Darren Lynn Bousman is the director of Saw II, Saw III, Saw IV, and several other horror films. So when he went to rent a car from Hertz – over Halloween week – well, you know where this story is going. He passes along,
When the Saw franchise is inevitably rebooted I want Hertz’s customer service team to be the new Jigsaw.
Bousman flew to Kansas City and went to the Hertz lot to pick up his rental. It took 30 minutes of paperwork and he was assigned to an EV. As he left the lot he “notice[d] the car is only 5% charged and the nearest charging station is 18 miles away.” That’s not going to work.
- He rang the Hertz location, but they were closed.
- He called their Roadside Assistance but got no answer
- He Ubers to his destination and back
Hertz Tesla Model 3
The next day he has the car towed back to the Hertz lot at the airport. He was charged $600 for the rental and the tow, plus he was out the cost of his Ubers. In his view, these expenses fall on Hertz.
After 90 minutes on the phone he managed to reach a supervisor. He’s told to pound sand – this is all on him. So much for what’s obviously his favorite holiday of the year.
My take though? He rented an EV and this time Hertz didn’t charge him for gas! You laugh. They did it to this customer and to this one. It’s impossible to fill up a gas tank on an EV, which means you can’t avoid fees for failing to fill the tank.
Hertz made a huge blunder with their EVs. They’ve proven much more expensive to maintain than the company expected, and much less desired by customers. They are very good cars, but they take some adjusting to – which isn’t something you want to do for a single trip. Plus charging takes time, and you don’t want to go out of your way and spend 25 minutes charging on the way to the airport.
If you’re familiar enough with EVs, go ahead and rent one. Just check the battery charge while they’re still open! But don’t buy a Hertz Tesla, and not just because buying used ex-rental cars is always dicey. Rental cars get beaten up by drivers and even by staff and aren’t as well cared for as a car owned by a single individual.
The condition of Hertz Teslas is apparently worse in particular for battery wear. These are high mileage vehicles for their age and when I rented one it was charged to 98% at pickup. Recommended battery care is charging to 80% for regular driving and 90% for occasional long-distance driving. Plus nearly all charging will be done with high speed chargers on a rental vehicle.
Ultimately, isn’t what happened to this horror film director on Halloween the least you expect to happen to you when you rent from Hertz? Earlier this year I wrote about one person who tried to rent from Hertz for the very first time and found they’d already been banned by the company. Hertz has even been known to ban a customer’s descendants, too.
One elite member chalked up 4 arrests spending 30 days in jail, where she suffered a miscarriage. And a father and daughter were held at gunpoint and arrested for renting from Hertz.
Considering the Hertz toll scam, and of course a history of customers getting arrested just because they rented from the company – and Hertz refusing to admit its mistake lest the police stop believing them when they file false police reports, just getting an EV without charged battery so you can’t take it far enough to get arrested seems actually not so bad in the scheme of things?