Hertz customers have issued complaints that the company falsely accused them of stealing rental cars. Numerous renters have made claims that they were stopped by police to be informed that the vehicle they had paid to borrow was reported stolen. Complaints became so prevalent that CBS News launched an investigative report last November to uncover whether individuals were simply lying about their innocence to avoid prosecution or if Hertz was habitually screwing things up.
By December, 191 claims had been filed in federal bankruptcy court on behalf of the people who said they were falsely arrested. But it took another two months for a Delaware bankruptcy court judge to issue a ruling that will require Hertz to make the number of renters it accuses of stealing its cars every year publicly available.
There are now 230 formal claims against the rental agency. However, it has contended that only a small portion of its fleet is ever involved in theft reports.
“Of the more than 25 million rental transactions by Hertz in the United States per year, 0.014 [percent] fall into the rare situation where vehicles are reported to the authorities after exhaustive attempts to reach the customer,” Hertz said in a statement following the ruling.
That would represent roughly 3,500 police reports annually, with around a tenth being false if the harrowing CBS reports are to be believed. The documentation required by the Delaware court should shed some light on how many of those were deemed...
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