Hertz Falsely Reported Rental Vehicles Stolen, Ordered To Compensate Arrested Customers

Hertz, a rental car agency, is being forced to pay thousands of dollars for mistakenly reporting some of their cars stolen. This has led to the arrest of several paying customers.

A half-dozen Hertz customers who had their rental cars mistakenly reported stolen, despite being paying customers, were identified by an investigative reporter.

Two victims described the fallout from the arrest and also the humiliation they faced for being wrongly accused in a news investigation by 6abc.com.

Kelly Grady, one of the wrongly accused said lights flashed and sirens began to blare when she was driving her rented Chevy Yukon from Hertz. She said she thought it could be a mistake. Several Pennsylvania police officials were pulling her over.

“They were yelling over the loudspeaker for us to turn the car off, put our hands out. Turn the car off put the keys out the window," Kelly said.

She and her passengers obeyed the order and got out of the car.

"They were screaming and yelling. All of them were pointing guns literally to the back of our head," she said.

Hertz had complained that her Chevy Yukon car was stolen in 2013. She told them that it was not stolen and that she had the rental papers with her in the car.

Police called Hertz and they admitted that it was a mistake on their part. The car wasn’t stolen and though she was released, her car was seized in accordance with the State Police Policy. She got a new car from another rental company but was pulled over a month later in New Jersey.

"He said do you know why I pulled you over? I knew I was speeding. And that was it. I just remember sitting in the car thinking 'oh I hope I don't get points,” she said, 6abc.com reported.

The police pulled her out of the car, handcuffed her and arrested her for grand theft auto. Hertz had filed criminal charges saying the Chevy Yukon car, which she was no longer driving, had been stolen.

"I was in jail for 12 days. It was humiliating. It was scary. It was horrible. It was degrading. I was sexually assaulted and gang beaten," she said.

Hertz refused to drop the charges against her until a judge tossed the case. "It's been four years and it still affects me to this day," Grady said. She sued the company and was awarded $100,000 dollars by a civil jury.

Another victim, Ramanda Vanpay, was pulled over in Indiana in late 2016. "I mean I was scared. I cried. I told the officers that there's no way," she said while explaining the time spent behind bars.

She returned her rental car to an Indianapolis Hertz branch for a new one after it got a flat tire. But the company failed to update its system and reported the car stolen. The charges were eventually dismissed. “I just want everybody to be careful because it could happen to anybody," she said.

Vanpay reached a confidential settlement with the company earlier this month.

“Basically they have broken computer systems,” said civil attorney Francis Alexander while claiming Hertz had a pattern of wrongly reporting vehicles stolen in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Kentucky and Texas.