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.
Instead of going after Steam for NSFW content, payment processors need to crack down on AI customer service traps. If your company doesn’t have a meaningful way of getting a hold of an actual human and disputing a charge, your company should be shut off from the payment processor networks. After all, the process of a chargeback normally asks if you’ve first exhausted their customer service options to resolve the dispute. Companies that don’t have any meaningful customer service simply shouldn’t be eligible for Visa/Mastercard payments. The chargeback risk is just too high.
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.
A “longtime” Hertz customer
Wait, those exist? Has Hertz not been the laughing stock of rentals for years now?
Is there a good rental company?
Kind of thought they were all shite
Oh most are but Hertz is famous for getting people arrested by reporting their rental cars stolen, fucking up charges and then threatening the ripped of customer and not having cars even when people reserved one.
HA,
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
did you really need to ask ai
The only way to be sure.
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
Now you’re getting it, Citizen!
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
If I earned a car rental company I would take out billboards with this story on them.
They’ll go bankrupt again after enough people refuse to stop using their services.
Refuse to stop?
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.
Chargeback. Credit card companies won’t accept that BS and a chargeback is for the entire amount.
You would probably only get a partial charge back. You still got it as a rental, so that isn’t eligible for a charge back.
Oh it certainly is if he was charged for damage that didn’t occur. I’ve been on the other end of chargeback disputes defending companies. A chargeback is absolutely warranted here and he can prove it. He’ll win.
No matter how the inspection is performed, it should not be done without the customer present.
Also if the car is moved after the customer returned it, the damage could have happened while the car is moved. Or for other reasons after the customer returned the car.I don’t see how an AI scanning or even a human evaluation at a later point in time can be legally binding?
I bet this shitshow doesn’t happen in EU, because I don’t think it would be legal here without the customer present.
It might. I rented a car for one day in Belgium from. A week after I got back to the US I got a letter saying I had badly scraped the rims and was being charged $1500. I emailed them and challenged it, and they said, “oh that was a paperwork error on our part, don’t pay it.” Not sure what would have happened if they had tried to fight me.
Could even just be their policy to try that all the time (or some random % of the time) and just back down any time a customer pushes back. Which is fucked up, but they might have never actually fought you on it because it was just meant to get free money from those who wouldn’t push back and just pay it.
Every type of insurance company does that BS. Always fight it. When they push back, fight even harder.
And the less regulation, the more this shit happens and people don’t have the time or energy to fight it. Probably never happens on their corporate accounts, because then it’s retained corporate law firm vs retained corporate law firm.
But standard retail customers? Even if only 10% don’t fight back, huge profits, and the CEO can buy a bigger jet.
Reminds me of this
“Alternative revenue streams”
Weird. This sound awfully like fraud. Cause if I was tell companies to bogus charges, I would get charged.
What, we all should do is incorporate and use corporations to scam other corporations. It’s just a civil matter than.
definitely sounds like these rental companies are trying to scam people, if they scam enough people, and most dont try to fight it, they profit from it.
Maybe they can make the claim, but I doubt it is legally binding for the customer.
The difference being that just making the claim may be illegal in EU.
We have way stronger consumer protection than USA, and as you state, you received the claim in USA.
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.
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.
You’ve just described capitalism
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We can’t hate on it when the market is regulated and competitive.
Of course we can.
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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.
As someone who got fucked over so hard by Amazon that I am now boycotting them and every single subsidiary for life, this is false. They have always been shit, but their customer service has become so thoroughly enshittified that if you actually have a problem, you might as well just accept whatever loss you’ve fallen for.
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.
Replicating their infrastructure isn’t that easy though.
That’s certainly true. If Amazon starts going after customers, things can change very quickly.
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.
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
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.
And I will just change my number.
They can’t on a charge back
