Hertz to Pay Out $168 Million After Falsely Reporting Cars Stolen, Landing Customers in Jail for Months

Imagine renting a car straight from a reputable company like Hertz, only to be pulled over by a police officer and accused of stealing the vehicle. Certainly, there has to be some sort of confusion but a couple of taps on your smartphone should be able to clear things up.

Well, for a number of Hertz customers, this was a reality and there was no clearing it up for quite some time. In fact, one customer even spent six months in jail because the rental car company claimed that his rental car was stolen even though it was completely paid for and above board.

Unfortunately for some of its customers, the rental car giant seemed to have a system issue that wouldn’t process some of its vehicles properly. Reports say that customers who either extended their rentals or swapped out their cars for new vehicles would end up having their rental reported as stolen.

The thought of having a felony like this hanging over your head and having to deal with court proceedings for something that you never did hast to be downright traumatizing. This doesn’t even bring into account those who suffered real jail time because of the system error by the company.

Below, we dive into a video from Inside Edition that takes the time to speak with some of the individuals who get to tell their stories.

Later reports from the NY Times also relay that the company will be paying out $169 million in the name of settling with 364 customers who were a part of the mistakes by Hertz that ended up having some incredibly serious implications.

With a massive payout coming, it leads us to question just how much money being mistakenly thrown in prison for six months is really worth. Something like that is certain to change someone’s life forever.