Horrible experience – ***** or Thievery

Hertz Rental Car Sandton

Horrible experience – ***** or Thievery

I hired a car from Hertz Sandton EYE in January 2021. Upon hiring the car, I took out full and comprehensive insurance (Super Waiver). A few days into the hire I was involved in an accident. A speeding car crashed into me while I was stationary. The impact was severe, and I was injured in the crash. I was then rushed by paramedics to hospital because of my injuries. As my wife arrived on scene, she was told to go with me & assured by Hertz and Tracker staff, that they would take care of the rest on scene. Surprisingly, they arrived timeously. While lying in the trauma unit at Milpark Hospital, dazed, battered & bruised (I also could not move my hands at this stage as they thought I had injuries to the left side of my body and I was undergoing multiple scans) I was notified by the nurse that my phone was constantly buzzing. I asked the nurse to please check my mobile in case it was urgent (due to Covid regulations families were not allowed inside the clinic). The nurse alarmingly said that various large amounts of money where being deducted from my card, one after the other, by a company called “HERTZ”. At this time, it was already close to evening & Herts deducted as much money as they could and had totally depleted all the money from my card. In addition to the trauma of the accident, my family and I had to deal with Hertz clearing out my credit card. After recovering from my injuries, I called Hertz to find out why they had cleared out all the money from my credit card. Which was a considerable amount. From the first moment of contact I was given the run around. I was told later that they had to cover the repairs of the accident.

Starting from the Sandton Branch, the manager a lady named Zarina claimed to suddenly not know why the money was taken from my account , but she could see that large amounts of money had been deducted “by mistake”. She then re-directed me a lady named Sasha Adams in operations (at Cape Town customer service). Sasha claimed she too knew nothing of this & would try to find out what was going on. I then called a number given to my brother at the accident scene when Hertz towed away the car (this was the number of the Jet Park depo). I spoke to a lady named Lerato (Jet Park manager) who also claimed to not know to know anything at first but eventually slipped up and mentioned that a person by the name of Yanna Diekens (Cape Town General Manager) gave the orders to take as much money off my account to cover the repairs of the vehicle and the excess.

As per the insurance policy, only an excess of R5000 was supposed to be pulled of my card in the case of an accident or damage to the vehicle. The police at this stage had not yet provided a report to conclude the accident or prove who was at fault. However, Hertz took it upon themselves and accorded that the accident was my fault and therefore pulled of all money that I had on my card. The lady I spoke to claimed that one of their “insiders” told them the accident was my fault even though the police later proved otherwise & there were witnesses who gave testimony to back this.

I tried contacting Hertz via phone and email for the next few days to no avail. I then went to the Sandton police station & laid a ***** case against the Hertz branch. The local police followed up on this and was met at the Sandton eye Hertz branch by Zarina (manager), who said to the SAPS officer that it was a “systems error” & that Hertz was working on having my moneys refunded back into my account , I was called from the branch by the SAPS officer who relayed the message to me. The money was finally refunded to me 2 weeks later after numerous emails and calls.

Up until now, Hertz has not apologized for the way I was treated, nor did they provide an explanation for the “disappearance” of my money.

In summary, if you would like to have all your money removed from your bank account by so called “Hertz computer gremlins” please use Hertz rent a car.

This has been one of the most traumatic experiences of my life & Hertz made it worse!!!!

Very disappointed