Hertz Rent A Car

Horrible customer service. Wouldn’t wish their service on my worst enemies.

Simple in and out. Though they were running short of cars that day and the lady and counter asked me «are you just renting for you»? I said yes, and she told me, «OK, I’m going to give you a Camero because we’re running out of cars» So looks like I didn’t have a choice in the matter, though I was hoping for a 4-​door. It was fine though.

On Tuesday evening July 1^st my husband and I flew into Hilo and our first stop was to pick up our rental car from Hertz. What should have been an easy process turned into an over 2 hour nightmare. My husband had pre payed for our rental car through Orbitz or one of those other online deals and we thought we were all set to go. When we went to pick up our car my husband realized that he left his drivers license on the ship (He was in Hawaii for work he is in the Navy) but he had his military ID and all his credit cards with him. Laura explained to us that she had to put $ 200 on a card for incidentals and it had to match the persons drivers license. Not a big deal so I showed her my license and gave her my debit card to swipe. What Laura failed to mention was that she was actually going to charge my card $ 250 to cover gas. I knew I only had a little over $ 200 in my account and I planned to transfer more money over from my savings account when we got better cell service so I figured it was no big deal. I would have transfered the money first if I knew she was charging more than $ 200. Laura told me that my card had been declined and that she needed another card. I explained to her that I only have one card and that I would transfer money and she could just swipe my card again. Nope. For whatever reason Laura could only swipe my card once. She didn’t explain to us why she just kept saying well it’s company policy. I explained to her that our hotel was over an hour away and that we had already prepaid for it. She said she could swipe my card again first thing in the morning but that we would either have to taxi over an hour BOTH ways to get our rental car again the next morning or we would have to book a hotel in Hilo and lose out on the hotel we had already booked. I checked with all the other car rental places and they were all booked for the night. Again I pleaded with her to please just swipe my card one more time I was able to finally get online and transfer the money and I could show her on my phone that the money was in my account. Also this was ONLY for incidentals. The car was already paid for. I also asked if we could just use the same card that we paid the rental with since it was my husbands card and my name was on the account, but for some reason she couldn’t do that either. Finally after getting no where with her I made some calls to Hertz and got a helpful individual on the phone and they said that you could swipe the card twice if it was a debit card. I handed my phone over to Laura and she finally agreed to call her supervisor after talking with the lady from Hertz. Her supervisor told her she could swipe the card again and FINALLY we were all set. What pisses me off is that she should have called her supervisor right away and asked if she could swipe my card again. I understand that there are rules and regulations that need to be followed, but also customer service needs to play into effect. We were in a really tight spot and I didn’t think we should have to pay an extra $ 100 for another hotel because Laura didn’t want to swipe my card again. She SHOULD have explained before swiping it that she could only do it once. Also that wasn’t even the rules! She could have not wasted two hours of our time by just calling her supervisor to see what could be done in our situation. She also should have been informed that you can swipe the damn card twice if it’s a debit card. We will not be using Hertz again!

While the customer service here was great, there were a few things I did not like about this rental car company.
One, the car we got was pretty water stained. In addition to that the windshield wiper needed to be replaced. It did little to wipe away the rain as it fell onto the window.
Driving their rental car at night was difficult because you could barely see out your window. When I returned the car, I told them about the wipers needing to be replaced but they told me they probably wouldn’t replace them because they only keep the cars for a year.
Also they open at 6am so if you have an early flight be careful. Our flight was set to depart at 6:15am so we were stressing out about making the flight.

Our flight from LAX was 5 hours late and the Hertz booth stayed open for the delayed flight. The lady that rented and took in our return was very helpful and friendly. Above average Hertz experience. The Hertz magazine at the counter has good coupons and maps.

Excellent experience. Not only was it Hertz quality, but the lady behind the counter was truly accommodating, without giving away the store. She upgraded us from an intermediate to a 4WD SUV. At first, we cheered, as it would have opened up a lot more options on the big island.
After we realized that the SUV would be too big for some of the places where we were going (both of our B&Bs), we asked for some help. She was happy to help us, giving us an intermediate with their GPS thrown in – it included a number of audio tips for touring the island, which were also great.

This was a quick and easy pick up for us. The woman behind the counter was really sweet and I was able, with no trouble, to upgrade to a convertible.