Rental car price raised and not notified

[Lewisc]

Hertz made the change a few days before they exited bankruptcy. Bankruptcy makes it easy for a company to take actions like this.

Absolutely no excuse for not notifying affected customers.

 

[EACarlson]

The proof required was Mousesavers reader/subscriber - and I could easily pull up my monthly newsletter.

You have access to the CDP that says that? It sounds to me after reading MS email that they were given a Business use CDP at one point and no one said anything when it was given to subscribers. Now that Hertz cancelled that CDP because MS wasn't abiding by the terms, everyone want's to get upset at Hertz. Business decisions are business decisions, I'll make mine on the same basis I always do.

 

[Evita_W]

This is why prepaying is a good idea, then you have a written, agreed upon price that cannot change unless you add insurance, etc. At a later date.

 

[cm8]

Below is the text of the email from Mousesavers that arrived in my inbox about 10 minutes ago. All I have changed is to delete special "members only" link to a different travel site that gives discounts to Mousesavers members. This is DEFINITELY not a cool move on the part of Hertz and will cost them MY business (and I've already emailed to tell them this, even though I don't currently have an outstanding booking with them).

"This is a special notice because of an unusual situation with the MouseSavers exclusive Hertz rental car discount codes. The short version: Hertz has changed the rate plan for both of the MouseSavers-exclusive discount codes, including existing bookings. If you have a reservation that used one of the MouseSavers Hertz codes, you should check it now, because it may have gone up quite a bit.

Hertz did not give us any notice about this change, either before or after they did it. We found out from alert readers who saw their reservation go up in price and contacted us to let us know. Since then, we’ve been trying to get to the bottom of this with Hertz and see what we can do for our readers, some of whom have seen eye-popping increases in their rental rate.

Over the course of multiple phone calls and emails with Hertz executives, we were able to convince them to increase the discount off their standard rates considerably from what they originally had planned, but they are unwilling to restore the original rates for existing reservations.

The new, higher discounts from Hertz should start showing up on existing reservations today. But it might be a day or two before you see the final discount, as Hertz is applying the extra discounts manually to each reservation. Even with the new discounts, the rate will likely be higher than your original reservation, especially in locations where regular rates are extra-high, such as Hawaii and New York City.

Our advice: see if you can find a better reservation right away; don’t wait to see what Hertz is going to do (though wait until you find something better before cancelling the Hertz reservation).

The Back Story
If you’re at all interested in why Hertz would abruptly raise rates on a program that we’ve offered for almost 10 years, this is what we’ve been able to determine from conversations with our Hertz contacts and other industry partners.

The rental car business is under a lot of stress right now. Travel is coming back faster and stronger than anyone expected, and demand for rental cars is much higher than the rental companies predicted. They all sold off a ton of cars during the pandemic, when demand for rental cars was near zero. Now that lots of people are vaccinated and going on vacation again, the rental companies can’t get new cars fast enough to satisfy demand. This has driven up daily rates to previously unheard-of levels.

Hertz specifically has been going through Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization and making a bunch of changes to their programs to streamline operations and start making profits again. One of their operating changes was to make a clearer distinction between “business” and “leisure” rate programs, and particularly take steps to avoid their business-rate programs being used by leisure travelers. (In travel industry jargon, “leisure” is a catch-all term for personal or vacation travel.)

As a result, several programs that they considered business programs, but were being promoted for leisure travel, including both of the MouseSavers ones, were either changed to a leisure rate program or essentially deactivated so the rate was no better than (or in some cases worse than) their normal floating rates.

Keep in mind: Hertz was entirely aware that MouseSavers is a leisure-oriented site, and offered us business rates as a value-add for our readers. We did nothing wrong, and neither did our readers. Hertz just changed their minds about their pricing strategy, and decided unilaterally to change their terms.

The bottom line is that this is not a normal situation. We have never seen anything like this happen before and we don’t expect it to occur again under normal circumstances."

 

[cm8]

You have access to the CDP that says that? It sounds to me after reading MS email that they were given a Business use CDP at one point and no one said anything when it was given to subscribers. Now that Hertz cancelled that CDP because MS wasn't abiding by the terms, everyone want's to get upset at Hertz. Business decisions are business decisions, I'll make mine on the same basis I always do.

And where exactly are you getting this inside information in regards to this?

 

[EACarlson]

And where exactly are you getting this inside information in regards to this?

Don't have and never have claimed to have inside information. MS admits in their letter they had a business CDP that they were giving out to leisure travelers. If anyone has access to the CDP documents and wants to post them I'd be more than happy to admit I'm wrong. I do have experience with CDPs and what happens when they get changed, modified, renegotiated, expire. I had Alamo raise a rate on me last year after my CDP was changed.

 

[seetheworld]

Hertz got us too in the worst way possible this last week and for our upcoming wdw vacation as well. I had reservations for many months and they came in and tripled the rate. Upon speaking to a manager, they refused to help us at all. I am a 5 star member at hertz and what they did to me and so many others is completely wrong.

 

[SL6827]

This is just unreal. I thought your rate would always be set in stone.

 

[EACarlson]

This is just unreal. I thought your rate would always be set in stone.

Only if it says "this rate is guaranteed at the bottom of the confirmation page." Most people book with a CDP or Corporate Discount Program that is liable to be changed.

@seetheworld Did you use a MouseSavers code for that rate?

 

[Meglen]

Ok so since hertz is doing crazy stuff to renters I have looked into other options. My trip is currently Oct9th- 17th. But we are staying at the swan reserve for 2 nights thus we would end up paying for parking on a car we wouldnt use those days (epcot and HS days) So instead I booked FLtours to get us to Swan than Pick us up at AKL on the 17th. But we still wanted a car during the week so I just booked enterprise from the CCC for 190$ (cororate code) Now this leaves us hoping swan reserve does luggage service to AKL if not we can uber/lyft it. I have been told that at the CCC they will come get you when picking up(akl) and drop you off somewhere when dropping the car(MK TTC). I did the 12-16 which are both our MK days.. so pick up will be at 9am (yes we wont be rope dropping) same with drop off than bus it back to AKL at the end of the day.

Does all this sound too complicated? I just wanted to save some money and with both these services its gonna be about 300$ which is alot less than renting from the airport.

 

[Meglen]

Hertz got us too in the worst way possible this last week and for our upcoming wdw vacation as well. I had reservations for many months and they came in and tripled the rate. Upon speaking to a manager, they refused to help us at all. I am a 5 star member at hertz and what they did to me and so many others is completely wrong.

What did you end up doing?

 

[mickeychickie]

If it helps at all, keep checking - my friend had her Hertz rental raised - she checked a couple days before her pickup with another agency and she got a really, really good rate because of the cancels due to the ridiculous increase