UPDATE (Oct 11, 2014):
@Hertz caught my tweet, responded with their apologies, and reversed my charges! Kudos to @Hertz, and two Hertz staff on Twitter, ^SM & ^IB, for immediately taking action and reversing the charges. Moving my review to 2-stars.
From @Hertz:
HI george, we really don't like to hear this. Plz DM us your RR# for further review.^IB
@georgebabu I apologize for the way you were treated.Pls DM your rental or reservation number. I would like to investigate this further. ^SM
ORIGINAL POST (Oct 10, 2014) with 1-star:
I've been a lifelong Herz customer, routinely paying more for a Hertz rental out of loyalty to the brand, and an expectation that paying more comes with a commitment to good service. Thanks to a upsetting experience with the manager of the Hertz location in Mountain View, I'm taking my business (and my company's business) to the folks at Avis. I also wish I'd checked Yelp first before renting from this location.
We rented a minivan and I picked it up a day late because they had closed by the time I could get there. The van still hadn't been cleaned, so we had to wait while they cleaned it.
The fun began when I had to install the car seats when we got home, and in the process, encountered some sticky remnants of the previous renters. They had spilled food (ice-cream? chocolate milk?) over the back seats, and left other liquid food remnants in one of the cup holders. I discovered that it was pretty fresh when I accidently stuck my hand into the gunk while searching for the car seat anchors! Not surprisingly, I was quite disgusted. Furthermore, the idea of driving my guests around in a car in this state for a week wasn't very appealing. Not to fear, I thought, this is Hertz, the company with fabulous service. What could go wrong? Plenty it seems.
The fun continued when my wife called the Hertz Mountain View location and spoke to the manager (Greg...who looked similar to the "John Dario" described in Federico's review) His position, "You're lucky you even have a minivan because you came to pick it up late. The best we can do is for you to come back and wait while we clean it. No, we won't compensate you for your inconvenience. No, we don't have another minivan for you" (which turned out to be inaccurate as Kayak was showing that they did have another minivan, and I spotted a minivan in their lot when we went back.)
After speaking with the lovely manager, convinced it was all a misunderstanding and that Hertz, a fine company and an exemplar of customer service, would take care of it, we decided to go back to the location, return the minivan and get another vehicle.
This is when things got super-fun. We met the manager in the store. Seemed like a jovial chap. Someone I'd grab a drink with at the bar. Boy was I mistaken. He repeated his "oh, you should consider yourselves lucky you have a minivan" line, looked at the gunk and suggested that that was the best their cleaning staff could do (another blatant lie since it was fairly obvious that they missed several spots...wish I'd taken photos), and said there was nothing he would do. At this point, the fun ended for me, and I was pretty upset. Shocked that he wouldn't acknowledge the state the minivan was in, and upset that he was treating my wife and I so poorly.
And then it got even worse. I asked to cancel the reservation and get a full refund (we had picked it up and 10:30, and were back an hour and a half later). The manager point-blank refused to do that, and instead charged us $138!!! When I said i would dispute it with Amex, he laughed it off and said go right ahead. And when my wife said we would review this experience on Yelp, he laughed at us, saying "oh, look at me, I'm shaking in fear. You're going to write a Yelp review"...turns over to his colleague, and continues to mock us...his colleague joins in and starts laughing at us too! (My wife reports that he was actually visibly shaking, go figure).
We walked out shell-shocked and deeply embarrassed. Not only did he refuse to acknowledge why we were upset with the minivan, refused to rectify it (or even offer to), he actually rudely laughed at us in front of his colleagues and other customers in the store! read more