Hertz Try to Charge Rental Customer $10,000 for Excessive Miles , is This Fair ?
In the News
This customer hired a car from Hertz for one month and ended up clocking up 25,000 miles, around 800 miles per day
When he returned the car Hertz said there would be an extra charge of $10,000 for excessive mileage
The customer countered that the policy said unlimited mileage and they argued , neither backing down
In the end the Hertz employee said he would call the police if the customer did not pay
Here's part of the conversation
Customer: You’re going to charge this to $10,000 to my credit?”
Hertz: “Yes.”
Customer: “When this literally, that’s not even allowed. I never signed…”
Hertz: “You show me where it says I can’t charge it.”
Customer: “Right here, it literally says I won’t get charged anything, it says miles allowed, free miles, it literally says to refer to this if there’s anything extra. I’ve never signed anything saying I can only go 100 miles a day, or anything like that, or that I would have to pay more.”
Hertz: “But you also never signed anything saying you were going to be allowed to drive 25,000 miles in a month.”
Customer: “No, unlimited is 100,000 miles.”
Hertz: “No it is not.”
“Unlimited” is a weird word for limited, I think. The customer might as well tell this manager, “I demand you pay me $10,000 because you never signed a paper saying I can’t charge you $10,000.” The whole exchange is absurd. But it gets worse.
Hertz: “Dude, we’re done. Please leave. You can either leave or I will have you arrested.” (Dials phone.)
Customer: Wow. Now you’re going to call the cops on me, ok
It all sounds like something out of a comedy sketch, except it actually happened
I don't know what to think about this, on one hand 25,000 is a lot of miles to clock up in a month, and on the other Hertz does give unlimited mileage
What is your opinion on this , would you expect to pay nothing or do you think Hertz are right ?
By the way i did read Hertz tried to charge a customer for fuel on an all electric vehicle LOL
Unlimited is just that .Call me pedantic if you like.If it's not unlimited then use another sales pitch.
It's a con to say unlimited then try to enforce a limit 
. The agreement should be what has been signed off by the customer.
. To state reasonable use is fair but should then also clearly indicate a limit.
Depends on what excessive is meant. There's a huge difference between reasonable and excessive. 800 miles a day is crazy
Surely this must of been used by a business purposes covering that sort of mileage in a month. I get that it's unlimited mileage but surely somewhere in all that fine print that they give you it said fair or reasonable use , be surprised if an international company like Hertz failed to include that in the contracts, they cover just about everything else. If not it will be in future . As a one off Hertz can afford this anyway , even thou they don't like it , think it called " Karma" , for all the people who have been caught out by these car hire firms in the past.
Mango4 If it had happened in the UK i would have suspected someone had took it abroad on a touring holiday , although i don't think car hire allow this , i could be wrong
This being the USA and the country so vast i suppose someone could easy clock big mileage up driving around , but there must have been more than one driver to cover that daily distance
Mango4 The insurance bit is borderline scam, only giving you basic unless you cough up more to upgrade , and if you only take the basic they want a large deposit
Airlines pull similar stunts with other types of extra charges
These two industries need shaking up by further legislation to stop them ripping off customers
At the moment they are a law unto themselves, except in this case as i believe they got away with the high mileage
That is crazy, I remember a few years ago when I got a contract with O2 which stated unlimited data, and it turned out the unlimited data was 20GB of data lol
I'm not surprised, contracts nowadays aren't there to protect the everyday man. I've seen loads of things that say unlimited then when you read the small print it is not unlimited at all, how that's fair I'll never know. As for this, I do not see how they can charge the person if there is nothing that states a limit. I've hired cars abroad a lot and usually there is a specified maximum mileage on the rental agreement so if there wasn't one then I don't see how they can try to charge him.
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