Hertz’s slogan is ” “Rent a car. Own the memory.” But several people outside Atlanta say their memories renting with Hertz are ones they’d much rather forget.
Inside Edition interviewed three customers who claim they were charged with theft by Hertz after the rental car company incorrectly reported that their vehicle had been stolen.
“All guns drawn. I was thrown to the ground. I was arrested. And I was locked up for over a week. Absolutely they knew I had their car,”Inside Edition – Paul-Anthony Knight
“I absolutely paid for their car,”Knight was also added. Knight was later cleared of all charges.
Julius Burnside claims that Hertz also filed a report about him as a suspect in stealing a car.
“I just see guns drawn,”Burnside stated.
Burnside said that he cleared up the mess after showing a receipt showing Hertz had paid him. Although the charges were dismissed, Burnside was still held in jail for half an year.
“Hertz destroyed more than just my life. It affected my family, my kids,”Burnside stated.
Bianca DeLoach claims she was driving with her children when she was stopped by police.
“We paid for the car. Hertz reported the car stolen, even though we paid for the car,”DeLoach stated.
Her charges were also dropped.
“It’s a massive, corporate disaster,”Attorney Francis Alexander MalofiyHertz’s representative in Georgia is. “This is a systemic, nationwide problem where Hertz is putting good-paying customers in jail wrongly.”
Malofiy says the confusion seems to happen in situations where customers extend their rentals or swap out for new vehicles, and that information doesn’t get processed by Hertz accurately, so the vehicles come up as missing in the Hertz computer network.
He claims that Hertz reported the vehicle as stolen to the police, even though the customer still owns it.
It’s happening all over the world. California cops arrested an agent in real estate after Hertz reported that her truck had been stolen.
Carrie Gibbs said she had rented an automobile to replace her car that was in a collision.
She claims she was “completely shocked” over the charges, which were later dismissed.
“This has got to stop. It’s destroying other people’s lives,” Gibbs said.
Hertz did not comment on the allegations during our interviews but made a statement. “The vast majority of these cases involve renters who were many weeks or even months overdue returning vehicles and who stopped communicating with us well beyond the scheduled due date. Situations where vehicles are reported to the authorities are very rare and happen only after exhaustive attempts to reach the customer.”
They say that they care deeply about their customers and provide rental cars for millions of travellers each year.