In Reply to: The US is aiding Ukraine with inflation? posted by mh on August 15, 2025 at 09:21:32
Hertz is installing these new “tunnels” in their busiest airports, with plans to expand them everywhere. These tunnels scan the car and, according to all these articles, come up with imaginary damage to bill you for.
Here’s what happens: They’ll tell you to pay a discounted rate for the damage claim right now. If you don’t, they’ll threaten to come after you and tack on even more fees.
Hertz doesn’t have humans manually check the claims that their system flags. One story I heard involved someone who had video-recorded their car, but the company ignored the evidence. The most incredible story was where Hertz sent someone a timestamp of the damage that was from before their rental even started!
This is the problem when you let technology do everything without any human oversight. There is a large European rental company that’s starting to use similar technology, but they reportedly have a human review every single claim before sending it to a customer.
Hertz, on the other hand, is using this as a money-making machine. You could easily be held responsible for damage you didn’t cause — or for phantom damage, like a shadow on the car that the AI system mistakenly identifies as a scratch.