I’d previously booked a Jeep through Avis after getting off the plane (Avis was great BTW) but for the second half of my trip I wanted to book a convertible. I found a great rate on Expedia at Hertz and paid in full for the car and collision insurance.
I dropped my Jeep off at Avis with zero issues. I did a short walk over to Hertz which is where things began to go bad.
First, picking up my reservation took forever. The printer wasn’t working but I was happy and patient. I mentioned I’d already paid for insurance but the rep said they didn’t see it and turned me onto their insurance for $127. They also upsold me on the fuel option but didn’t mention the price of $77. I’d fueled my Jeep twice so I knew this represented about 2 tanks full and wasn’t a good deal.
The rep failed to walk through most of the items on the rental agreement, in fact, she simply slipped the receipt into the leaflet holder and gave it to me. I walked out of the office, looked at my bill of $836 on top of the $399 I’d already paid through Expedia and walked right back in. I’m not a fan of paying $399 for a 4 day rental and getting charged $1,115.
It took about an hour but I waited and had another rep walk me through each item. There was Premium Road Service, Personal item insurance, liability insurance on top of the expensive collision insurance. None of the other insurances has been mentioned, reviewed with me or approved by me. This was very deceptive.
I was able to remove a bunch of the extraneous unwanted and previously non-disclosed charges but I missed the most obvious charge because the receipt was confusing. I had paid for the car I rented in full but the $355 base rental price had somehow grown to $688, almost double the price. This had not been disclosed or mentioned and surprised the hell out of me. I’m still working through Hertz and Expedia to understand how the agreed upon daily base rate of the car increased from $88 to $172.
These are all deceptive practices and reading up on Glass Door and various consumer protection and review sites, it seems there is quite a pattern of casual, systematic overcharging for unwanted and undisclosed products. I can not recommend choosing Hertz (or “Hurtz”) based on this very negative experience when there are SO MANY other options.