Hertz has made quite a few customer service mistakes lately, but fining a customer for the red light ticket incurred by someone who had the same car previously is a new one to us. The person who got the erroneous fine seems to attribute it to small clerical error the rental car company allegedly won’t correct.
Typo allegedly leads to a wrongful traffic stop.
This ridiculous situation was explained by the Hertz customer on travel forum flyertalk. In his post, user pete3 claims his car rental at the Calgary Airport was put into the system as starting at 10:30 am on May 15th instead of 10:30 pm.
That error between morning and night resulted not only in an extra day charge for the rental car, but also the red light ticket of $436.50. According to pete3, the person who was driving the same vehicle on May 15th ran a light at 2:33 pm.
Since pete3 was in the air at the time and nowhere near Calgary, with a flight itinerary to prove it, he reasonably seemed to assume Hertz would correct the obvious mistake and reverse the ticket fee.
However, he says Hertz only reversed the extra day charge, that was it. Not only is he, the customer, stuck with the red light ticket charge but other fees associated with the extra day he didn’t have the rental car.
In the recent past, Hertz has angered customers by charging them for returning Tesla electric cars with supposedly empty gas tanks and reporting their rental vehicles as stolen, resulting in some being arrested and held in jail for theft.
That, combined with the rental agency having to unload many of its Teslas and other EVs thanks to a lack of demand, hasn’t exactly helped with its public image. The big question is if this red light ticket fiasco will further tarnish the brand?
Update
Hertz provided the following statement on this incident:
“We regret that we were unable to resolve this matter sooner. We have apologized to the customer, issued a refund for the inaccurate charges and provided points that can be used toward a future rental.“
Image via Hertz/Facebook
Follow The Auto Wire on Google News.