[HN Gopher] Hertz to pay $168M to customers arrested due to Hert...
___________________________________________________________________
Hertz to pay $168M to customers arrested due to Hertz's false
police reports
Author : kochb
Score : 222 points
Date : 2022-12-05 16:53 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (viewfromthewing.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (viewfromthewing.com)
| nickvanw wrote:
| These stories are awful - this wasn't just an administrative
| headache for people, they served real time and has real
| consequences.
|
| Filing a false police report is a crime, it would be nice to see
| that enforced against the company in one way or another.
| pitaj wrote:
| Personally I'd prefer customers be directly compensated than
| companies just be fined or people imprisoned.
| vkou wrote:
| We can, and should do both. Filing a false police report is a
| crime, and if your boss is telling you to do it, it's
| organized crime.
|
| "Someone told me to do it" is not an excuse for criminal
| behaviour, and neither is "We constructed a bureaucracy that
| results in us engaging in criminal behaviour".
| pavlov wrote:
| Why not both?
| ethanbond wrote:
| Why can't they be compensated directly for the financial
| damages and then put the perpetrators in prison for all the
| damages that can't be moneyed-away?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _put the perpetrators in prison for all the damages that
| can 't be moneyed-away?_
|
| Unless it was done wilfully, this just perpetuates the
| American fetish for imprisonment. They should be fired.
| They should be fined. And they should be deeply
| investigated, to confirm there wasn't intent.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| They had an explicit policy of not retracting police
| reports after finding out they were false, so yes, it was
| done willfully.
| [deleted]
| pitaj wrote:
| How does imprisoning someone help the victims in any way?
| People have some really fucked up ideas of justice.
|
| Justice should focus first on making victims whole, then on
| rehabilitating the perpetrators to prevent victimization in
| the future. Imprisonment serves neither of those goals.
| kitanata wrote:
| Retribution is part of criminal Justice. We have no
| problem "rehabiliting" companies (except that it often
| fails), and we have no problem using retribution as an
| excuse to send poor black people to jail for long
| sentences. Why do we struggle with conceptualizing
| retribution for handling corporate malfeasance? You have
| a duty as a company leader to your fellow citizens. If
| you fail, you should be held accountable. I support
| prison time for the business leaders at Hertz who caused
| this problem to occur. Lock em up!
| ipaddr wrote:
| Retribution isn't part of the system. To deter future
| crimes is and could be used.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Retribution isn't part of the system.
|
| On what authority are you making this proclamation?
| ipaddr wrote:
| Someone who reads the laws they live under.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Do we know that jail time for corporate executives does
| not serve as a deterrent?
| pitaj wrote:
| Personally, I think if you're the one advocating for
| locking people in cells, you should be the one proving
| that it's effective.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Pretty sure your gut reaction against the punishment is
| good argument that it'd deter someone from doing the
| action that yields said punishment.
|
| Meanwhile we do the equivalent of charging a $90 penalty
| for a crime that earned $100.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It doesn't have to be "effective", it just has to be more
| effective than not locking people in cells. If you're
| advocating for something else, you should be arguing its
| effectiveness over locking people in cells.
| "Effectiveness" doesn't mean anything outside of a
| comparison to other options.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > How does imprisoning someone help the victims in any
| way? People have some really fucked up ideas of justice.
|
| Sending people to prison for committing crimes is "fucked
| up"? We can quibble over which crimes deserve what
| sentence, but we shouldn't outright dismiss the
| possibility of imprisoning white collar criminals.
| pitaj wrote:
| > Sending people to prison for committing crimes is
| "fucked up"?
|
| Unironically, yes. Prison is super fucked up.
|
| Prison time barely acts as a deterrent. It doesn't reform
| criminals. It has high costs for taxpayers.
|
| American prisons are entirely inhumane. Even heard of
| prison rape? Even violent criminals shouldn't have to
| endure what goes down in there. With modern technology,
| house arrest is far better.
|
| Even for extremely violent criminals who are a existent
| danger, prison is not right. They should be in mental
| hospitals.
| Lanolderen wrote:
| I'll never understand how people in the US believe their
| prisons are "entirely inhumane". I see it surprisingly
| often. Every time I've seen a video about an US prison
| they understandably don't seem like nice places to be at
| but definitely liveable albeit boring.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| There are so many reasons, like rampant rape, the near
| requirement in some prisons to join a gang to not get
| beaten up, $10 for a package of ramen in the shop,
| routine abuse of things like "solitary" by guards to harm
| people for fun, $3 a minute to call your family, and
| horrific situations where the warden is made responsible
| for planning food, and also given the rule that whatever
| they don't spend of the meal budget they get to
| personally keep, which results in inmates eating a slice
| of american cheese on two slices of bread twice a day for
| most days.
|
| The punishment of prison should be entirely limited to
| losing your independence and the dignity that comes with
| it. It should literally be like childhood "time out".
| These are still human beings and we owe it to them to
| treat them like people, they just need to be silo'd off
| from society for a bit sometimes.
| luckylion wrote:
| > Prison time barely acts as a deterrent.
|
| What? Why aren't career criminals more brazen in their
| acts, if not for fear of punishment (which means:
| prison)?
|
| I totally get the point that you can't just increase the
| prison sentence and expect the deterrence to scale, but
| suggesting that punishment "barely acts as a deterrent"
| sounds insane, _especially_ when we 're talking about
| calculating criminals like Hertz executives. It's not
| like they have the uncontrollable urge to make false
| police reports because of some weird psychological
| defect.
| xdennis wrote:
| The primary reason to lock people up is punishment. It's
| crime and punishment, not crime and deterrence, or crime
| and reform, or crime and efficient use of taxpayers'
| money.
|
| Those are all nice-to-haves, but justice is an equal
| exchange of bad things done by you to bad things done to
| you.
| pitaj wrote:
| I disagree. Punishment is not justice.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Never? What if it keeps a criminal from committing future
| crimes?
| itake wrote:
| > Justice should focus first on making victims whole,
| then on rehabilitating the perpetrators to prevent
| victimization in the future. Imprisonment serves neither
| of those goals.
|
| The perpetrators are the employees at Hertz that made the
| decision. Issuing a fine to the company does not
| rehabilitate or penalize the decision makers.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _How does imprisoning someone help the victims in any
| way? People have some really fucked up ideas of justice._
|
| I see where you're coming from in general, but the
| standard for non corporate executives is imprisonment.
| Even if it's a "fucked up idea", it's the status quo.
|
| Arguing against imprisonment in the context of corporate
| criminals doesn't do anything to change that status quo.
| Rather it just helps perpetuate the dual class justice
| system where the upper class gets respect and treated
| like humans while the faceless lower class gets draconian
| sentences to be "tough on crime".
| rtepopbe wrote:
| It depends a lot on what kind of crime you're dealing
| with.
|
| This isn't a matter of teaching the executives of Hertz
| that no, they don't need to commit crimes to survive, and
| how to access alternative means of survival, and all
| that.
|
| They did this because they were greedy, lazy, and they
| knew they wouldn't suffer much for it. When you're
| dealing with white-collar sorts of crimes like this,
| deterrence is a thing.
| pitaj wrote:
| Prison is not the right fit. If you want deterrence, make
| them pay directly towards the victims. Put them on house
| arrest. Put them on probation. Ban them from holding a
| managerial or executive role.
|
| There are plenty of alternatives that don't involve
| locking people in cells - and that are probably more
| effective a deterrent.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Different types of prisons exist. Prison reform should be
| the next big battle.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Clearly you did not read the story, insurance is covering
| the costs, and the CEO does not have a care in the world
|
| I am sorry if your false report causes someone to go to
| jail, then you need to go to jail as well
| eweise wrote:
| Prison would be an extremely effective deterrent for
| executives. Fines don't scare them at all.
| gpvos wrote:
| Prison is a great deterrence, if targeted at the right
| people, in this case the executives.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I've seen the difference between "requirements that will
| be expensive to violate" and "requirements that will have
| the CEO go to jail personally".
|
| Guess which ones get taken a lot more seriously.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| I can assure if one executive served even 1 day in Jail,
| Hertz would not have a false police report for years or
| decades
| kabdib wrote:
| Putting an executive in jail because they wrongly and
| deliberately caused a customer to be jailed seems pretty
| reasonable.
|
| What else do you do, make them pay a fine that's just a
| rounding error on their checking account? Having them
| wear orange instead of pinstripes for a similar number of
| days will get their full, undivided attention.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > How does imprisoning someone help the victims in any
| way?
|
| It doesn't help past victims, it helps future victims.
| Turns out, people do things that hurt other people if it
| will 1) benefit them and has 2) never resulted in any
| consequences.
|
| > People have some really fucked up ideas of justice.
|
| That people who have harmed other people face
| imprisonment is not one of them.
|
| > rehabilitating the perpetrators to prevent
| victimization in the future.
|
| Will this be done with a magic wand?
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| a) don't underestimate the importance of feeling like
| having received justice
|
| b) deterrence is important, especially in cases like
| this: if there are consequences for willfully ignoring
| something that causes severe harm to others, it's less
| likely to be willfully ignored in the future. If you can
| expect to only have to make others whole (if caught),
| it's a lot easier to just not care. And legal
| compensation rarely actually makes people whole.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| There are several reasons why prison sentences make sense
| in this scenario.
|
| Or phrased differently: without prison sentences the
| whole situation becomes a pure numbers game: did they get
| more money out of the false reports/not fixing the bugs
| causing this misbehavior then they now have to pay in
| damages.
|
| These kinds of crimes will continue to become the
| baseline if there are no real consequences to the people
| actually being responsible for the deeds (this includes
| the CEO).
| singleshot_ wrote:
| There are four reasons to incarcerate, as near as I can
| tell:
|
| Retribution: punish the offender. In the state of nature,
| if someone offended against you, you could hurt or kill
| them. Now, the state has a sanitized responsibility to
| fill that role.
|
| Rehabilitation: give the offender time to think about and
| learn from his offense.
|
| Isolation: remove the person from society for a while so
| that if rehabilitation fails, society is still relieved
| from having to deal with the offender's misbehavior for a
| time.
|
| Disincentivization: give others an idea of what would
| happen if they were caught doing a similar offense.
|
| None of these overlap with "making the victim whole,"
| which is probably why there is a whole separate system of
| civil law for that which has nothing to do with
| punishment (excluding, of course, exemplary damages).
|
| If you think there is no excuse for incarceration, then
| I'm curious how you'd propose handling the problems of
| sanitized retribution, isolation, and disincentive for
| crime. It seems pretty obvious (to me) that the world
| would be pretty gnarly if unrehabilitated criminals
| lurked among us, free to perpetrate crimes until an angry
| victim killed them just because they made a business
| decision that their crimes outweighed the civil penalty,
| and would be criminals saw this behavior and got the idea
| that it would be good for them to emulate the successful,
| unpunished offenders.
|
| That said, a focus on rehabilitation for those who are
| deemed possible to rehabilitate seems reasonable to me.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| Well in this case, it would prevent the current
| executives who pursued bad policy from being executives
| at a company pushing short sighted bad policy that has
| real world consequences on customers. And when they get
| out, maybe they learned a lesson.
| pitaj wrote:
| So would sentencing them to probation where being a
| company executive is prohibited.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Do you feel the same way about rape or murder as you do
| about direct abuse of the justice system by the powerful
| against the weak?
| FpUser wrote:
| I'd settle for this: compensate people losses, pay punitive
| damages and charge owners with criminal fraud. Also instead
| of blindly arresting people on a corporate whim the police
| must require proof of actual stealing. Even if car is
| actually not returned on time it does not constitute theft.
| Renter should be notified first and given opportunity to
| answer. The whole thing is fucking perversion of justice in
| favor of corporation thanks to legalized bribe system /
| lobbying.
| DerekL wrote:
| I agree. "Someone stole my car" is different from "I lent
| someone my car and they didn't bring it back when they said
| they would." Require the rental company to sue the customer
| and prove to a court that the car wasn't returned.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| But... intent - Hertz had no intent to have customers locked up
| or threatened by out-of-control cops, so it's all good. When it
| comes to life-and-limb matters like this intent really
| shouldn't matter because it's nothing more than a get-out-of-
| jail card for executives who couldn't care less about the
| impact of their policies.
|
| No one important at Wells-Fargo went to jail either - they set
| policies which were expected to have certain outcomes, but top
| brass could not have possibly have foreseen the outcomes. I'm
| sick of plausible deniability, especially when it isn't even
| plausible any longer, the complaints go back years.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| intent is one thing, neglect is another
| ajross wrote:
| It is for the crime that you're discussing. Filing a false
| police report is criminal precisely because of intent.
| Needless to say, if you have a good faith belief that you
| report to the police[1], you should be able to do so
| without fear of prosecution if you're wrong!
|
| [1] And whether people like it or not, Hertz clearly
| thought this system worked at the time they reported the
| "stolen" cars; just like software developers think their
| buggy code works until the user reports or crash telemetry
| come back.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| The key part of the law is "know or SHOULD HAVE KNOWN"
|
| They can not claim poor record keeping and ignorance as
| an excuse for filing false reports, they SHOULD HAVE
| KNOWN, which is part of the intent standard in most
| jurisdictions
|
| 1, 2, even 10 reports ok... they suck. 100's of false
| reports, that is beyond simple clerical error it would
| not take much to convince a jury that intent is there.
| i.e they internally setup the process that lead to false
| reports being filed likely as a say to cut costs
| ajross wrote:
| That seems to be assuming facts not in evidence, though.
| Did Hertz decisionmakers continue operating the system
| after having been notified it was giving false positives?
| I tend to agree that sounds like criminal negligence. But
| nothing seems to be alleging that anywhere.
|
| Flipping it around: would you feel comfortable calling
| the police to report that criminal negligence? Or would
| you be worried about getting in trouble for a false
| report?
|
| The system is tilted towards non-prosecution, and for
| some very good reasons. No one's going to jail here.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| If I was a victim absolutely I would be pursuing that
| with local prosecutors
|
| >The system is tilted towards non-prosecution, and for
| some very good reasons. No one's going to jail here.
|
| yes for high profile corporate execs it is, if some
| Teenager reported his car stolen but then found out a
| friend borrowed it, not only would the teen reporting the
| crime go to jail, but the teen that borrowed it likely
| would still be prosecuted for theft at the same time
|
| Kinda like "resisting arrest" charge that is still valid
| even when there is no underlying crime to resist arrest
| from....
|
| Your idea of " system is tilted towards non-prosecution"
| only exisit for one socio-economic class of citizens
| pessimizer wrote:
| It doesn't pass any smell test for filing false police
| reports hundreds of times to be a series of hundreds of
| mistakes.
| ajross wrote:
| You're saying that Hertz deliberately targetted these
| people for some reason? No, that's ridiculous. _Clearly_
| this was a mistake. No one thinks Hertz was deliberately
| trying to punish its own customers. They just messed up
| and rolled out a feature with a buggy fraud detector.
| randcraw wrote:
| Or depraved indifference.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Intent always matters. And it is absolutely plausible that a
| rental car could be marked stolen through a bureaucratic
| error. If fact, in this case, it's more than plausible. It's
| pretty much inconceivable that a rental car company would
| intend to just say "fuck you in particular" to a few
| customers and try to put them in jail.
|
| Those customers should obviously get their judgment money,
| and Hertz should pay a heavy price (maybe even such a heavy
| price that they go bankrupt), but no one should go to jail
| for filing a false police report unless they intended to
| mislead the police.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| "A rental car company" didn't do anything. Humans working
| at a rental car company did.
|
| Maybe it _was_ a "bureaucratic error" that fraudulently
| reported the cars as stolen. That bureaucracy didn't
| spontaneously emerge from dust. Humans built it.
|
| Why should humans not face legal repercussions for the
| havoc they've wreaked on their victims' lives?
| xwolfi wrote:
| Because the havoc they ve wreaked could have been
| avoided, if only the police itself, a public service,
| behaved appropriately.
|
| Declaring a car stolen by mistake shouldnt be the end of
| the world. One day someone with the same name as me
| committed an offense and I was wrongly given to the
| police of my country, and it took 5 minutes to clear me
| and nothing happened.
| shkkmo wrote:
| It Hertz didn't intend to ruin people's lives, they would
| withdraw the police reports when confronted with their
| mistakes. Instead, the company prohibits that because:
|
| > A Hertz spokesperson told the Philadelphia Inquirer in
| 2020 that the company has no "mechanism" to withdraw
| reports and does not do so because "In the rare instances
| this happens, if you report a crime, and you later say it
| didn't happen, then law enforcement tends not to believe
| you if you retract it or say you were mistaken," the
| spokesperson said. "Hertz's continued good relationship
| with law enforcement is important." [0]
|
| It seems like there is plenty of intent there. The intent
| to continue lieing to police to protect Hertz's
| reputation at severe cost to Hertz's victims.
|
| [0]
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2022/04/11/hertz-
| stolen...
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Yes, there should be legal consequences for the officers
| involved as well. Blame is not zero sum.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > I was wrongly given to the police of my country, and it
| took 5 minutes to clear me and nothing happened.
|
| That's great that worked well for you, but in America, I
| don't have enough faith in cops for that to work out.
|
| The prevailing attitude is that cops have to be "tough on
| crime", and if some false positives end up happening and
| an innocent person goes to jail for a few days until
| their name gets cleared, that's fine. In the mean time,
| they'll try to find SOMETHING to charge them with.
|
| Land of the free, indeed.
| z3c0 wrote:
| What you're describing is "culpability" and it most
| certainly does get considered separately from intent (mea
| culpa vs mens rea). Not knowing whether or not you were
| within the boundaries of the law is only an excuse when you
| reasonably couldn't have ever known, with no opportunity
| for due diligence. Bureaucracy is not ever going to be a
| legitimate excuse for not knowing if you were acting within
| the law, because chances are that you could have verified
| so with any amount of effort.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| That's an assertion of belief, not a statement of fact.
| It's plainly visible that current policies have led to a
| rash of false police reports (the 168 MUSD judgement is
| more than sufficient proof), and there is no need why
| society should put up with the carelessness of Hertz. The
| problem is pervasive enough to go beyond isolated cases
| (after all they were slapped with an 8-digit civil fine).
| Civil law deals with damages to individuals, and criminal
| law sets expectations for society to prevent trouble.
| Hertz's incompetence has reached criminal levels, and
| anyone who rolls out intent as a defense needs to examine
| himself it that's desirable.
|
| (Speeders, drunk drivers and violently abusive parents
| rarely intend to kill people but we still have laws on the
| books to treat such cases adequately.)
| shkkmo wrote:
| > the 168 MUSD judgement is more than sufficient proof
|
| This is a settlement, not a judgement.
| [deleted]
| halpmeh wrote:
| People should also be punished for gross negligence. Hertz
| filed hundreds of false police reports. After the first
| few, they should have updated their system. The fact that
| they allowed the continual filing of false police reports
| is a willful disregard for the safety of others.
| jimmydddd wrote:
| Agreed. The company is like yeah, we make some minor
| adminstrative mistakes. But the story says a woman spent 30
| days in jail? Picture yourself in her shoes.
| m3047 wrote:
| This. https://viewfromthewing.com/hertz-has-the-most-insane-
| reason...
| fencepost wrote:
| Atlanta Black Star has a nice writeup including some of the more
| egregious examples. One of the criminal cases didn't even get
| dismissed despite public statements that it would be, apparently
| it was finally dismissed when it went to trial in October.
|
| https://atlantablackstar.com/2022/12/04/hertz-false-stolen-c...
| thelastgallon wrote:
| From the article:
|
| In its release, Hertz says they believe "a meaningful portion of
| the settlement" will be covered by insurance so 'no big deal' to
| them what they did to customers, at least for investors.
| Meanwhile their CEO shrugs in an included statement saying they
| "will not always be perfect."
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| I don't think insurance should apply in criminal behavior.
| xaerise wrote:
| i hope the insurance company takes a look in the documents and
| tells Hertz to go f** themselfs...
|
| No way that the insurance company would cover negliance and
| fraud...
| jeffbee wrote:
| Every business is insured against claims of negligence. It is
| totally standard and I imagine universal that large
| businesses are so covered.
| phonon wrote:
| Many business policies don't cover gross
| negligence/punitive and exemplary damages.
| panny wrote:
| >an average of just over $460,000 per customer.
|
| Says a lot about law enforcement practices when being wrongly
| accused by them is considered so terrible, that compensation is
| 10 years of average income in the country.
| tristor wrote:
| Issues like this is why I now have high status with
| Enterprise/National and I will never again use Hertz. I don't
| care how much I get discounted, Hertz is not worth dealing with.
| Their entire business seems to be constructed on financial
| trickery and malfeasance with a side effect of sometimes renting
| a car to someone. They should have been fully liquidated during
| their earlier bankruptcy rather than allowed to continue
| operating, and I look forward to the day their corporate charter
| is revoked.
|
| I travel a LOT, and there are very few businesses in that
| industry I hate, Hertz is one of them. My only times using Hertz
| have all ended in disaster.
| ergocoder wrote:
| Paying fine doesn't seem enough.
|
| Someone needs to go to jail.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Maybe there's a way to trick them into renting a Hertz car...
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| I hate this ridiculously unfair double standard. If someone
| costs a company money, we ruin their life. If a company ruins
| someone's life, we charge the company money.
|
| If a cashier at a fast food restaurant takes $30 from the
| register, they go to jail. If a company steals millions from
| their workers paychecks, we slap them with a tiny fine.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Until we can get money out of politics nothing will change.
| avgDev wrote:
| In my opinion, which may be unpopular, a CEO who earns many
| times more than a regular employee should ensure that there
| are policies in place that prevent a regular employee or the
| "system" ruining a customers life. They should be held
| individually responsible if it can be proved in court that
| they ignored the issues.
| nickff wrote:
| Should the president of the USA be held responsible for
| some department of the US government ruining a citizen's
| life (which happens all the time)? What about a state
| governor, should they be responsible for all the state's
| agencies? How about a mayor whose police force or other
| department acts poorly?
| tcmart14 wrote:
| Yes and no. Responsibility should be held accountable to
| the level that it should. Would I paint a broad brush and
| say specifically the CEO? No. Sometimes the really bad
| decision happens at a departmental level or maybe it is
| the CTO and it never got to the CEO, the accountability
| needs to be there. When it is because of the CEO, then
| yes. The same rather happens in government. Government
| employees loose their job or can be removed from
| positions. In some cases, those government employees have
| gone to jail.
|
| The only reason why we haven't had a president go to jail
| for crimes committed, at least for one congress has
| pursued is that the Presidents who were for sure to be
| removed (Nixon), resigned and was pardoned.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| If the president of the United States is knowingly making
| a profit from the actions of a government employee and
| they do not interfer, then yes they should go to jail.
| The line is murkier when someone is just doing a bad job,
| but if someone is knowingly making money from illegal
| behavior they can easily put a stop to they should go to
| prison.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| > If the president of the United States is knowingly
| making a profit from the actions of a government employee
| and they do not interfer, then yes they should go to
| jail.
|
| This would be a great argument for abolishing the IRS.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| No it isn't. Taxes don't go into the president's pocket.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| I can't tell if this is sarcasm, so I will answer without
| sarcasm:
|
| Yes, they should be held responsible (for some value of
| "responsible"). It is ultimately their responsibility,
| which goes along with the power they wield. It's what
| they signed up for. And this doesn't absolve the people
| who directly caused the issue. You want leadership to
| focus on ensuring that their delegates are competent and
| not corrupt.
|
| There are some shades of gray here, of course. In the US,
| these leadership positions don't have absolute power. It
| isn't necessarily their *fault*. But it is absolutely
| their *responsibility*.
| avgDev wrote:
| Of course they should. If a cop makes a dumb move and the
| city gets sued then mayor should not be held accountable.
| However, if the mayor ignores police corruption, then I
| would love them to serve a prison sentence. They have the
| power, they must use it.
|
| President should be responsible for things he can change,
| in US a president doesn't really have power to change
| everything as there are other parts of the government
| which are involved in decision making.
|
| Any person in a position of power who can CHANGE policies
| or remove people and doesn't do so, which leads to
| further incidents and corruption that affect the
| population should be held accountable.
|
| This will never happen, as powerful people don't want
| this.
| geodel wrote:
| What is double standard? Who do you want to put in jail for
| this: front line employee? legal guy? finance guy? CEO? or
| all of them? Or is it just like "Some one need to go to jail,
| I just don't know or care who that will be and I do not have
| time for that"
|
| So as per example your example the guy who filed the report
| be sent to jail even though he was following company policy,
| though in this case made a mistake. How it compares to cash
| register guy who was clearly stealing.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| They continued the practice after it was reported in the
| newspaper. It's reasonable to assume senior mgmt discussed
| major negative coverage of their company. That means the
| practice continued after senior mgmt was aware of it. That
| makes it their responsibility.
|
| What should they have done instead? First, inform every
| employee of a new temporary policy that any report to the
| police about a customer purely about the theft of a car the
| customer had rented now has to be approved by a senior
| lawyer. Second, figure out the scope of the problem and how
| to fix it. Third, replace that unpleasant temporary policy
| with something more tailored once you understand what went
| wrong.
| Sakos wrote:
| There's likely a paper trail of various people talking
| about this policy and what to do about it. Based on that,
| directly fine or imprison the people responsible for
| decisions about the policy that lead to people being
| falsely imprisoned. It's really not that hard.
|
| It's ridiculous that corporations can always absolve
| themselves and their executives of responsibility because
| "well, who would we punish" or equally spurious arguments.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| How about the person responsible for instituting this
| policy along with anyone who approved it?
| FpUser wrote:
| >"Who do you want to put in jail for this" - persons who
| allowed to put people in jail based on unconfirmed report.
| If I as a person go and complain to police that corporation
| stole money from me they would not just go and arrest the
| board / CEO.
| ccleve wrote:
| Precisely. Nothing happens until the individuals responsible
| pay a penalty. If an exec knowingly, or through negligence,
| causes a person to be arrested, that person needs to pay up
| _personally_. If they did it to protect their own position,
| then jail time is appropriate. Falsely reporting a crime is a
| crime.
| bombcar wrote:
| Qualified immunity makes _some_ sort of sense for actual
| cops, perhaps, but makes absolutely ZERO sense for a
| corporation and its executives.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Just to be clear, corporations and executives do not get
| qualified immunity. They just get to pay with someone
| else's money (insurance, or shareholders) instead of their
| own.
|
| I don't know why judges don't insist on jail time for
| someone in these situations. It might not make sense for a
| mistake that happened once, but after they knew it was
| happening and didn't fix their systems, the behavior was
| knowingly reckless.
| bombcar wrote:
| They get an effective form of "qualified immunity" even
| if it's not codified.
|
| Any individual doing what Hertz is doing would be facing
| prison time.
| adql wrote:
| Should be on the CEO's head unless they can prove it was
| someone's malicious action without their knowledge. At
| least that would partially exclude the ridiculous
| compensation
| bena wrote:
| Dissolution of the company's charter.
|
| You fuck up someone's life bad enough and often enough, you
| just don't get to be a company anymore.
| hedora wrote:
| Once we rented a vehicle from them with a flat tire. Also, it had
| been electronically limited so that it could not drive at freeway
| speeds.
|
| When I called customer support to deal with the issue, they hung
| up on me three times. (Typical conversation:
|
| - Sit on hold for 15-45 minutes
|
| - Hello, can I have your rental number?
|
| - 12345-XYZ
|
| - <click>
|
| I told the fourth person I'd be issuing a chargeback and dumping
| the vehicle in front of the locked gate of their parking lot if
| they also hung up. They directed us to a location that couldn't
| accept the vehicle.
|
| We ended up paying for one day rental or something, but at least
| I didn't go to jail.
|
| As other commenters said, multiple people (probably management,
| execs) at Hertz should be serving time in federal prison.
| mjhay wrote:
| Once I rented a Hertz car. A couple hundred miles from where I
| picked it up, the transmission died. I could only drive in
| first gear. After spending over an hour trying to get through,
| the person on the phone actually tried to get me to drive it
| back - 200 miles, in first gear, on freeways, at my expense.
|
| I finally got it towed because I said I'd just be forced to
| abandon it.
| aj7 wrote:
| Really? Hertz HAS $168M?
| aktuel wrote:
| The US is capitalism-porn come true.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| > 364 claims
|
| while this is indeed 364 too many, this number is still
| absolutely tiny. there is going to be lots of confirmation bias
| in this thread -- of bad interactions. whereas the very very
| large majority of customers are probably happy with hertz. i
| always have been.
|
| don't get me wrong, someone at hertz should go to jail for this.
| but your chances of being one of those 364 seems absolutely tiny
| doesn't it? they must do a billion rentals a year.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| I travel quite a bit for both business and personal reasons.
|
| This means I'm driving a rental car for 100+ days a year.
|
| I've tried all the major rental brands and Hertz is a terrible
| experience even when they're not calling the police on you by
| mistake. Their systems don't work quite right, there's a bunch of
| hidden fees, and their customer service is lacking at best.
|
| I swear by Enterprise and purchasing the extra insurance to cover
| any damages. They've done right by me as a customer across many
| different cities and locations.
|
| I know that some people are always going to just buy whatever is
| the cheapest or whatever deal gets them the most points with
| credit card or whatever. And that seems to be where Hertz makes
| their money.
|
| But for anyone willing to pay a little more for a good experience
| and less stress Enterprise is my recommendation.
| lrem wrote:
| Is that a US thing? I've been using both in Europe and Hertz
| seemed better, but also more expensive.
| Insanity wrote:
| I will +1 enterprise. Consistently had good customer experience
| with them.
| mi100hael wrote:
| +2, and National which is owned by Enterprise and allows you
| to just walk into the garage, get in a car, and drive out.
| It's the most painless process in the industry.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| Isn't that also exactly the Hertz experience? Has been for
| me. Of course it isn't literally drive out. Most airports
| you do have to stop at an exit booth and show your ID.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Enterprise, small rental office near home--took them an
| hour to locate the plates for the car after I complained
| about and refused to accept a car with expired temporary
| tags.
| LanceH wrote:
| The last 3 years I've had occasion to use Budget on an "I need
| a rental now" basis.
|
| I've had a good experience because they just don't seem to
| care. That is, the employees working there just check in/out,
| sign the paperwork, that's it. I haven't had to spend a lot of
| time turning down questionable options and upgrades. There
| haven't been turn-in inspections where they claim that tiny
| scratch on the car with 160k miles is my fault.
|
| They just seem to get me checked in so they can get back to
| their phone. It's not a premium experience by any means, but
| it's simple.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| FWIW I use Avis (same company, higher price tier) and also
| have zero of those kind of issues.
| jamies wrote:
| I have only rented with Hertz for about 20 years, and finally
| gave about after almost several bad experiences. Tried
| Enterprise on my first trip last week and was shocked at how
| much better it is.
| geoelectric wrote:
| Interestingly, I had Enterprise squarely in my head as the
| budget option compared to Hertz, who I always had down as the
| "pricey but better service" option (at least if you exercised
| the Gold program, etc.)
|
| Not sure if I'm strictly a victim of effective marketing, or if
| they flipped places in the last however many years, or what,
| but it's interesting to see your post and the replies that
| imply I've got it backwards.
| iso1631 wrote:
| We have an Enterprise deal with work so we get very good rates,
| especially when they drop a car off and pick up at my home or
| office
|
| However I was in one a few months ago and got a puncture on a
| dual carriageway. By the time I pulled over to a safe location
| the tyre was shredded. No problem, go into the boot to get the
| spare wheel out and I'll deal with it later.
|
| There was no spare wheel. Just some little device which I
| assume is supposed to somehow re-inflate the tyre and seal any
| small holes for a small amount of time. Clearly not going to
| work when the side wall is shredded from driving the best part
| of a mile on it.
|
| Too 6 hours for a tow-truck to arrive, pick me up, take me to a
| local garage, and change the tyre. That cost my employer far
| more than the cost of a spare wheel -- not to mention the cost
| of the tow itself being about the same price as the wheel +
| tyre.
|
| Probably not a slight on Enterprise, as I'm sure it's the same
| with other hire companies (I hired from Sixt on holiday and it
| was the same). Why don't cars come with spare wheels any more?
| Are people really that incompetent they can't change one?
| Surely punctures as as common now as they were 20 years ago.
| kshacker wrote:
| I was shopping for a car/SUV recently and was given the story
| about tire technology changing and tires being so good they
| never fail :) wish I could remember the precise words but
| good discussion since I never bought the car due to supply
| chain issues and now I will remember to ask the details.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Are people really that incompetent they can't change one?
|
| I suspect they don't want people stealing/replacing spares in
| rentals with worn ones[0]. The mere possibility of this adds
| 1 more thing that has to be inspected and kept track of.
|
| 0. I once managed to run down the battery on a U-Haul by
| keeping the emergency blinkers on(!). I didn't have jumper
| cables and thought I'd hot-swap it with the one on my car to
| get it charged: which is how I discovered that batteries in
| U-Hauls cannot be easily removed. I ended up getting a tow
| truck to jump-start the U-Haul many hours later.
| throw8383833jj wrote:
| I once chose hertz because it was cheapest and I regretted it!
| They didn't specify how much the baby seat was going to be and
| it end up being like 20$ extra! they should have mentioned how
| much the baby seat costs on the checkout page. and then when i
| complained about it, they just wanted to blame the 3rd party
| checkout processor. Hertz, never again!
|
| In life, i've learned, that if an optional extra price isn't
| listed for that option, don't select it. and if you really need
| that option and the price isn't there, just hit the back button
| and don't use that service ever again.
| jimmydddd wrote:
| re: "because it was the cheapest" I use Budget and I haven't
| had any problems. However, I always thought Hertz and Avis
| were the expensive premium rental places. So I learned
| something today.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| Avis is at least. They are the same company that owns
| Budget, but on the more premium price tier.
| esalman wrote:
| I actually always book through Costco membership. Even then I
| try to book from Enterprise or budget and avoid Hertz.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Let's compare this to China where 2 executives were sentenced to
| death (and others to life sentences) for their role in selling
| tainted formula (resulting in infant deaths) and concealing it
| [1] or Jack Ma (of Alibaba) who just disappeared for 3 months
| [2].
|
| It should be a legal requirement that a human review and sign off
| on any complaint about a stolen car to police. That personal (and
| company) should be held criminally liable for making false police
| reports in addition to any civil damages (including significant
| punitive damages) they should pay.
|
| [1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna28787126
|
| [2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56448688
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Let's maybe not copycat a country that abducts people who make
| gentle criticism of it's flawed banking system.
| lostmsu wrote:
| One should be disputing individual policies. Policies are not
| all-or-nothing deals.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Are you really using China as an example of how this is handled
| well? From your own source:
|
| >Ahead of this, Ma addressed an assembly of high-profile
| figures with a controversial speech that criticised the Chinese
| financial system. He was not seen in public again until late
| January. In the interim, there were rumours that he might have
| been placed under house arrest or otherwise detained. Some even
| questioned if he was still alive.
| jmyeet wrote:
| The lesson I would like people to take from China is that
| government is the only thing that can rein in corporate
| power. This is one reason (of many) why I either laugh or
| just roll my eyes at libertarians.
|
| Obviously there are aspects of China you don't want to
| emulate (eg the ethnic cleansing).
| fallingknife wrote:
| What does anything in this thread have to do with
| "corporate power?" It's the cops who put these people in
| jail and you have exactly the same power as Hertz to file
| false police reports.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Trading a set of small villains which sometimes get
| (insufficiently) punished for one super-powerful supervillain
| which never gets punished for anything doesn't look like a good
| deal to me. Yes, Darth Vader used to choke his underlings who
| misbehaved, it doesn't exactly make him a good guy.
| jmyeet wrote:
| The "set of small villains" is in fact basically every CEO
| and major shareholder. Corporate power is almost completely
| unchecked and both parties are completely owned by these
| corporations.
|
| $1000 insulin only exists because the government has been
| bought and paid for to create a legal monopoly. This is state
| violence against people who need life-saving medication.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| We still haven't sent either Trump or Clinton (either) to
| jail. How do we not already have the supervillain system?
| Some of Trump's admin genuinely believe that the president
| should be above the law, and other's in the republican party
| agree
| steve76 wrote:
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > pending 30 days in jail, where she suffered a miscarriage.
|
| Ok this is horrific, and Hertz should be ashamed of their
| behavior. Now, we dont have any proof the arrest or jail time
| caused the miscarriage, but to the extent we believe it did, can
| we also talk for a minute about why our executive branch/jail
| system is so hard on people (of both sexes btw) such that
| physiological distress occurs such as miscarriages or suicides?
|
| It's completely unnecessary, I'd dare say detrimental, to getting
| rehabilitated.
| lajosbacs wrote:
| On one hand, I admire the US system where a class lawsuit can
| punish even the largest corporations, like here.
|
| On the other hand, I am terrified to travel there fearing
| something like this will happen and I will rot in jail for some
| Kafkaesque mistake.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Because the police for a hundred years have cultivated a
| culture of horrific abuse of power, and if you bring it up,
| half the country calls you a radical.
|
| Some people, whether they notice or not, prefer a world where
| "others" suffer.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > prefer a world where "others" suffer.
|
| I did notice this aspect of American mentality. Somehow the
| culture here really seems to feel that retributive justice is
| justice served.
| jboy55 wrote:
| A long time ago I was in a relationship where my SO took my car
| and refused to give it back. I called the police to report it
| stolen and they said that since I had lent the car to her in the
| past, this was a case of someone not abiding by an agreement, and
| it was a civil matter and I would need to retrieve the car or a
| PI would. This was California, so other states probably have
| different laws, but I would have to think for a major corporation
| this should be in civil court first.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| The police gave you bad information.
|
| California law does not have any sort of "prior use" exception
| to theft laws. Letting someone use a car in the past does not
| give them cart blanche to borrow it again without permission in
| the future.
|
| You ex stole your car. If they police did not do anything, the
| proper response would be to take your complaint of inaction to
| Internal Affairs or your local elected representative. And then
| to take the car back yourself, or to hire a PI to retrieve the
| car or a lawyer to issue a demand letter for the return of the
| car.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| If you know where your stolen property is your best way to
| get it back is to let the police know you're on your way to
| get it back. They tend to react to that because while they
| DGAF about stolen property they really don't like what it
| would look like if "serious violence" ensued from them not
| acting.
| FateOfNations wrote:
| California even has a special "taken without consent" (i.e.
| joyriding) law for cars where you don't even have to prove
| the "permanently deprive" part that proving theft normally
| entails.
| g_sch wrote:
| I think your story carries an unspoken assumption that the
| police understood and/or cared about the law. I wouldn't be too
| sure that's the case.
| snapcaster wrote:
| This is so awful it's hard to even believe. It does feel like
| there needs to be some threat of a company being completely
| dissolved in cases like this or Equifax or other problems this
| big that the organization has shown no interest in stopping
| annexrichmond wrote:
| at what point is the punishment worse than the crime, such as
| if hundreds or thousands of people lose their job?
| infamouscow wrote:
| Consequentialist arguments aren't very good for punishing
| actors for bad behavior. For example, we don't let murders
| free just because the lives of their children are forever
| impacted if the murder goes to prison.
| pessimizer wrote:
| This is dumb. If Hertz closes down, other car rental
| companies will take up the demand, and Hertz employees will
| apply for jobs at those companies.
|
| edit: and if people aren't punished at Hertz, those other car
| rental companies will see that the money to be made through
| bad behavior more than makes up for the costs if caught.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Amount of people employed should not factor in to decisions
| like this. Otherwise the government should prevent Amazon
| from laying off 20,000 if that's all that matters.
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