Hertz, the massive rental car company, has elected to pay a grand sum of $170 million in settlements regarding the various claims of false robbery with its customers.
In a recent press release, the company claimed that it had finalized over 364 claims which shows the resolution of 95% of all of the active claims. It is slated to pay out roughly 168 million by the end of the current year and claims that it “expects to recover a meaningful portion of the settlement amount from its insurance carriers.”
The customer base of the car company has claimed that they were pulled over, taken into custody, and subsequently put in jail and prosecuted for theft of vehicles. However, their claims state that Hertz just failed to find the cars in the wake of their turning back in. A number of customers have expressed issues with many other frustrations surrounding their rentals.
One of the many lawsuits involved a total of 47 separate customers and made the claim that the company failed to keep track of any rental extensions and incorrectly stated that customers had not issued their payments. The suit also expressed that Hertz failed to keep track of their rental vehicles and additionally failed to fix false reports that had been issued to law enforcement.
A number of the people that have sued Hertz stated that police forces held them at gunpoint due to the false claims made by Hertz.
“We are reviewing and considering each claim brought against Hertz on its individual merits,” expressed Jonathan Stern, a spokesman for Hertz, at that time. “We have begun extending settlement offers to dozens of claimants and will continue to do so on a case by case basis.”
Steven Scherr, the CEO of Hertz, took over for the company in February and issued promises to fix the problem.
“As I have said since joining Hertz earlier this year, my intention is to lead a company that puts the customer first. In resolving these claims, we are holding ourselves to that objective,” stated Scherr.
“While we will not always be perfect, the professionals at Hertz will continue to work every day to provide best-in-class service to the tens of millions of people we serve each year. Moving forward, it is our intention to reshape the future of our company through electrification, shared mobility and a great digital-first customer experience,” he continued.
This past June, Hertz handed out its first grouping of settlement offers. Before the settlements, the lawyers for the plaintiffs guessed that the total amount of money for all damages would be well over $960 million, but Hertz stated that the company was sure that such a number was exaggerated.
Hertz expressed that the settlement money would most likely not see a “material impact on its capital allocation plans for the balance of 2022 and 2023.”
