DEAR TRAVEL TROUBLESHOOTER: My spouse and I rented a automobile from Hertz in Arizona for a few days with our youngsters. The rental went pretty seamlessly, and we didn’t discover any harm to the automobile when choosing it up. The consultant didn’t give us something to doc harm, which was kind of atypical.
We returned the automobile with none harm, and Hertz didn’t observe something after we returned the car.
Six months later, I acquired a declare notification from Hertz that the automobile had $850 of injury throughout our rental interval. There isn’t an outline of any harm or any proof of restore — only a request for our insurance coverage info or bank card quantity.
I informed Hertz that we didn’t incur any harm throughout our rental, and I informed them it was regarding that almost six months after returning the car with out harm, we acquired a invoice for it. Are you able to assist?
— Joseph Meisinger, Elkhorn, Nebraska
ANSWER: Hertz ought to have famous any harm to your car whenever you returned it. That approach, it might have proven you the issue, and you might have signed off on it and agreed to pay for the repairs.
Sending a invoice when there’s no clear documentation of injury is problematic. And 6 months later? That invitations a variety of questions.
It seems you had a variety of questions, too. You despatched them to Hertz in writing: What sort of harm? The place did they’ve the automobile repaired? There was yet one more drawback — a 600-mile hole between the odometer studying reported by Hertz and the one reported in your return. Which means Hertz may need rented the automobile to another person who broken the car, and the corporate was holding the fallacious renter accountable.
Hertz didn’t ship you any of the restore documentation or clarify the 600-mile hole. So, what then? A quick, well mannered enchantment to Hertz may need helped. I record the names, numbers and e mail addresses of the Hertz customer support executives on my shopper advocacy web site, Elliott.org.
It seems Hertz has finished this sort of factor earlier than. I’ve mediated instances like this one, and Hertz usually takes anyplace between two and three months to ship the paperwork. A consultant informed you that it had a backlog of injury instances.
You can have gotten this dropped in case you had “earlier than” and “after” images of your rental automobile. At all times take footage of the outside and inside to show your innocence simply in case your automobile rental firm decides to ship you a late invoice. (I’ve extra info in my free information on renting a automobile, which I additionally embody on my web site.)
I contacted Hertz in your behalf, and also you acquired a message from Hertz’s govt customer support division: “I’ve acquired notification from our company claims group that the declare has been closed presently, and you’ll not be held accountable for the damages to the car,” it mentioned.
Christopher Elliott is the founding father of Elliott Advocacy, a nonprofit group that helps customers remedy their issues. E mail him at chris@elliott.org or get assist by contacting him at elliottadvocacy.org/assist/.
(c) 2024 Christopher Elliott
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