$440 Charge For A Wheel Scuff Raises Questions About Hertz's AI Rental Car Damage Scanner
$440 Charge For A Wheel Scuff Raises Questions About Hertz's AI Rental Car Damage Scanner - Jalopnik
Cars get damaged, it's part of USING a GOD DAMN CAR. To me if something is damge that is invisible to a normal human eye and doesn't impact the function of it, it's part of renting cars.
Have you considered.... Line go up?
Wear and tear is specifically not allowed to be charged for home rentals in Australia. Damage that is not wear and tear can be I would assume it would also apply for car rentals but I haven't checked.
Whenever I've rented from Enterprise here in the US, they explicitly do not charge you for simple scuffs/scratches that aren't deeper than a specific amount (like 0.5cm or something).They've always told me they don't charge for dents that are smaller than around 2-4cm in diameter. In other words, basic wear and tear on cars being used by hundreds of people over their rental lifespan.
If Hertz ultimately goes down this path and their competitors do not, I would almost guarantee they'll lose tons of business.
I recently hired a car from eurocar. And they did have a reasonable wear and tear policy.
My car needed some repair work. Insurance set me up for a rental with Hertz who told me not to pay for bridge tolls with my own car's transponder. When I take the car back, they tell me I'll be invoiced later for the tolls. Had 4 toll crossings which ordinarily would come to less than $30 (even less if I had used the transponder).
A month later, the Hertz charges show up: $77 (including 'processing fee'). Called and complained. They said they'd look into it. Never heard back.
Not using them again.
Yeah, never use rental car agency toll payment. Too late for you now, but they treat it the same way they do the gas fill charges. If they do it they’ll double the cost. Use your own toll pass if you have one, add the rental plate to the pass while you’re using it.
They did something similar to me in Florida, hit me for 400 fucking dollars. I use Avis now.
I'm assuming they stuck a camera to an LLM?
Tech companies are treating LLMs like how people back in the day would put asbestos or mercury in everything. "It's good at this one thing, it's gotta work for other stuff too."
How is a large language model going to apply to a visual inspection?
This is probably a CNN trained to identify different types of damage. Similar to how your phone identifies faces.
It's got Radium! It's what the body craves!
You do realize that you are allowed to read the article, right? Cause if you did, you would have noticed the picture of the setup in the article, along with a basic description of it.
But there was no LLM summary of the article, how am I supposed to know what's in it?
Jokes on you, I never learned to read!
I'm assuming they stuck a camera to an LLM?
Hey, if you don't know what you're assuming, there's no point asking us.
But I'll say YES, that's what you're assuming, just so you have an answer.
AI is going to make customer service so much worse than it is now. Makes me want to be a customer as infrequently as possible.
It's a lucrative market market for AI lawyer systems that automatically fight every claim.
I took my car to the dealership (begrudgingly) for recall work, and they have one of these scanners. I'm not sure if AI is attached to it, but it clocked hundreds of dings and dents as "needing repair" despite everything being simple cosmetic scratches and dings.
A friend of mine works for a dealership, where they have one of these things too, and even raindrops will register thousands of dings on these readers. They're so full of shit to siphon every single penny out of their customers.
I'm in the industry, and the only thing I've seen the scanners used for is cya. Make sure the dealer doesn't get blamed for pre-existing damage
There isn't really a good rental company but Hertz towers above the rest as the worst. I've gone to pick up a car I reserved at noon on a Wednesday and there was just nobody there to give me the key and no one to answer a phone.
Is Hertz still renting cars to people, then reporting them stolen so the people who rented the cars get pulled over by psycho aggressive cops and run the very real risk of being shot/killed?
Always
Hertz is the worst rental company I've had to deal with. Enterprise is the only one I'll use if I have a choice.
One of the problems with removing people from the equation is that there is no way to escalate an issue. I’m guessing it’s by design.
An example of this is the food delivery app in the country where I live. One time a delivery person said the restaurant was closed. The app said it was open but it was a holiday. Neither of us could cancel the order or contact a person to allow the cancelation.
Another instance, a delivery rider had a problem with their bike and asked me to cancel the order, when I told her I could not, she told me to call the restaurant to cancel it.
I don’t think she really had a problem with her bike, but I couldn’t chat with anyone who worked at the app to resolve the issue. She eventually delivered it. I think she just didn’t want to wait for the food to be ready since it wasn’t fast food. I ended up ordering from a different place, and ended up with 2 dinners.
Returned a multi-week Hertz rental a couple of days ago and had to fight with the staff to get to get a written acknowledgement of no damage.
Customers are supposed to just trust Hertz employees will self-report damaging the car after it has been turned in? Absolutely laughable considering how many times rental companies try to screw over their customers.
This is great info and I won't be renting from Hertz again.
Why would anyone rent from a company that was convicted of persecuting their own customers because of the incompetence of the company?
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1140998674/hertz-false-accusation-stealing-cars-settlement
Hertz fucked up repeatedly and people lost their jobs, were imprisoned and had their credit scores wrecked because Hertz couldn't find it's own cars on it's own lots.
Why anyone would give them a fucking nickel is beyond me
It's almost certainly programmed to find damage that doesn't exist and price gouge you for it, but they haven't found that sweet spot yet, where you can get people to pay more without putting up a fight.
Hertz is so ass I reserved a car and the fuckers didn't even show up with a car. Had to file a credit card dispute. The address they gave didn't even exist.
And just like that, I never rented from Hertz again.
I got a ticket in France (I'm from the US) in a Hertz rental and never paid it, so I too will never rent from Hertz again.
Yeah people will not bother to risk losing so much money or a day argueing for a Camry. I had to do that once with a local rental here and never used them again despite them having better cars and cheaper price.
I can’t load the link but the human beings at places like Enterprise where I usually rent are totally reasonable. They’re always like, don’t worry, only big things are an issue.
It really depends on the company. Some look for any way to squeeze you. Others are pretty decent and probably more efficient as they dont waste as many working hours on bullshit claims and claim resolution.
Also if i rent a car i want things to go smoothly. I got places to be. You make my life easy, ill happily pay again and do my best to make yours easy too.
I’ve had all of my wheels stolen before. That was an awkward teams meeting, explaining why I was not there in person. The photographs I sent into the chat made it more entertaining though.
I think the weirdest part was how nonchalant that Hertz rep was about the situation. Because this shit happens all the time
It's not like it's their car, why would they get mad?
I don't know.... But some people take their shitty jobs way too seriously.
Honesty, if you are working for some mega Corp why are you bootlicking? They don't give a shit about you.
I don't understand some people... It's like the dude working at Walmart running after shoplifters... Like dude.... You're risking your life for fucking Walmart....
That is not what I was suggesting. It was more like oh yeah, this happens all the time no worries…
Come to find out Hertz removes the OEM installed lock nuts on each vehicle, which was starting to me. I realize there are ways to around that quickly, but why remove a simple barrier like this?
The other thing I figured out is why all hotels don’t monitor their parking lots… That is what really pissed me off.
I'd love to see them prove they genuinely incurred those costs, how do you go about fixing a tyre scuff?
Wheel, not tyre. So I presume they curbed an alloy or similar.
Could be, but that's a very strange choice of language by the author. You scuff a tyre, you scratch or gouge a rim typically.
A tire can be scuffed just like a rim can be scuffed just like a wheel can be scuffed.
They are all equally valid to be scuffed.
And Tyre is old English, go back to your island. ;)
Steve Lehto did a video on this too. Hertz is a garbage company. https://youtu.be/kGgPEIv65pU
Hertz used to be cool.
Another reason to never rent from US companies
If it takes a whole 60 seconds for this glorified camera-carwash contraption to scan a vehicle and generate a report, they are charging $11,400/hour.
Hertz, I will personally sit on a roller stool with a camera and make beep boop sounds for that dough. Take my resume.
The jo is harder than that. You have to occasionally say "enhance".
Yeah, but can I also occasionally hallucinate like many AI’s apparently do?
Yeah but you are a person presumably, so there is accountability. The reason to use AI is to escape accountability
yeah but then theyd have to pay ya instead of pocketing almost everything and getting a robot to do it for them.