By Christopher Elliott
Q: My wife and I rented a car from Hertz in Arizona for a couple of days with our kids. The rental went fairly seamlessly, and we didn’t notice any damage to the car when picking it up. The representative did not give us anything to document damage, which was sort of atypical.
We returned the car without any damage, and Hertz did not note anything when we returned the vehicle.
Six months later, I received a claim notification from Hertz that the car had $850 of damage during our rental period. There isn’t a description of any damage or any evidence of repair — just a request for our insurance information or credit card number.
I told Hertz that we did not incur any damage during our rental, and I told them it was concerning that nearly six months after returning the vehicle without damage, we received a bill for it. Can you help?
— Joseph Meisinger, Elkhorn, Nebraska
A: Hertz should have noted any damage to your vehicle when you returned it. That way, it could have shown you the problem, and you could have signed off on it and agreed to pay for the repairs.
Sending a bill when there’s no clear documentation of damage is problematic. And six months later? That invites a lot of questions.
It turns out you had a lot of questions, too. You sent them to Hertz in writing: What kind of damage? Where did they have the car repaired? There was one more problem — a 600-mile gap between the odometer reading reported by Hertz and the one reported on your return. That means Hertz might have rented the car to someone else who damaged the vehicle, and the company was holding the wrong renter accountable.
Hertz did not send you any of the repair documentation or explain the 600-mile gap. So, what then? A brief, polite appeal to Hertz might have helped. I list the names, numbers and email addresses of the Hertz customer service executives on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org.
It turns out Hertz has done this kind of thing before. I’ve mediated cases like this one, and Hertz normally takes anywhere between two and three months to send the paperwork. A representative told you that it had a backlog of damage cases.
You could have gotten this dropped if you had “before” and “after” photos of your rental car. Always take pictures of the exterior and interior to prove your innocence just in case your car rental company decides to send you a late bill. (I have more information in my free guide on renting a car, which I also include on my site.)
I contacted Hertz on your behalf, and you received a message from Hertz’s executive customer service department: “I have received notification from our corporate claims team that the claim has been closed at this time, and you will not be held liable for the damages to the vehicle,” it said.
Christopher Elliott is the founder of Elliott Advocacy (elliottadvocacy.org), a nonprofit organization that helps consumers solve their problems. Email him at chris@elliott.org or get help by contacting him at elliottadvocacy.org/help.
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