This review is about Hertz but the problem I am speaking to is entirely an online one not specific…read moreto any Hertz location. I rented a car in Salamanca, Spain and got a speeding ticket. Afterwards I was notified by a Hertz email that I could pay the ticket online for a reduced fee, but only within 72 hours after being notified. I tried to pay the fine online twice but was blocked both times. I called Hertz. It gave me a Hertz email address to contact to address the problem. I emailed it twice, but the emails were bounced as undeliverable. I told Hertz, but it could not explain why the address didn't work, even though it was a Hertz address.
After several emails to Hertz customer service, to which I attached all the relevant documentation, e.g., the ticket, the car rental receipt, screenshots of the blocking of my payment, Hertz told me to email the same address again that I already knew and could prove did not work, without explaining why or what purpose that would serve. The 72 hours expired and I still have not paid the ticket because I have not been able to get around this technical problem, which by all indications is Hertz's responsibility.
I was just informed by email that the ticket would be forwarded to an unknown "agency sanction issuer", presumably in Spain, that would then send me a notice to pay the fine, presumably (this is not clear yet) at the higher rate, which would require me to pay approximately 40 additional Euros. So, it looks like I will be mulcted for gratuitous money I should not have to pay, the illegitimacy of which I will most likely, in reality, be unable to resist unless I want a black mark on my driving record that shouldn't be there, or unless I can figure out with massively more expenditure of time and effort what legal procedure, if any, may exist to vindicate my right to pay at the promised lesser rate - and then go through that procedure (How many more emails? How many more fees for miscellaneous items and filings? How many more procedural irregularities and idiosyncrasies?).
Even if it turns out that I only have to pay the fine at the lesser rate (this is highly unlikely), this review is still not premature: my time and energy has already been dearly wasted simply trying to communicate with someone who could handle the most basic troubleshooting. It is beyond inexplicable how and why Hertz could not figure this out, and how and why it would continue to give me a dysfunctional email address, after being informed that the address doesn't work, without a viable alternative.
These are the little experiences of corporate and administrative tyranny that accumulate piecemeal and eventually, in conjunction with other larger injustices, result in the kind of society-wide rage that is destabilizing the whole world.
