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Months of reporting tied to lawsuits filed by Hertz renters falsely accused of theft should now come to a halt. Maybe.
Here’s the company’s statement on the multi-million dollar settlement, which doesn’t say much about Hertz’s culpability, nor any plans it has in place to prevent something that has only occurred with this rental company from happening again.
Hertz Global Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: HTZ) today announced the settlement of 364 pending claims relating to vehicle theft reporting, bringing resolution to more than 95% of its pending theft reporting claims. The company will pay an aggregate amount of approximately $168 million by year-end to resolve these disputes. The company believes it will recover a meaningful portion of the settlement amount from its insurance carriers.
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First, it’s only “95%” of pending theft reporting claims, which means the company is still somewhat tied up in litigation.
Second, while it may hurt Hertz a bit to cough up roughly a half-million per bogus theft claim, it appears it won’t hurt much. Apparently, its insurance carrier will be footing the bill, which means as long as its insurers are willing to cover costs related to horrendous inventory control practices, there’s really no deterrent in place to prevent this sort of thing (a sort of thing extremely particular to Hertz) from happening again.
Third, the CEO’s statement portrays the false arrest of people as a commonplace customer service failure, rather than the potentially deadly, life disrupting experience it is.
Fourth, the plans for “moving forward” do not address the underlying issues. Instead, the CEO touts a future full of app usage and electric vehicles, something that’s apparently meant to make us forgive its recent past full of sloppy inventory control, outsourcing of repo work to local cops, and a reputation for converting honest renters into criminals.
The statement also says nothing about the company’s unwillingness to drop bogus prosecutions of renters despite being sued multiple times.
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The CEO promised to clean this mess up, but he’s the same person who hasn’t explained why his company has allowed prosecutions over bogus theft reports to proceed even though Hertz was aware the reports were false.
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Source: Hertz Shells Out $168 Million To Settle 364 False Theft Reports | Techdirt
Robin Edgar
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