It seems like the more of this Hertz news comes out, the more grim it gets. Business Insider details yet another Hertz customer that is suing the company after she was arrested four separate times over a rental she says she had already paid for.
It started back in 2018 when Antwanette Hill, a Hertz Gold Memember, rented a vehicle from Atlanta Airport in late 2018. Being a Gold Member, she didn’t have to check in with anyone. You simply walk right out and get in your rental and leave. But as she went to leave, an employee stopped her claiming she was stealing the car. Hill answered that she was a Gold Member. Hill told the employee to check for her reservation, which would have been simple. Instead, the employee escalated the situation by calling the cops.
It’s not known what happened after that, but between 2019 and 2021, Hill was arrested three more times. According to her lawsuit, the arrests were for failure to appears for court in relation to the theft charges. Hill alleges that she wasn’t properly notified about some of the court dates, causing her to miss them. Which is to say that she wasn’t notified about them at all. For each failure to appear, Hill spent nine days in jail.
The worst was Hill’s fourth arrest in May of ‘21. Hill was pregnant at the time, but suffered a miscarriage while she was being held in jail and had to be hospitalized for three days. From Insider:
The lawsuit stated that “the loss of her child will haunt her for the rest of her life,” and that she was struggling to find work as an optician due to the pending charges.
It gets better when you learn that Hertz isn’t dropping the charges against Hill.
Hill’s incident is just another in a long line of customers who have reportedly been screwed by Hertz. With lawsuits and customer allegations mounting, this may get bad for Hertz.
Update, October 4: We reached out to Hertz for a statement regarding what happened. A Hertz representative told Jalopnik: “Hertz cares deeply about our customers, and we successfully provide rental vehicles for tens of millions of travelers each year. Where our customers have been negatively affected, we are committed to doing what is right by our customers. At the same time, we will protect and defend against false claims intended to cause our company harm.”
We’re still looking into more details for this story and will update it when and if more information becomes more available.