Hertz Charged Member $277 for Not Filling Gas Tank on a Tesla, Won't Remove Fees

https://viewfromthewing.com/hertz-charged-presidents-circle-member-277-for-not-filling-gas-tank-on-a-tesla-wont-remove-fees/

by josephcsible • 2 years ago

76 65 2 years ago

viewfromthewing.com

josephcsible• 2 years ago

To me, the worst part of this is the way they effectively remove the consumer protection that credit cards are supposed to give you for things like this, by banning you from renting cars for life if you do a chargeback, even if the credit card company agrees that they were the ones in the wrong.

lotsofpulp3• 2 years ago

Being able to do a chargeback is more accurately described as banks offering to arbitrate individual transaction disputes, not offering to manage the whole business customer relationship.

thedanbob2• 2 years ago

The last time I rented a car I was hit with two bogus extra charges, both of which I disputed successfully. I assume this got me put on a "no rent" list with the company, but dealing with the situation left such a bad taste in my mouth that I won't ever rent from them again regardless. I imagine it's the same for many if not most people in that situation.

Ajay-p2• 2 years ago

The rental car market needs more regulation. I remember car rental companies erroneously calling the police on renters for stealing cars, and billing for "wear and tear." The fuel surcharges and everything else is just a continuation of the same anti-consumer practices.

Car rental agencies are King's when it comes to BS fees and practices.

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1140998674/hertz-false-accusa...

https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/Dinged-for-normal-wear...

yencabulator2• 2 years ago

Now imagine living outside of the big cities and having approximately 2 possible rental companies total serving your area.

Zak• 2 years ago

Coming from a perspective of the company believing its charges are legitimate, this doesn't seem like an unreasonable policy. If someone found a way to reverse a payment they made to me after the fact, I probably wouldn't do business with them again either.

The problem here was the company not having a reasonable way for the customer to reach someone with both common sense and the authority to reverse the charges.

yencabulator2• 2 years ago

Last I read my credit card company's policies, being charged for services not provided, if merchant refused to fix it or refund, was a valid reason to do a chargeback.

dec0dedab0de• 2 years ago

If you have to do a chargeback you should avoid that company anyway. Luckily, Hertz does not have a monopoly.

legitster3• 2 years ago

Getting that chargeback feels soooo good though. I have never wanted to go back to a business I got a successful chargeback from, so it's not a big price in my opinion.

At a certain point, if they muck about with chargebacks too much, they are going to be in trouble with Visa themselves. And I don't think any business fears being on anyone's bad side worse than Visa.

criddell• 2 years ago

Hertz refunded the charge.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/hertz-is-charging-tesla-model-...

cjk22• 2 years ago

I've got a Hertz EV rental this weekend, albeit a Polestar which was on offer. This is not what I wanted to stumble across.

However in my case if they pulled this shit, it would end up as a chargeback because it is definitely outside of the terms of their hire which I have carefully archived and screenshot should any crap like this happen.

Alupis6• 2 years ago

Read the article... the driver apparently has no idea how rentals work.

FredPret• 2 years ago

A sibling comment of yours claims this chargeback will result in a lifetime car rental ban

cjk22• 2 years ago

I live near a major airport. There are plenty of other fish in the sea :)

starshadowx2• 2 years ago

The linked original article has an update saying they will refund the charge.

"Update May 9, 12:45 p.m. ET: After this story was published, Hertz informed The Drive that its Customer Care team would be "reaching out to Mr. Lee to apologize and will refund this erroneous charge.""

https://www.thedrive.com/news/hertz-is-charging-tesla-model-...

legitster3• 2 years ago

It doesn't really change the story. Them only giving back the money they took only after a journalist got involved is still slimy.

If a company doesn't offer a reason why it happened and how they are going to change policies, it's not a real resolution.

nixass• 2 years ago

But I thought that they are "unable to provide an adjustment or refund since the service was provided and contract is closed."

dekhn• 2 years ago

It sounds like a common answer from Tier 1 support, to make you go away.

Alupis6• 2 years ago

When I rented a Hertz Tesla, it had 50,000 miles on it and I picked it up with a 98% charge. Best practice is charging to 80% for everyday driving and 90% before long drives.
This customer actually returned the car with a 96% charge, the same as they’d picked it up at.
And there is no fuel tank to fill on a Tesla EV. Prepaid fuel is based on the capacity of the gas tank being filled, and that amount here should be zero.

This is amateur-hour, highschool newspaper levels of journalism going on in this article.

Is the fee ridiculous? Yes. Did the customer agree to return the vehicle at a specified "fill" (read: charge) level? Yes. Did the customer not return the vehicle as agreed? Yes.

It doesn't matter that the vehicle physically doesn't have a gas tank - they are charging a fee because they now have the burden of charging the vehicle. Ridiculous fee, agreed, but so are all of the extra fees a rental company tries to charge. News at 11...

It reads like someone never rented a vehicle before, and the article author perhaps was born yesterday..

SR2Z• 2 years ago

Even ignoring the 2% different (which we shouldn't because that's stupid), Hertz themselves say the max charging fee for an EV is $35.

afavour2• 2 years ago

It’s not just a ridiculous fee, it is transparently the wrong fee.

Can I Return My EV Rental With a Low Battery?
Yes, you can. However, if you return your EV at a charge level below what it was at pick-up, we will change you a simple $35 Recharge Fee. A low EV battery can lead to delays and add to our turnaround times for other customers.

https://www.hertz.com/us/en/blog/electric-vehicles/do-i-need...

The story here is really that Hertz customer service is absolutely awful.

(and while 96% isn’t 98% this accuracy does represent a notable shift from gas cars. Usually if you’re within the same needle mark (e.g. 7/8, 6/8) the company doesn’t make you pay. Requiring 98% feels like a scam: they have charging facilities onsite to give the car to you at that level but you’d need to find your own charger within a couple of miles of dropoff to make sure you’re at the right level. They’re well within their rights to demand it of course but customers should be aware)

Alupis6• 2 years ago

And it appears Hertz did correct the overcharge. The entire article is a huge waste of time... trying to be sensationalist about some sort of one-off billing error.

nothercastle• 2 years ago

It’s a total scam it’s basically impossible to hit

ArchOversight• 2 years ago

  > This customer actually returned the car with a 96% charge, the same as they’d picked it up at.

It specifically states that the customer returned the vehicle with the same "fuel" level as when they rented it.

Alupis6• 2 years ago

Except they didn't - TFA says they picked up at 98% and returned at 96%. There is no reality where 0.98 == 0.96... even if the difference is ridiculous - it is a difference.

hartator• 2 years ago

Yes, 96% is different from 98%. If that delays the next customer, the cost to hertz is real.

CyberDildonics3• 2 years ago

Why wouldn't they just give it to someone else with 96% charge?

100721• 2 years ago

I think most people would agree that 98% and 96% should be considered equal for this purpose. It's certainly close enough for gas tanks that don't have such precise displays, and gasoline is more expensive.

If I charged the car and lost 2% while driving to return it, I also would be furious at being hit with the fee.

JoshuaEN• 2 years ago

The linked source this article was using states: "You might ask, maybe Hertz was charging Lee for having to top the Model 3's battery upon its return? According to the final receipt, the customer gave the Model 3 back to Hertz with the battery 96% full, the exact same state of charge it was picked up with. And, even if Lee hadn't done that, the maximum fee should've been $35"

https://www.thedrive.com/news/hertz-is-charging-tesla-model-...

Alupis6• 2 years ago

I picked it up with a 98% charge.
This customer actually returned the car with a 96% charge, the same as they’d picked it up at.

96% is not 98%. Agreed the fee is ridiculous, and it does appear it should have been a max of $35, and the update states Hertz corrected the overcharge.

Somehow the author is confused and thinks these charge levels are equal when they are clearly not.

mcphage4• 2 years ago

Is the fee ridiculous? Yes. Did the customer agree to return the vehicle at a specified "fill" (read: charge) level? Yes. Did the customer not return the vehicle as agreed? Yes.

This is Hertz's recharging policy: "You can return your EV at any charge level and we’ll recharge it for $35—or just $25 for Gold Plus Rewards Members. Or, return it at the same level as pick-up and pay $0."

They got the car at 98%, and returned it at 96%, so... no, that's not at all what this is. I don't understand why you assumed it was. Maybe they would charge him the $35 for returning it 2% down, but that's not what happened here.

thedanbob2• 2 years ago

The article doesn't say the customer's car was at 98% when he picked it up. It says the last time the author rented a Tesla it was at 98%. It also says 96% is "the same as they'd [the customer with the fee] picked it up at".

bastawhiz• 2 years ago

A Model 3 with the extended range has 340 miles of range. That's not a realistic number, but let's be generous. A 2% difference in charge comes out to about seven miles—and that's being maximally generous to Hertz in this case. There's no burden here. Seven miles is probably about the round trip necessary to drive the car to a charge station. Hell, I've turned in plenty of ICE cars with more than 2% less fuel than when I got it and incurred no fee. The fee is more than two orders of magnitude greater than the cost of the electricity. And because it's so close to the maximum battery capacity, you're talking about an hour of charging or more—the closer to full a Tesla gets, the longer it takes to fill up (by design! It's not supposed to be filled that high, as the article points out!).

dingnuts• 2 years ago

$277 is egregious but the assertion in the article that the cost to refuel the Tesla should be $0 is also absurd. Electricity is not free.

Obviously the fair cost should be amp hours needed to charge the battery times cost of electricity where the vehicle is charged.

prmoustache2• 2 years ago

If you are asking renter to charge upon return you are killing most of the incentives to use a rental EV in the first place.

The price should be simply accounted for in the rental price.

xboxnolifes• 2 years ago

The same thing could be said about ICE rentals, yet that also isn't accounted for in the cost. It's not unique to EV.

DamnInteresting• 2 years ago

From the article:

This customer actually returned the car with a 96% charge, the same as they’d picked it up at.

faeyanpiraat• 2 years ago

This belongs to tabloid news

tantalor• 2 years ago

It's true that he didn't refill the gas tank before returning the car.

But it's also true the car's gas tank was full when he returned it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuous_truth

mcphage4• 2 years ago

It's true that he didn't refill the gas tank before returning the car.

He could have played that game, too—"yes, I filled the gas tank completely". What are they going to say? If they say "no you didn't", he could ask them to prove it. If they claim he couldn't have because there is no gas tank, then he could ask what he should have done, that they were charging him to not do?

NickC252• 2 years ago

How could Hertz even claim the customer didn't fill the gas tank when the vehicle in question has no gas tank?

How fucking stupid is their customer service team?

lotsofpulp3• 2 years ago

Stupid enough to have many customers arrested for stealing cars (that were obviously not stolen):

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1140998674/hertz-false-accusa...

NickC252• 2 years ago

Wow. That's just maddening levels of stupidity.

Yet Hertz tried to basically have all these cases dropped when they went through bankruptcy. Never change, corporate America.

notimetorelax• 2 years ago

I assume they only have a few pre-written answers they can give and they have to pick between them…

Flatcircle• 2 years ago

The future is going to be filled with a lot of bureaucratic red tape people will need to jump through to get rid of questionable bills.

I argued a hospital charged my wife too much for a 5 min procedure. ($2900 bill)

after many back and forths, they lowered it to 2800, then to 2000, then 1800, then 1400, then just wiped it all away.

Just bureaucratic red tape all over the place.

nojvek• 2 years ago

I'm scared of entering a US hospital. Looking at minimum $1000 out of pocket just stepping in to see a doctor's face.

MyNameIs_Hacker• 2 years ago

The car was returned with the same battery charge level (96%) that it was picked up with. This isn't a matter of "fuel" being either electrons or petroleum, which is something that the article fails to address.

PreInternet01• 2 years ago

I've had plenty of "not refueled" disputes with car rental companies over the years, but since these transactions were always done via a credit card, these have never caused me any actual issues, other than having to forward my initial denial email (with a fuel gauge picture on return -- protip: always make one, and one of each side of the vehicle as well, to ward off damage claims!) to the card issuer.

Other than "yeah, Hertz has really lost the plot" and (with a nod to lobste.rs) "Hacker News is not customer support for your car rental company", there doesn't seem that much to discuss here?

(And for the record: Sixt [a major-ish car rental company] in .eu requires EVs to be returned with at least 80% charge these days, and will have an add-on fee otherwise [so: take a picture of the dashboard upon return!]. Not, like US$277, but a fee nonetheless)

elzbardico• 2 years ago

Well, maybe using an LLM as a support agent is not going to be so easy as people thought.

wood_spirit• 2 years ago

Different countries, different companies, same shit. I have hired a few cars when on trips over the years and always dread the whole upsell crap, then the check for prior damage stuff, then the return etc. So far I have had extremely negative experiences with two of the big name companies and I vote with my feet and go to their competitors, but I’m running out of options…

Does anyone know of a ‘good’ car hire company that isn’t out to take advantage of the customer every way they can?

Ajay-p2• 2 years ago

As it has been said before, Hertz Hurts. It used to be a dominant market player but over time, declines in customer service and quality has damaged its brand. Its disastrous experiment with Tesla might have been viable had the company not been Hertz.

toddmorey• 2 years ago

This is really poor training and empowerment. Frontline employees should never be stuck saying "I am unable to provide an adjustment" because supposedly "you were fully aware" of the broken thing per the contract. They just lost a Presidents Circle customer over their own error.

Ritz Carlton famously provides each employee $2,000 in discretionary spending to make things right for a guest without bureaucracy. Hire good people, trust good people, empower good people.

legitster3• 2 years ago

A recent thing happened to me on Airbnb.

I'm a host, and one of our guests clearly encountered a bug in the app that caused their reservation to get cancelled. We had a clear paper trail with screenshots.

After hours of denying anything was wrong, Airbnb's offshore support finally admitted that it was probably a bug. But then they admitted that they had no way of contacting Airbnb to report a problem - all they were authorized to do was answer customer questions and come up with explanations. But they couldn't do anything the app didn't let them do.

Airbnb provides no email addresses, no contacts, or even any mailing address for complaints.

Somewhere, there's a lazy executive rewarding himself with stock options for creating a "perfect" experience - a box from which no customers' or employees' screams can escape.

tommiegannert• 2 years ago

These are the same Teslas they want to get rid of, because they are too expensive? Hmm, they found a way to adjust the price, I guess.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38058979

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38943434

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38954384

aSithLord• 2 years ago

This just sounds like a typical DEI interraction. Get used to it.

CyberDildonics3• 2 years ago

What does this mean?

Hertz Charged Member $277 for Not Filling Gas Tank on a Tesla, Won't Remove Fees

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