I now know that this problem isn't mine alone! Others have experienced it.
We had a two day rental of a Kia from Vienna to Salzburg this summer. We returned the car, with a "walk around" by the local Hertz-Salzburg agent. Our German friend walked with us. None of us found ANY damage and no reports were made nor forms signed to indicate any damage found.
Two weeks later I was charged $744 dollars and sent 3 pictures that showed no damage but supposedly showed damage to the rear bumper. VISA has kindly reversed the charged as it investigates and Hertz is in possession, now, of all the paperwork I received directly from the Vienna Hertz office that processed the claim.
As a Gold Club #1 member of Hertz, I'm confident that Hertz international will reverse this local agency claim...but I will report WHATEVER HAPPENS, in this forum, for others to be aware of. Fraud of this kind should be stamped out before it further blemishes the good name of Hertz!
In the meantime...ADVICE: take pictures of your rental car when you drop it off AND get a SIGNED form from the accepting agent that there is no damage! AND don't use a DEBIT card!
Hertz-Austria fraud??
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This is very unusual for Hertz. Must be a third party franchise, that Hertz sometimes uses.
I've used them in Europe for over 25 years and have never had a problem. That's both business and personal.
The Hertz #1 club folks will give you and extra bit of help on this.
Ya, I sympathize. A similar thing happened to me in Mexico last year although Mexico is notorious for it. Any franchised rental agencies of any brand (Hertz, Avis, Budget..etc.) It occasionally happens through all of them. Just watch your credit card statements and complain complain.
Nick K.
www.onmywalkabout.com - Living Vicariously Through Yourself
Good news!
On August 23rd, 20 days after it charged me for non-existent damage to the rental, Hertz-Vienna refunded the VISA charge.
No apologies yet...so who knows if there will be any change in policy and procedures, etc...
So...the advice still stands:
ALWAYS get a signed receipt on rental car's return AND take pictures!! Don't trust ANYONE!!!
Sad to say this but...it really is a "buyer beware kind of world" out there!!!
We picked up our Hertz rental car at 7:30 am in Voss, Norway. On the Hertz website the location was listed as the Shell station in Voss with hours starting at 7am so that is what we reserved.
The girl at the Shell station just handed us the keys and after we did our own walk around with pictures we took off. We returned the car five days later, no problems and went on our way.
The next day I received their final billing invoice via email and was charged 80 euro for the road tax (which I understand)but still think I should have been notified of it ahead of time. The road sticker was included in our rental in Austria, and another 50 euros because we picked up 'out of normal business hours'.
I called Hertz immediately and told them that 7am was the opening time they had listed on their site and so it should not be considered out of normal hours. She said something like it was in the small print or something to that effect and I vehemently disagreed with her until she relented and said she would credit us the charge.
They did credit us the charge. I'm still annoyed by it though. On the Hertz site you cannot reserve a pickup time that is not listed so when you can reserve it for that time, you should either be notified there will be an additional charge for that pickup time or the system should not allow you to reserve it for that time.
Buyer beware. Once they have your credit card you can be charged these fees without your prior knowledge so just be sure to check your statement carefully.
We hired a car from Hertz Vienna for the day. hertz wien innere stadt kärntner ring
(Aug 22nd 2012)
On signing for the car they told me there was some minor damage to the rear bumper and I signed to agree that this was prior to my hire period. With Hertz being such a large company, I never suspected it would come back to haunt me.
The car was parked on the street and I was told to return in there when we had finished.
There was no damage to the car when we returned the car the very same day, but 2 weeks later we have been billed £600, a £50 admin fee and received photos of a scratch on the rear of the bumper
We are now fighting the case as we didn’t take their insurance, but we do have an independent insurance. It's total fraud, as we only travelled a few miles and never at any point was the car involved in any form of scrape to cause any damage at all.
I will give you the Hertz UK Customer Relations email address which I initially struggled to find. customer-relations-uk@hertz.com
Hertz UK advised this branch is a franshise and they need to take it up with Hertz Austria
I also called the local Hertz Store in Vienna but they would not help me
WARNING! – Always make sure when returning the car, the store sign to say it has no damage. Take photos with date and time stamp when returning your hire car and keep all paperwork.