Hertz Rent A Car

I wish there was a way to have a 0 instead of a 1. My company has a corporate relationship with Hertz and this location is by my job, so it makes sense to come here. NEVER AGAIN! I’m trying to fight with them to see if I can go to a totally different company. I initially thought it was just this location, but there’s an east side location that was just as bad. That’s a different story, back to the Livonia location; on 3 instances I was told that a specific car would be available for me, which wasn’t when I got there. I had to drive lower level cars every time; I did not think it would be so difficult to rent a full size vehicle. Seems like they would have them because reducing my costs only loses money for them. One time, the car smelled like cigarettes, the second time one smelled like marijuana, with residue in the middle console. Every time, I get apologies and promises that things will be better. Too late, 4 times a charm, you don’t get to keep messing up like that. I don’t even mind driving further and creating more of an inconvenience to get some type of proper service. PLEASE DO NOT CHOOSE THIS LOCATION EVER!

This is a small, dark office with a huge parking lot though not a lot of cars on the lot. Typically two employees. And as Mandy stated, even if you reserve online there’s no guarantee a car will be on the lot. They are first come/​first serve kind of operation and if they can charge you more inperson plus upsell — that person is going to get your «reserved» car. Reserving online gets you a cheaper price but no other advantage: no car guarantee, no time saving. The young men filling out your paperwork are also suppose to take care of inspecting/​cleaning and refueling on return. Epic fail: 2 cars rented from this location, one was on E the other less than ¹⁄₈^th of a tank, neither cleaned very well but with heavy doses of cheap carpet deodorizer. Pulling out of the lot, I noticed a warning light was on, AssUmed it was due to gas level. Drove to the nearest gas station, light still on. Drag out the owners manual: light means low tire pressure. Buy tire guage, ck and inflate tires. Sigh, never going to make my appt. Call and reschedule. Milage on car indicates it is several thousand miles pass the oil change sticker on the door. Just attention to detail in replacing the sticker or lack of maintenance? I needed the car for 2 weeks but returned it after one. The low tire light came back on. Think I’ll try enterprise next time I need a rental.

We decided to rent a car from Hertz because they are a United Preferred Partner, we have a United card and we fly United. We expected the same excellent service that we get from United from their Preferred Partners, but what we got from Hertz was the exact opposite of. On 12÷24÷14, we arrived at Hertz in Livonia, MI to pick up the Midsize SUV that we reserved online October 25^th, 2014. At that time, we paid $ 218.02. When we arrived at Hertz, we were met by Jermaine who acted as if he had no idea why we were there. When we explained that we were there to pick up our car that we had reserved and paid for, he informed us that they did not have our car. We had just flown into MI from OR on a red eye and had been travelling overnight for 12 hours. We were in no condition to troubleshoot why our reserved car was not at the location it had been arranged to be at. Jermaine talked and talked and talked and also called around to other Hertz looking for cars. He explained to us that just because we reserved a car, doesn’t mean the car will actually be there. We reported that we reserved and paid for the car and expected it to be there. He said that that is not how it works. He then proceeded to tell us that he had a guy who had reserved a full sized SUV for earlier that day and that they didn’t have that car either. He said that the guy showed up 1 hour late and so he told the guy that he had given away his car because he was an hour late (he then said, but I never had the car in the first place). He then proceeded to say that he downgraded the guy’s car and gave him a midsize SUV because they had one on the lot. He said the guy was fine with it because Jermaine had made him feel like it was his fault because he was late. It would appear that Jermaine had just told us that he gave away OUR car to the guy that had been there earlier, but was late. It also appeared Jermaine didn’t realize he had told us this. Jermaine kept calling around. He found a couple of cars at other Hertz locations and wanted us to get in a car with him and drive to those locations with him. The locations were 20 – 30 minutes away without traffic. We didn’t know this guy and I surely wasn’t getting in a car with him to go get our rental car. I informed him that we were staying with family in Livonia and we weren’t driving with him to go get the car. I asked him if they could just give us a different car. He said that they didn’t really have any besides a very tiny car that clearly wouldn’t have fit our luggage and us in the car. We then proceeded to watch 3 other customers come in and get cars. One customer had clearly been having similar issues. Jermaine then proceeded to tell us because we booked our car so early, we couldn’t actually expect it to be there when we went to pick it up. We both rebutted that we had rented many, many cars in life and had never experienced such a situation. We both reported that if a rental care company didn’t have the car promised, they always upgraded to a better car. Jermaine informed us that that isn’t how Hertz works. He also said that he could rent that car for $ 200 per day if someone walked in off of the street to rent it, but that we had got a deal and got it for $ 240 for a week. He said that of course they would rent our car to the person paying $ 200 per day over us. Jermaine then told us that he would give us a discount for the trouble. Jermaine then talked one of the other Hertz locations into bringing over the car. That was an interesting conversation and the reason that he cited they should bring it over wasn’t because that was in the best interest of the customer or because that was good customer service — it was solely because the person on the phone owed Jermaine and it took him a lot of begging and negotiating to get that to happen. After he got off of the phone, he processed our rental. There was no discount noted or mentioned at this point and frankly, I was too tired and so sick of being in the grungy, dirty rat trap of an office to deal with negotiating a discount with Jermaine. Once the car arrived, we went around the car to inspect it. It had multiple scratches and dings everywhere — we were told we were to note concerns. When we went to note these, we were told that it needed to be things over the size of a quarter. Although the whole car was covered in dings and scratches, apparently they were too small to note. We were also told, the gas tank is a little above a ½ tank so bring it back at that. We then got in the car. It was filthy and smelled of cigarette smoke. The seats were stained, there was animal hair all over the trunk, there were soda bottles on the floor in the back seats and the carpet had stains. The car ran terribly. It sounded like a rocket ship taking off every time you pushed the gas pedal. Overall, my experience was beyond terrible and was truly ridiculous. With Hertz, the customer is never right.

Loved that I could return my car instead of driving back to the airport where I picked it up (no extra charge). They brought me back to my hotel in Livonia — great, friendly customer service!