Hertz Hurts Hertz

I hired a van when moving and had friends helping. This all seemed very straight forward, with the only major problem being that I was moving on the hottest day of the year .

Move went OK and at one point I increased the rental time, which went through no problem. When I came to return the van I remembered the clause that the renter had to ensure that the tank was at least a 3rd full.

The van even came with a fuel card to pay with! The tank was ever so slightly less than a 3rd so I went to the petrol station and filled up(*).

Went in with the fuel card and tried to pay numerous times, declined. Annoyed, I paid with my own money and made sure to keep the receipt.

Then I got back to the drop off point 5 minutes late because of all the hassle(*)

Got the bill via email and immediately started trying to contact hertz to get my money back for the fuel and the late fee.

Stage 1: Contact Hertz.

There are no phone numbers that led to people and everything states you must go through an email address.

Send email with details and get a classic " we have received your message here is a reference number, we will get back to you "

Stage 2: Hertz can not find my booking.

They ask for driving licence and other details. I provide these along with the invoice number Hertz had sent me.

Nothing and then...

Stage 3: The confusion.

They ask "is this about the AdBlue oil change?" and the only hire information they had was for me 4 months prior !?

Stage 4: The end part 1.

I send a huge, humongous email detailing every single email and text I had received since I signed up until now. This included TO and FROM addresses, SUBJECT and the Datetime stamps.

- crickets -

Stage 5: The humiliation.

I ring the no-humans phone number and try for quite some time going through every menu option. Not to mention holding down various keys and choosing non-existent options. All I got was a rebuttal and hung up on. Eventually one option got me through to a real life person, who sadly could not transfer me to customer services but would hear my plea.

Yes, that help-desk ticket was closed as RESOLVED and no there was no information that I had made the rental...

** Stage 6: The truth** But, and it's a big but, there was another department called Hertz247 that should be handling this. No, there was no way to be put through, had to start again and email them.

So that is where we are today, they closed my ticket rather than helping me get in touch with the right department.

Expect more to follow now I have contacted the "right" department.

(*) The "hassle": To use the fuel card you needed the PIN. The PIN was on a small device screen that repeatedly crashed when trying to navigate the menus to find the PIN. It was supposed to be affixed to the vehicle dash, but instead flopped all over the place on a short lead making it very difficult to read.

There was actually a whole lot of other issues, but I will not go in to detail as this is about the customer services after the hire.

Where is the Flog page gone?

(hopefully adding this post will fix it)