The first rule of fighting a corporate damage claim is not to panic when the bill arrives.
That’s easier said than done when the bill is for nearly $10,000.
During our annual February snow goose hunting trip, my husband had rented a Chevy Tahoe from Hertz in Nashville and returned it at the Memphis airport a couple days later.
It was a pretty uneventful rental, aside from my husband angrily peeling out of the fourth gas station we stopped at in a row where the pumps didn’t work. Yet three months later, we received an email from Hertz demanding we pay them $9,368.15 for damages allegedly caused during the rental period.
Hertz wanted to know whether we planned to file with our insurance, use credit card benefits, or pay them directly.
There was one problem: we did not damage the car.
As a female driver, I am no stranger to backing into a pole or tapping a bumper. But I definitely would have noticed if we had scraped the entire side of the SUV like Hertz claimed we did.
Along with the payment demand, Hertz sent us a 74-page document outlining their evidence that we were the culprits.
I was determined not to let this injustice stand, so I put on my journalist cap and started digging.
A few discrepancies immediately stood out to me.
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