet globally… But then was this system only rolled out in that Houston store?
I have so many questions that I’m sure have unhinged answers, but I will be gleefully buggered before the daily mail will do any investigation outside of some social media posts, good day.
Hell yeah for using “clanker” as an AI slur lmao
I hope to be lined up against the wall first when they take over. Get it over with early 👍
This isn’t an AI problem. It’s an accountability sink.
I wouldn’t bother chasing Hertz. I would send an email and issue a charge back. Then they will cal me.
Unfortunately, they will just send you to collections.
They can’t on a charge back
And I will just change my number.
It could have been worse. This is a shout out to not use Hertz.
Hertz will pay $168 million to customers it falsely accused of stealing its cars
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1140998674/hertz-false-accusation-stealing-cars-settlement
They also own
- Dollar
- Thrifty
- Firefly
Whoa, I didn’t see the first time around that they double downed even after losing many cases. Sounds like it was intentional.
I used to be a weekly Hertz customer and I noped right on out after this started happening.
When all you customers leave: Hertz donut?
Hertz keeps failing again and again with their automated systems. Only within the past few years did they finally settle with 364 customers that were falsely accused/arrested for stealing their cars.
They have an automated system for generating police reports on stolen cars, but there were many instances of customers falsely reported when they had actually called in to extend the rental, or if they had rented a car which had previously been flagged as stolen (but not corrected in their system).
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1140998674/hertz-false-accusation-stealing-cars-settlement
I had Hertz call me because I had the same name as a supposed car thief 5 states away. 😂
Well he’s certainly mobile.
The funny part is The Hertz was in Indiana I am in NY and they tracked the car to Florida. My name is so common there are 24 of us in the local medical systems in a very small city. I have to use my middle initial, and Jr to be found immediately, and I am not related at all to the other 23. I hope they called 5000 of us. 😂
Sorry to hear that John Doe.
Correction… John D. Doe Jr
hertz just sounds like herpes,
I rented a car in Canada a few weeks ago and it required a lengthy argument with their staff to get written proof that the car was returned without damage. I’m done with Hertz too.
