hertz doughnut?

well, twenty years too late and it’s a different company but i support this decision…

…i dealt with some shit, but apparently hertz folks have dealt with worse!

while i was pulled over for SUSPICION of grand theft auto because a plate hadn’t been properly secured, hertz has actually reported cars stolen when they weren’t returned on time, and then when they have been returned, forgotten to rescind said report, and the next person that rents the “stolen” vehicle gets busted for theft.

that’s some bullshit.

i mean, reporting a late car as stolen? i’m sure this happens with all rental car companies. absolutely SURE of it. but how late do you have to be? and now that i think about it, do they ALL do it?

i always rent through enterprise, and even when they’ve given me a crap vehicle, it’s just crap by my standards. it’s still clean. it still runs smoothly. i’m just not a fan of certain makes, models, and styles, and i let them know. these things happen.

it’s like the shop – we take payment AFTER we tattoo or pierce you, which always surprises people…and it wasn’t always that way. when i first started there (2009) part of my pre-work shpeal for a customer was to ask if they were paying cash or card. if the former, we’ll settle up when you’re done. if the latter, we got payment up front…because what if the card doesn’t clear?

but then we’d have folks wanting to pull an extra transaction at the end because they’d shorted the tip not knowing our work quality, which i couldn’t do because of how things are structured. so lots of tip money, that the customer WANTED to leave, was going out the door…and that sucked. a few of us hit the conclusion that the type of client that would agree to a tattoo price knowing they couldn’t actually swing it was NOT the type of client we had, and there was no point in pre-running cards. in the decade plus since we changed that i can think of only three or four times where payment was remanded and that’s across all our shops.

those numbers don’t suck.

so i have to assume hertz had a LOT of stolen cars before they just said, “FUCK IT!” and started reporting shit after x number of days something hadn’t resurfaced. i guess enterprise doesn’t have that type of clientele, because i’ve never heard of that clause in their agreement…or maybe it’s just in the fine print that none of us read? i can say this – when we went to vegas and walked into the rental car plaza we were shocked at the lines in the lobby, but it turns out that was all folks for hertz, dollar, and thrifty and filled the lobby…but walk AROUND those lines to enterprise and there were, like, four people ahead of us.

that i can deal with.

so clearly, since they filed for bankruptcy in 2020, the hertz folks are bouncing back. i know they’re my sister’s preferred rental car spot…hope she doesn’t catch some GTA charge of one. i don’t know how well she’d do on the inside!