Car rental from Hertz - Collision Damage Waiver

sheenas

Don't use Hertz. I had loads of issues and they are very unhelpful. They tried to charge me £1000 for returning a car to the wrong depot. I had parked the car in the same bay I hired it from. it took 2 weeks to resolve and it turned out the return operators tablet was incorrectly set to a Hertz 2 miles away.

Seek out a smaller indy with good ratings.

youth_leader

Sorry that happened to you. In hindsight I could have arranged it for her, I will have a look and see what is available.

WellKnownSid

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81939361#Comment_81939361

I've hired from Hertz hundreds of times in many different countries - almost every week for 5-6 years - and never once had an issue. I used to be in their "President's Circle" which always got me a free upgrade. I always declined Super CDW but had a separate annual car hire insurance policy.

The trick was to always book vanilla Focus / Mondeo level cars through the Ryanair website for pennies - back in the day when they had their 'special relationship' - but would always be given big SUVs, Mercs and one time an Audi TT 😂

I guess they question less when you are a known quantity - I once forgot my driving licence but had no issue picking up the hire car just because of my 'status'.

youth_leader

I am glad for you - there are many many unhappy Hertz users on Trustpilot. I am glad my daughter and boyfriend were unhurt. They skidded approaching a left hand bend on an ungritted narrow country back road unfortunately, and the car ploughed into the snowy muddy bank. It used to be gritted when a bus route, but Covid put an end to that.

youth_leader

Finally I have found the information about the excess on my phone - but I cannot find it by looking at the Hertz website on my laptop.

There is a full list of the Vehicle Groups and the CDW - Non Waivable Excess. The group B Vauxhall Corsa she hired is £1,700. The group S6 Land Rover Discovery Sport, which I'd have liked her to have in the snow, is £2,800! Makes me feel a bit better!.

youth_leader

I am 69 and I do try with IT, finally got the link if anyone is interested.

hertz.co.uk/rentacar/reservation/policy/policy-detail/enGB/LHRT50/CDW

WellKnownSid

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81939432#Comment_81939432

Yep, there are always negative reviews. Unfortunately in your daughter's case the contract was for the hire of a motor vehicle and the expectation was that it would be returned with the same amount of fuel, seats, windows, doors, wheels and exterior panels as it went out with. I can see it's disappointing - but that was the agreement.

I hired a van recently through a small independent. Unfortunately I clipped a tiny branch of a very low hanging tree at night during a bad storm and there was a small crack in the windscreen. That cost me £800. It was 100% down to me - I could try to blame the lack of street lights, or the tree, or COVID, or the weather I went out in - but at the end of the day it was 100% my fault.

youth_leader

I appreciate everyone's advice, I will be messaging my daughter tomorrow to tell her it is dealt with. If I offer to pay for a hire car in future I will make sure she has a reasonably priced insurance from the recommendation.

I've been doing some more reading, it seems they use AI in the US to check for damage. At least my daughter was able to use her eyes!

MyRealNameToo

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81939432#Comment_81939432

Putting into context that Hertz has over 600,000 vehicles and by normal standards 80% of them should be rented on any given day. On top of that they operate franchise model as well so their vehicles will be on top of those owned by Hertz themselves. How many negative reviews are you seeing against the tens of millions of hires they do every year?

Every business in the world has unhappy customers, you have to remember that unhappy customers are much more likely to post than unhappy ones. Not everyone that is unhappy is justified at being unhappy at the business. Yes being involved in a hit and run is annoying, having to pay your excess for someone else's mistake but thats hardly Hertz fault is it?

All firms can have a bad day but personally have hired many times from Hertz without any significant issue, though most the hires have been from Hertz owned sites and I have less experience with their franchised locations. The closest thing I had to a bad experience was a vehicle that broke down on the way back to their depot to return it. A pain having to get their recovery firm out but they apologised and waived the full rental cost as a gesture of goodwill. No idea what was wrong with the vehicle but on the basis it had under 200 miles on the clock when they gave me the vehicle suspect the blame lies more with Volvo than Hertz.