I was provided an insurance rental from Hertz in 2011. The body shop kept my car 8 days, and told the Hertz location the repair would take 8 days when they quoted job to insurance company. At day 5, Hertz began charging my bank card for the rental, even though the insurance was paying. When i protested, Hertz put a $500 hold on my bank card. It took 9 days to fix it and i had to file small claims to get a refund. I will not rent a car from Hertz under any circumstances.
Everyone here is missing the biggest point. She has the proper paperwork showing that she is the rightful owner of the car. Hertz stole the car from her and somehow the authorities (DMV according to the article) claim that this is a civil matter. Uh, What? She has papers showing she is the owner. They took it. That's theft. How is that not criminal?
It is not the DMVs call as to whether it is criminal or civil, that would be up to the police and prosecutors office. She should file a stolen car report to the police if for nothing else to protect her rights. Hertz failed to report it stolen originally and they have lost their rights to the car.
Because although we claim corporations are people they are not. You can't handcuff Hertz and book them at the county jail. Because it's a corporate no singular individual is legally responsible.. It's a giant clusterf÷%k.
In the beginning of covid they moved their cars out of rsw Airport to a empty field next to the airport. 2500 cars mysteriously went up in flames at 3am 3 days later. No lightning etc.
Hertz: reports cars they rented stolen, and has their customers arrested. Also Hertz: doesn't bother to report a car stolen when it's actually missing.
Then they lose the car and it is legally auctioned off, Hertz lost their car through their own inability to track it. Hertz then steals the car from the new legal owner.
And claims they didn't know it was auctioned off, but somehow were still able to find it even after it had completely different plates and was located in a completely different country.
Why doesnt hertz brand their cars? It would be signifcantly harder to steal their cars if its branded Black and Yellow with a big fat HERTZ on both sides and the roof. With a HERTZ banded rear seat
Absolutely. Unfortunately any time you ask a bureaucrat to do anything they don't do all day every day they will do anything they can do to pawn it off on somebody else. So if it is a civil case then you have to deal with it. That is why everybody hates all bureaucrats.
What brought the vehicle into the possession of the entity that sold it? The individual who brought it across the border against the contract they signed I suppose is Hertz's problem. Plot twist, True to their style Hertz Mexico declared it stolen in Mexico before she bought it so it's Hertz's car. Contact the embassy... This could get very interesting.
@@jamesodell3064 I'm talking about in general, where authorites say something is a civil matter just to make you go away because they don't feel like doing anything about it.
What I don't understand is stating who has legal title is not a civil matter. It may be one fact in a civil matter but the answer to the question is not a civil matter. It is literally the job of the public servant. I think she might have a lawsuit againist the DMV as well.
I do love how in the U.S. and here in the U.K. it's always a 'civil' matter when it's a business doing wrong, but it's 100% criminal if an individual makes the same kind of mistake.
That's because corporations are "people" for the purpose of civil matters, but not for the purpose of criminal matters. As a rule, courts don't prosecute corporations for their crimes because it's not possible for them to commit crimes. You have to prosecute the individuals involved in the corporation.
It’s a goddammned travesty! I’ve had people steal stuff from me; I could prove they stole it, they were known thieves, and the police said ‘it’s a civil matter’! They should have arrested the bastards, and given me my property back.
@@AxionSmurf Lmao? Firstly that's a redundancy, corporatism is an inherant part of fascist doctrine. Secondly, one of the core goals of the fascists was to erase that kind of private soft-power. All power had to be formalised and centralised in the state or eradicated.
People I know in south Texas had a Ford LTD stolen in the 1970’s. The car was taken into Mexico, there was nothing the police could do. About 6 months later they were shopping in Mexico when they saw the car parked. It had Mexican government plates on it. The dad still had the keys so he tried the lock - it opened. He started the car and drove it back to the US. He really got a kick out of a decal on the sun visor “Property of the Federal Judicial Police.” He stole his car back from the Federales. Apparently they really liked the Ford LTD as police cars but they were hard to get in Mexico. Self help 1, Federales 0.
Right? The whole thing just smacks of overworked and underpaid workers to me. I've been in too many long lines waiting for a rental car, it's not just Hertz, but their name sure makes the headlines a lot...perhaps there's an unusually good reason?
Makes perfect sense. They know how many cars got stolen and simply report that number of cars stolen. Looking up which cars were the ones that got stolen would be too much work.
If hertz is involved, it means they take cars whenever they want. You park your car close to a Hertz rental, they might claim ownership of it too so beware.
They're losing lots of money because why would they even need to steal if they're profitable? That or they're making deals with criminal organizations. I can't think of anything else.
Makes me happy that my hometown does not have a Hertz dealership at all. We only have Enterprise, and yes i Enterprise also sucks but I'll take Enterprise over hertz any day of the week.
I worked with a single mother on the run from an abusive ex go to jail for purchasing an enterprise rental car. She had the paperwork, receipts, and everything to prove she purchased it but they took her to jail for auto theft anyways. Last I heard she had skipped bail since her ex had found her from the jail publishing her name, photo, etc on their blotter. She went on the run because the police couldn’t protect her. Sometimes our system just completely fails.
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There is no justice system, only a criminal adjudication machine.
In response to the @christian6911comment above. BAM! You can bet your arse that if well dressed, well spoken people owning an expensive property called the police to prevent a vehicle from being towed, the police would STOP it from taking place, because tow truck drivers only have an order to retrieve the vehicle in question, but usually have no paperwork explaining WHY, they have the authority to do so. If one lives in a low rent apartment, the police WOULD ALLOW your car to be towed and claim it were a civil matter.
I thought the moral of the story is to rent a car from hertz. With insurance. Then enter the car in a demolition "last one standing" derby. Give what's left back to hertz. You're free and clear since you got the insurance.
Notice that for her it would be auto theft, but for them it is a "civil matter". That is why they just don't care. Other people face criminal charges, while they just maybe pay some money.
Once she wins in court she needs to file criminal charges of car theft against hertz and the people at hertz who called this in and filled a false police report. It is so important that this happens because the people who did this need to be held accountable.
You can't file criminal charges as a citizen, you can request the DA do so but that's it, also there was never a police report they claimed it was unreported stolen vehicle, if there was any form of police report it was also likely done in Mexico since that's where the vehicle is lost
@@RobertMarshall-d2n unfortunately that's towing companies in another country... Cross border criminal charges against companies are kind of hard to do anything with
For real, so many people at Hertz need to go to jail for all the false police reports they've filed. If I was a police officer I wouldn't even be willing to investigate anything called in by Hertz because I'd assume that they're lying and filing yet another false police report.
So to summarise: Hertz Mexico didn't respond to the paperwork from the towing company, and so at that point lost title to the car. Hertz conveniently forgot this, and claim it's still theirs. Good luck, lady, you're clearly in the right here.
Doesnt sound like the towing company many any effort to contact the legal owner before selling. The fact the the towing company has no records seems suspicious too
I had a bank "repossess" my car once. It was a used car that NEVER had a loan on it. The original owner bought it cash at the dealer and 10 years later I bought it cash from them. Not knowing what happened, I reported the car stolen. About 3 weeks later, the police come by and tell me they found the car, but a finance company has it claiming that I never made the payments. So I called the lawyer and gave him all the paperwork...took 6 months, but I got the car back, damages, and they had to reimburse me for the cost of buying another car. The best part--I bought the car in AZ and the finance company that took it was in GA and did not even operate in AZ. The arbitration hearing was a comedy. The arbitrators started with show us the loan documents. Nothing but stupid looks. I never had to "prove" it was my car, they had to prove they did not steal it. Near every military base there are shady car dealers/financers and they will steal anything.
I flip classic cars in Arizona, after 5 years of the police report of it being stolen Arizona considers it an "Abandoned car" so if they had tried to go through the court, even an arbitrator they wouldn't have won anyway because it was past the 5 year mark anyway.
This could happen if the dealer took your cash but submitted a loan agreement with the finance company and took that cash as well without your knowledge.
@@jessestreet2549 Repossing a car that doesn't have a bank agreement on it is illegal also. Noone's going to knowing commit a felony and forge someone's signature on a bank note, what's the pay-off for them?
@mike thats why theyre bankrupted. They let some Mexican drug dealer drive their rental across the border and steal their car working with the towing company. I bet the lady being sold the car got a huge discount. But she is also in on the scam or got bamboozled. Either way crooks skirt the law this way.
Even if it was in good faith yeah its criminal in my mind, since this really needs criminal courts to get involved, instead of expensive civil courts that are about mix of how strong case you have and how much money you can afford to sue them. If they have millions behind, they will drag the case until you run out of money.
That's happened more that a few times. A person rents a car then returns it. The rental company loses track of it then assumes that it wasn't returned.
Hertz has worked hard to build this new reputation. They have certainly earned it. I used to rent from them, competitively with other companies, but haven’t for years now simply because they have elevated the risk of hassle and legal issues just for doing business with them.
This whole thing of "it's a civil matter" just baffles me. So someone can drive off with your car or sqat in your house and despite you being the legal owner the entire justice system just shrugs it's shoulders and says " not my problem, you want justice, you better have money". Amazing to me.
This is because, as a civil matter, it needs to be taken care of in court. The folks at the DMV are not attorneys nor are they judges. That is why it becomes a matter for the courts.
As to squatting in a house, unfortunately in most jurisdictions it is a civil matter, and the owner needs a court order before being able to legally oust the squatters.
Here in Oklahoma, I actually had a brand new Geo Storm illegally repossessed a yr and a 1/2 later because of a bank error. My wife, up at 4:30 AM to feed our baby, woke me up in a panic yelling "Our car has been stolen!" I reported it to the police over the phone and was told that it had been repoed. The terms of the loan allowed for a 3 month grace period. The problem was that I made all the payments on time every month. And even though my payment book, which is always initialed and dated by a bank official, showed this, they claimed that I was over the grace period. It took a month of a knock- down drag-out fight to get it back before the bank finally admitted to a clerical error. It worked out for me, because in order to avoid being sued they cleared the 2yrs remaining on the loan.
I used to be a Hertz customer. I had a car scheduled for me in another city I flew to. when I got there to get it I was told "oh, no car for you, you had a traffic ticket for something somewhere." the ticket happened a year or so before I made the reservation. if Hertz didn't like it, why didn't they look it up when I went to reserve the car? I walked across the airport to National and they handed me keys to a nicer car for less on the spot 🙂 I still wonder how Hertz exists anymore 🤔
From what I've seen here in Europe - corporate contracts. For instance, when buying stuff from IKEA you can rent a van or a trailer. And since IKEA isn't a car rental company, that company is actually Hertz.
@TheMoonEcat enterprise has a local bill collection after me for a new windshield it was heavily scratched upon rental they pushed on my insurance i sent every picture and they claimed sun glare and that I damaged it. I even had the agent note it down on the agreement and I signed on it. They mysteriously 'lost' that but still have documents I rented like um that was the rental agreement... jerks I'm blacklisted and I don't care my local hertz gave me no problems as a franchised location but enterprise will never get a penny from me. Now there's turo and other similar alternatives online so these rental companies are falling by the wayside.
I'd phone the police and demand they arrest the CEO of the company for grand theft auto. She has the paperwork to show legal ownership. If they want compensation, they need to sue the person they rented it to.
Remember when Hertz went around filing fake stolen care reports to where people who rented from them ended up getting arrested, charged with auto theft, and thrown in jail. One guy who never even rented a car from Hertz got his name in their funky database and ended up spending 6 months in jail for a crime he didn't even commit.
@@arbjful I think Hertz just uses the principle of "we are a huge company with lots of money and lawyers so we think we can get away with these practices". And most of the time they do, because their lawyers can send very aggressively threatening letters and aren't above pointing out that YOU really can't afford to sue Hertz. Even if you can afford it and win, that's just one lost case in a series of probably hundreds or even thouands of cases, so for Hertz it will still be a very profitable practice.
I got a letter years ago that I had a parking ticket in Philly, owed a lot of money and they demanded I pay. I have NEVER been to Philly, ever. I sent a letter back stating that, I never heard from them again.
@@bikerkat01 I got a parking ticket in the post. Our car is registered as a red Renault. Ca in picture was a green citroen. False plates. I pointed this out. By the way, when they do the address search it tells them make and model of car with colour.
I had something like this happen. When I was 19, I got a car impounded, but the impound lot tried to auction it while it was still under impound and moved it to a neighboring town. The sheriff department caught it, found the car, and wrote me a letter advising me to press charges for grand theft auto. I did. Turned out it was my landlord and his junk yard. Then he tried to hold the car from me until I paid him what he illegally paid at auction for it. He went to jail then a few months later died of a heart attack.
Had a dui when i was 22, got found not guilty, but they towed my vehicle months before i actually got through the court proceedings, then the police or whoever had it sold it, as it was held for a week or so and then fined for those days, which I didn’t have the money. Never was reimbursed
The malicious part is that they had to have done a title search in order to find the new owners name, address, and new tags. They had to have known the car was no longer theirs.
That's wild...reminds me of a news story a while back where a bank mistakenly forclosed on a fully paid house and wouldn't relent after losing the cases in court untill finally the owners of the home had to get a forclose served on their local branch of the bank.
I've had this happen to me, or something similar, and I believe it was Hertz. Hertz reported my car stolen. I was driving home from work and got pulled over. Within minutes I was surrounded by cops with guns drawn claiming that I was in possession of a stolen vehicle. While I did get it worked out, I couldn't believe the headache I had to go through in order to prove it was my vehicle and the danger I was put in during that initial confrontation with police.
@@jenjenny9968 It was a used vehicle from a Ford Dealership. I had the car for just over a year when it happened...again, if I recall correctly. It was a long time ago; I want to say somewhere around 1996-98.
Australia has a very simple solution to this. Cars that are stolen or have money owing on them, owners can list the vehicle on a REVS register. Buyers can get a REV's check certificate and and if it lists neither of those things, then the car can NOT be taken back from them. The onus is on the original owner to list the vehicle on the REVS register or they lose out.
What is amazing to me is they would rather attempt to bankrupt this woman in legal fees rather than give up a car they can easily afford to lose. They have to know they legally don't own the car in America where it resided at the time of repo.
I'm perplexed why the cops didn't order the towing company to give her the car back once it was revealed that her paperwork was correct. "It's a civil matter, but for now it's hers. If a judge says differently we'll talk then but she's leaving with this car."
The towing company likely does not have the car. Why store it at the inbound yard? They likely handed it over to Hertz USA. Hertz USA entered the car into their system - meaning loosing it - transferred it to Hertz Mexico - meaning mixing it up again somehow.
DMV should also be held accountable. Once the title was issued and registered to her they negated the 'civil issue'. Hertz should not be allowed to change anything relating to the car until this is settled in court.
@@Nope_handlesaretrash hmm... it can make sense that Hertz Mexico Legal Team hands over the case to Hertz USA Legal Team and Hertz USA Legal Team represents Hertz Mexico. Does not make it easier.
@@BanaiFeldstein not really id wager it had a tracker on it its common for rental companies to put them on cars. The issue is why did it take so long be it that maybe due to the battery being dead(they do that after a while and sounds like it was in an impound yard a while then when it was powered again they sat on it for a while to make sure the gps wasnt moving and so on.
My guess would be that they were watching for the VIN to show up in Carfax or similar. Once the new owner got it inspected or the oil changed somewhere, they knew where it was.
I use to work for this corporation that had in house counsel. Part of my job was to email the lawyer abt certain actions to see legality of such. And most times the lawyer would reccomend not to do it or reccomend other steps. When i wrote up a report and sent it to powers that be 99.99 percent of the time they would go against legal advice. Could not figure out why until i found out that majority of the time people could not afford or the price of a lawyer cost more than what it was worth. Even if they could sue for court costs and such it sometimes just wasnt worth the risk or they did not have the money up front. I think hertz is just playing a numbers game. They probably did this a few times and just havent made the news yet. I think its a dirty game personally.
It sounds like another revenue stream to me. And you're right, its a legal system not a justice system and it comes at a price many cannot afford. It sounds like Hertz have it all figured out. If they get called out on lets say 1 in 10 and then have to pay they are well still in front.
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER rent a car from Hertz. I heard about the stories of them claiming cars were stolen and had people arrested WHO HAD OPEN CONTRACTS for the car rental. One guy spent 4 months in jail because of this. Another guy, an ex police investigator was arrested in a 7-11 parking lot because Hertz claimed the car he rented was never returned. A few weeks later I returned a car to Hertz in Nashville airport and two weeks later Hertz called me and ACCUSED me of not returning the car. It was a 6am and there was no attendant. At 8am they should have barcoded the car in and issued a receipt. That was NEVER done. This when on for weeks. Finally an investigator found the car on the Nashville lot in the maintenance bay. They NEVER checked it in. I rent from AVIS now.
You live in a land of unicorns. "Oh no, don't rent from hertz". Like Enterprise, Alamo or Budget are hundreds times better. Many times you are lucky to get any car from any company when rental lot is empty. All rental companies has pages of horror stories, just read their reviews. Hertz is better than most of others
And the worst part about Hertz is that they even got some people arrested for renting a car that Hertz had already wrongly reported stolen and hadn't bothered to tell the police that they made a mistake or the car was returned. So even if you did everything right Hertz incompetence can STILL get you arrested on false charges.
I’m pretty sure they all engage in illegal practices. They offer “reservations” on their website, take your money, but nothing is ever actually “reserved”. The number of times I’ve reserved a vehicle only to turn up and get a 🤷♂️ when they don’t have anything even remotely close to my “reservation”. This seems like textbook false advertising, potentially fraud in extreme cases (which aren’t exactly rare, even though extreme).
Part of me thinks that hertz knows exact what's going on and is hoping to frustrate the victim till they give up, because the other explanation is simply that they are simply too dumb to understand how badly they messed up. After everything is said and done, it will end up costing hertz far more to fight this than they can hope to recoup from hypothetically get the car back and throw it back into circulation.
@@niyablake And if Hertz Mexico have taken the vehicle back across the border I would imagine getting Mexican courts to release the vehicle back to the rightful owner in the US is going to be difficult, particularly if there are different laws between the US and Mexico covering the disposal of vehicles by auction.
@@stephengraham1153 Well, it was auctioned in the US. The parent company could be sued for theft and a return of funds if the car can't be returned. In theory
@@niyablake So that means Hertz and the towing company have a problem they need to settle among themselves, but when a towing company sells a car correctly, that's final. Or in other words: Towing auction sale transfers the liability of mistakes being made, to the towing company. But Hertz would lose to the towing company, as Hertz can't even prove the car was missing, so they'll never prove they claimed it before the auction.
The last time I dealt with Hertz, they were VERY quick to use the threat "or else we'll report it stolen immediately". Like, get it here by this time, not a minute later or else we'll report it stolen. Use the original credit card to extend the rental and not a different credit card or a debit card or we'll report it stolen. I'll never do business with them again. It's been my experience that the people who are most defensive about getting stolen from are thieves.
I’ve seen youtube videos mentioning how hertz rented out a car and the renter returned it and hertz claimed their car was stolen. One video had more than one person this happened to. I’m a little surprised hertz can keep doing something like this
My god, Hertz is absolutely never going to recover from all these scandals, thefts, and false police reports. It’s literally gotten to the point people have to consider before rental that they could be putting their own lives at risk simply by renting from such a reckless company like Hertz.
@@downhomesunset The reason I stopped renting from Hertz is because they had gotten more and more expensive over the decades along with increasingly subpar service. Enterprise may not always be the cheapest but is the most consistent in customer service.
The next time I rent a vehicle, it won't be from Hertz simply because they just don't have their management feces together enough to safeguard me as a customer.
If, as they claim, they didn’t know the car was sold off at an auction… How did they trace it back to someone’s house and identified the car if it had been registered with a new license plate? They would have had to do some research to trace it through various owners, seen the records of transactions and simply opted to ignore all of that.
Car will have had a tracker, someone will have realised it was missing and checked the tracker without looking to see what had actually happened to the car.
The shenanigans that towing companies get up to behind the glass at recepton. So the car had a value of 21k how much of that did the towing company pocket
@@gerardmccarthy2432 Yes everyone is screaming Hertz is wrong in this scenario…. the tow company never explained throughout how and where they became in possession of this vehicle and why they took it auction so quickly. Supposedly they sent Hertz notice they were taking it to auction which might be BS in itself . I think this tow company instigated this to make some 💰
Recently used Hertz, they took my reservation for Christmas Eve but the rental place was actually closed that day. Left me in a terrible situation and then they hit me with a $150 "no show" fee. Funny how I only got a refund, but not paid $150 for my troubles. No show only goes one way If it was worth my time I'd take them to small claims for breech of contract to recoup the difference in having to get a last minute Christmas Eve rental from another company
@@CHMichael it was purely out of convenience. Use the place next door or go on a 40 minute train ride to get to another rental company. I'll definitely take the train ride next time
I’d have disputed that $150 “fee” with my bank. And showed up the next time they opened. Made sure to document that they were closed. Allowed you to make a reservation and got a lawyer and reached out to the news
Nope. The car was abandoned , then towed . the tow yard never told hertz about and then auctioned it off violating the law/ Just imagine having your car towed and never told who took it
Late to the show, but how come Hertz, who doesn't legally own the car anymore, is not sued for theft? You can't legally "repossess" something you don't legally own.
DMV says Hertz can do it, no problem. Hertz has more expensive lawyers and deeper pockets than most individuals, so are likely to win. Individuals know this so are unlikely to sue them.
So Hertz not only obstructs justice and puts innocent men behind bars out of sheer laziness, and gets people arrested for using their services normally... but also STEALS CARS. Hertz is GTA protagonist.
Towing company just shows up at her home, and confiscates a vehicle because "someone told them it was theirs". Hertz being scumbags aside, how long are these towing companies not going to be held accountable for that BS?
This is my question as well. Can't she go after this tow company too? Especially if they took it from her driveway or something. I would think that tow companies aren't allowed to just tow any vehicle at any time because someone told them to, but especially if the person they took it from had the legal and valid title at the time.
@@midnightgamerdad5963 This one is complex. They were contracted by Hertz who said it was their car. They had no way of knowing if Hertz was right or not, and if asked, Hertz could have faxed a copy of the title. So, the tow company may have technically stolen the car, but they were acting in good faith. Yes, they may be on the hook, but their insurance company would probably get involved to defend them as they honestly did not think they were doing anything wrong. If the case went against them, and Hertz was not on the lawsuit, they would then turn around and sue Hertz for their expenses in dealing with Hertz's mistakes.
shady/crook can use tow companies to do their dirty work.steal cars, and the tow driver is sticking their neck out, and being used a lot of times to help others comit a crime, and they don't necessarily are aware of anything......in some cases
I used to rent from Hertz back when I traveled quite a bit. But they turned sleazy many years ago and I will never do that again. The one that really got my craw was, a month after returning from an international trip, suddenly finding an unexpected $200 (a lot back in the 80's) charge, with no explanation. I challenged the charge and after two months Amex closed it out - Hertz never responded to their query. They just wanted a $200 bonus and hoped the customer wouldn't notice
I spent many years as an insurance adjuster for a large insurance company. I was forced to deal with Hertz due to our corporate agreement. I had some epic run-ins with Hertz forcing them to honor agreements.
Bottom line America... Hertz can not be trusted to do the right thing... stupidity or laziness or greed or whatever. Do business with another rental company... Check your BBB re rental companies in your region...
I rented a car at Hertz in Dearborn, Michigan. Went to the gas station to fill it up & it had no gas cap. I returned the car with the exact fuel level it was rented at and the clerk DID NOT open the gas cover at all, but charged me $35 for a missing gas cap, then added $170 for missing fuel because she said it went out full, not with the less than 1/4 tank. Only when I started to call the Dearborn police did she drop the charges (I still have both of the receipts)
@@bighands69 I had a receipt going out that said the car had 5/16 tank of gas - not full. The police would have had cause to arrest her for theft, and her manager as it was planned since they knew the cars going out didn't have gas caps so they didn't bother to look. Plus if they checked the cars ready to go out and found them missing caps they would have that as more evidence to conspiracy to commit theft.
My brother used to own a towing company. One day an apartment complex called him to tow away an abandoned car. It was a 2 year old Nissan Maxima with a flat tire and a bent rim. He went through the whole process of notifying the lienholder through registered mail as required by the state. After the required wait time for a response, it was sold with a new title. Three months after it was sold, the bank that was the lienholder called and said that they were sending a tow truck to pick up the car. When he told them that the car wasn't theirs anymore, they threatened with a lawsuit. My brothers lawyer put a swift stop to the proposed lawsuit.
So he gets the benefit of an expensive 2 yr old car with just a flat & bent rim? Yeah, that's very honest of you😢😢😢😢😢. Tow drivers are thieves too. I'm surprised they aren't sniped at.
@mawi1172 Apparently reading comprehension is not one of your strong attributes. The tow truck was requested by the apartment complex management to remove the abandoned vehicle from their property. The only 'people' who were affected by this was the bank that financed the vehicle. It had been abandoned for about a month before being picked up and when the bank was notified by registered mail of the fact that the towing company had the vehicle, the bank totally ignored the fact until they realized that payments hadn't been made for over 6 months.
@@mawi1172 The bank could have taken prompt action to recover their vehicle once they were legally notified. They FAILED. Not the tow operator's problem, he's got expenses to have towed away the vehicle and then stored it. At a certain point, the vehicle is considered "abandoned" and the tow operator may sell it.
@WayneBraack I'm pretty sure theft has been illegal for a few hundred years. The police just didn't know how to deal with a company stealing instead of an individual.
@@WayneBraack Car is stolen. It is not the police job to say no it isn't. It is the courts job. Arrest the thief and let the court decide. Plaintiff filed the complaint. Cops job is to act on it.
I have had a few situations like this as an auto theft investigator for a police dept. If the person that had the vehicle towed from them can produce a lien free title I had the owner meet me at the tow lot and instruct the tow /repo company release it. They would complain and I told them it is a civil situation. Period. In Arizona the title denotes ownership, no lien no legal repossession, end of story.
I’m from UK and a colleague bought an ex military vehicle from auction (with all relevant paperwork). Several weeks later police turned up and recovered vehicle as reported stolen. Colleague waited several weeks then reported vehicle stolen by police to police. They said “not to be ridiculous” but owner persisted and vehicle was returned a couple days later…no apology/explanation.
I bought a car at a impound auction here in Michigan. About a week later I had the bank calling me and threatening me that the vehicle is theirs. I argued with them, the lady said she is going to talk to her manager and get back to me. I never heard from them again
I’m going through a situation kinda like this with the city of Mobile Alabama. I was the lien holder on a vehicle. I never got any payments and the customer disappeared. About a year later the vehicle some how made its way into a Mobile city impound lot, and was sold off at a police impound. We were actively looking for the vehicle and buy chance found it on a car lot in Theodore, AL by searching the VIN number. I called the dealer to find out how they came in possession of it and they told be the Mobile police auction. So I called the police department and after quite the run around, I spoke to the lone employee in that department. It was her responsibility to take the proper steps to be able to sell this vehicle. Over the phone, the attitude I got about my inquiry was that of a young lady who “snakes” her head back and fourth when speaking about things she would not like to be a part of. In a nut shell she said she contacted to owner, the fees weren’t paid, so they moved forward with selling it. Generally speaking, if the owner of a vehicle is a year and a half behind on payments, they don’t go pay the impound fee. When I asked why I wasn’t contacted considering I’m the lien holder, she said there wasn’t a lien listed. When I told her I had the title in my hand clearly showing me as the lien holder, she told me that she was busy and didn’t have time to talk to me and that I could “get a lawyer” if I didn’t like it. Well by God that’s what I did. It’s on going at this time, but currently a third party consultant that contracts to the city says that the city doesn’t feel like they are at fault and is denying my claim. Big surprise huh! What the city of Mobile has failed to realize is that I am the #1 fan of fuck around and find out. Come he’ll or high water, the city will pay me for my vehicle and the headache I’ve had to deal with since this all began. Remember folks, the more you fuck around, the more you will find out.
The problem is the city has the funds to drag this out forever. Your best hope is to get a judgment against the city you can use as a lien and then use it to take city property (a vehicle perhaps) of equivalent value.
As a former Para Legal in Sacramento I can tell you that you are spot on as the law goes. It is the same in Ca as in your state. The only thing I did not hear you talk about is Grand Theft Auto charges on Hertz
And the towing company. The tow truck drivers might not be liable because of the employer trust. The towing company has the responsibility to verify the information given before "reposition" of a vehicle.
She should also look into an insurance claim. I'm an insurance agent in AZ and I had a client buy a vehicle from a private party. Turns out it was stolen from the manufactures production lot in MI. When the vehicle was taken to a dealership for a recall it was noticed and Dodge took the vehicle back. In AZ there is a provision that allows a client to file an insurance claim if they legally own a vehicle that was previously stolen.
I really hope there is a follow up to this story. I want to see this lady either get her car back or compensated properly for all the stress and mental suffering.
If this goes to court - which is doubtful - it will take over a year for her to be made whole. I say that going to court in California is doubtful, because we have pretty decent consumer protection laws, the facts of the case appear straightforward, and there is media attention. Only a really stupid lawyer would take this to trial, or even botch the settlement by lowballing the initial offer. And, while there are too many dumb lawyers out there - even with California's notoriously difficult bar exam - you would need to be extremely stupid to not tell Hertz to settle, the sooner, the better... open up that checkbook.
At one point in December 2022 our car was repossessed shortly after we had made our final payment in October that year, it turns out after we had paid they "lost" our payment. I had to ride through freezing snow and ice for two weeks until they mysteriously found our payment after I threatened to sue. Then I got stuck with storage and towing fees that if mclarty had done their job wouldn't have existed.
Decades ago I recall towing companies loving to tow out of state vehicles on the side of the road. Essentially, they would file a notice with the state that the vehicle was registered in and by the time the owner was notified the impound fees were more than the car was worth. The tow company would then sell the vehicle at auction.
'Budville' NM. A notorious Rt 66 speed trap' back in the day'. There were countless many cars in back auto fuel/repair facility yard 'storage.. When Bud (also convenient, 'Budville Justice of the Peace') finally faced his maker,... earlier than anticipated... ' ;/..
@@captinbeyond tow truck drivers have to have a cdl. That means they have to pass regular drug tests. The tow company is required to test employees at random. The impound lot, not so much.
@@UpnorthHere yeah, but any amount that a jury would award the victim as reasonable damages to an individual is going to be a rounding error in Hertz's operational budget. Until CEOs start seeing jail time for corporate malfeasance, this problem will only get worse.
@@UpnorthHere And to make up the difference of the loss, the corporation will then (eventually) increase the price distributing the "punishment" across all the people using their service. And that's why PastelChloe is correct to call it appalling. The corporation does get away with what they want, and they make the population pay the punishment.
there was already a class action lawsuit they agreed to settle for falsely reporting cars stolen, which resulted in some people spending months in jail. They just agreed to the settlement maybe a month before this incident.
One thing that sticks out to me in this case. The tow yard that auctioned the vehicle has "no records" as to how the car ended up in their yard. That is going to be a problem. Without a tow record of how and why the car was impounded, the auction may be nullified. Definitely not the woman that bought the cars fault. My theory is that the car was sold to a "friend" of the tow yard at a decent discount, noticed the valuation (between $501-$4000 for a 2022 Camry, LMAO) on the auction paperwork from a TV report, then flipped on facebook. Knowing the shadier side of the towing business, not an unreasonable assumption.
That may relate to questions and issues I raised in a new comment... *Something else needs explaining:* How did Hertz find the car in order to have it towed, when the car had a new and different license plate? Did they use some kind of electronic tracking like LoJack? If so, that raises additional questions: Is LoJack also liable for damages, as an accessory to fraud/crime? Is there anything a new OWNER can do to make sure such things are turned off or removed? If the electronic tracking is a factory original system, does the car manufacturer now become liable for damages as an accessory to fraud/crime? If the towing company was not part of Hertz, is the towing company also liable for damages, as an accessory to fraud/crime? Next set of extra questions: If ANY kind of _remote tracking_ was involved, why was the vehicle not reclaimed by Hertz at a much earlier date, before the unfortunate woman ever bought it? This being a cross-border case initially, why was the vehicle not flagged at the border, or immediately after crossing, and hunted down for reclamation at that early date, before some random towing company could ever get involved? Finally: Or was the car identified visually by some other means, perhaps a window sticker, using either human sight or something related to machine vision? In that and some of the other scenarios I've explored, it seems like folks should be made aware that they can and should take actions to prevent their vehicle becoming the target of this kind of _corporate "self help."_ So, @user-ms1jf2pv2r - Could there be some kind of shady system which tow truck drivers have, that allows them to just drive around and get some kind of alert when they are near a vehicle somebody has been 'playing games' with and so tow it away, even though it may have been honestly bought by some unlucky person at the end of a chain of games?
Laziness, and an overloaded bureaucracy that will barely prosecute crimes against people (violent crimes) but won't take on crimes against property unless the amounts are huge. And, a court system that has trouble coping with the load with the few crimes that do make it to the courtroom, vs. plea deals and DAs dropping charges for political reasons. Why yes, I do live in Southern California, how'd you guess???
I sold new and used cars in California for over thirty years. Here is a scenario that a dealer has to be very careful with. Let's say a new car is stolen from the lot and then gets towed a few days later because of parking or whatever. The tow yard immediately files paperwork for a lien sale to occur about 30 days later. They will also send a certified letter to the owner on record, which in this case will go to the manufacturer as no title exists. The manufacturer will then hopefully notify the dealer in a reasonable time period. If the dealer does not notice the car is missing before the thirty days is up they could potentially lose the car even though the have the MCO (Manufacturer's Certificate of Origin) Kinda like the birth certificate for the vehicle. In any case the dealer has to pay all of the storage fees, impound fees, etc. to get their car back. It gets even trickier if a used car is stolen as title is often left open until vehicle is re-sold to the end customer. The company I worked for installed inexpensive GPS units on all inventory then geo fenced and reconciled daily. Hertz should have reported the vehicle missing/stolen immediately. Bottom line is Hertz has no valid claim to this vehicle and it legally belongs to this Woman.
I've read several stories where people rented cars from Hertz. They did not record the rental properly. When the cars were noticed not being on the lot, they reported them as stolen. So here they were on vacation and got pulled over for a stolen car.
This is a PR nightmare that Hertz can't afford. Their best move would be to have that car towed back where they found it, appologize, ask for forgiveness, and take them to a VERY nice resaurant for dinner. But of coarse, they won't. They seem to hell-bent on doing the wrong thing lately.
They already owe her for time and money spent thus far, plus the loss of wages to deal with this nightmare and we don't even know if she kept her job as it may depend on her having a vehicle. Dinner aint gonna cut it.
They like many large corporations aren't actually interested in doing any of the stuff that "being a business" normally entails. Why do any of that hard stuff when just bringing in enough cash flow to keep the lights on let's them game the system by skimping another 0.1% off costs to get a bonus. Or just be "too big to fail" or take that 0.1% saved and buy back stock inflating it's price.
Lol you're under the impression this was all some kind of horrible accident? This was intentional. Rental companies selling cars under the table and then reporting them stolen is a firmly established revenue stream at this point. There is a reason that tow company has no record of how that car even ended up in their lot and hertz has no record of who supposedly rented it and never returned it.
@@Kewrock That's precisely the problem. Too many people are only concerned about what's going to benefit them/their company/their organization rather than what the moral and proper thing to do is. If this was in the 1950s, or even the 1980s for that matter, this company absolutely would have profusely apologized publicly and done everything possible to make them whole. That was something that was believed to be necessary in order to avoid severe damage to their reputation and severe damage to the continued financial prospects of the business. The fact that they no longer feel the need to do the proper thing, even if only for PR purposes, is an indication of the moral decline of the population in general. It's the reason crime is so rampant. It's the reason corporations are so comfortable with taking advantage of the consumer. It's the reason government are so comfortable passing ridiculous and often times unconstitutional laws. And it's the reason cops are so comfortable abusing their power.
This has been an ongoing issue with Hertz for a few years now. It's been on various news channels with basically identical story lines to the point where Hertz has been accused of doing these things ON PURPOSE, KNOWING THAT WHAT THEY ARE DOING IS WRONG AND LIKELY UNLAWFUL. Yet, they apparently continue doing it. The pandemic has had a weird affect on all aspects of our lives.
Hertz went bankrupt and basically cannot recover their original business model, so they are basically doing a sort of exit scam, burning the company to the ground in the process of collecting as much money as possible in any slimy, scummy way they can.
Hertz had a vehicles stolen and yet everybody is acting like they are the bad guys in this. Everyone of you know that if the same happened to you what you would like to do. This is one of the problems with stolen property. There can be two victims including the buyer and the original victim of the theft. I know most want to pick on the corporation but if they do not recover what is theirs they will not stay in business.
@@bighands69 As Steve Lehto noted, self help is not a good (nor legal) idea especially when there was likely 40 things Hertz decided NOT to do or IGNORED which caused the sale to go through.
@@bighands69 It is not about picking on a corporation. If the same thing happened to me. First of all I would have reported it stolen fairly quickly, not waiting until a long period later when it ends up at a tow yard or at an auction. Or in this case even well after those instances and another whole month later. Second of all I *most* definitely would have responded and made a lot of noise that hey this is my car _when_ I got notified by auction company or towing company that they had a car they were thinking about putting up in an auction to have the title changed to someone else. This is completely the fault of the party that specifically ignored all of this, in this case Hertz. It would be the exact same thing in reverse that IF I get a traffic ticket, was notified, and chose to ignore it and not respond. No matter how innocent I was of that charge, it would be my issue that I chose not to act accordingly and be liable for any court decisions and fines. The court and government certainly would not care or feel sorry for me either. I do not feel sorry for anyone that puts themselves in that situation. Whether a private person or a company. They have specifically made laws and policies and proper procedures so as to greatly limit two victims of theft. When one party does not follow those proper procedures, that is their issue and their problem. Especially with such a major corporation that has gone through this exact issue multiple times. Not learning from your prior mistakes is what really makes them the bad guys. Purposely doing this repeatedly with this 'self help' nonsense hoping that private person will not even attempt to uphold their rights against a big corporation, makes them the bad guys.
A used car dealer in Seattle refused to transfer title after I had paid it off, then tried to repossess the vehicle. I had to go toe to toe with the slimeball owner before they finally relented. Scumbags.
The cynic in me thinks that Hertz knew where the car was the whole time, and waited until it entered the possession of someone who may not have the legal means to fight back.
Seems obvious. Hertz was notified, but didn't want to pay the fees owed. So they chose to wait until it was purchased by someone else, then used their (now out of date) documentation to have the car towed/stolen, and returned to Hertz, avoiding the fees. Clear-cut theft.
That's the second "un-reported car theft" issue I have seen this week. In the other video, cops used that term to go onto private property and detain the owner while they investigated the non-theft. No documented complaint existed. This is a bad sign.
@@Z64sports or if it's "unreported/non-reported" who's to say that it's even stolen at all. Seem like one could make the claim that ANY car on the road today is "non-reported"
Back in the Navy days, hubby bought a bike from a guy on base who was mustering out. In CA all you need is to sign the back of the pink slip (title) This particular bike had changed hands more than a dozen times without ever being re-titled at the DMV. It took me nearly a year and probably hundreds of trips over to the DMV before we were finally able to title it on our name. That was back in 1978. We still have her. She's a 69 Shovel. And worth every minute of that clusterfvck! ❤️
Guy in what is now Zimbabwe... Total cad and bounder... Rented car, swapped plates, drove it to airport and "sold" it to incoming tourists...then he flew out of the country... 1975 BTW...Hertz operated in that country then... Don't know if car from their fleet...
I had the opposite happen to me. Twelve years after I traded in a "high theft vehicle" to a dealer for a new car, I received a summons to court for "Attaching a Number Plate" illegally to that vehicle. After some research I learned: The dealer only keeps records for sales of trade-ins for 5 years. My state, Massachusetts, does not track bulk sales across state lines. My vehicle was bulk sold to Maine. The car was bought, stolen, driven back to Mass. and illegally parked. The officer ran the VIN which still showed me as owner (because Mass doesn't track bulk sales across state lines.) The officer, when doing follow-up paperwork should have checked the cross-state clearing house to see that I no longer owned the vehicle, but did not. As an individual, I got access to that information for $10 and showed the Maine ownership. I showed up to the court date. The officer did not. The case was dismissed. The RMV said they dared not touch the title information because it would conflict with the expected auction from the towing company that currently had posession of the car. I haven't heard anything further about the car since, but I haven't bothered to pay another $10 to see where the car ended up.
One night my doorbell is ringing and it's the police. He asks for me and then says we have your car. I say nope my car is parked right there. He says you don't own xyz car? I say no I traded it in NH 6 months ago. He said oh well it was involved in a few felonies and abandoned. I'm like well I mean good luck. Then he tells me I have to sort it out with 4 separate police departments in MA because they want to discuss these crimes with me. Apparently, Mercedes and VW were fighting, and Mercedes refused to release the title so it couldn't be sold. Even though I had the paperwork showing I traded it I had to explain that I didn't own it and don't know where it went 4 times. In the end I needed to hire an attorney to help sort this out even though I had nothing to do with it. Massachusetts doesn't seem to track much when it comes to cross state car sales.
That's your fault. Anytime you sell a vehicle it's your responsibility to make sure a proper title transfer is done and that it's no longer registered in your name. That's why when you buy a car from a dealership they complete and submit all the title and registration paperwork and fees. They aren't going to just give you the car and trust that you're going to do it yourself.
@@Rowgue51 wrong dude. If you sell a car privately to someone you sign the title over. Then you're done. There's nothing else that you can do. If the buying person doesn't go and have the title put in their name and get proper registration and plates then you can and will be screwed if something happens. Eventually after fighting it out you can be cleared but not before you jump through a bunch of hoops. This has happened twice to people that I know. Years ago My grandparents sold their car. Signed over the title and then about a month later the cops come knocking on their door saying their car had been abandoned and illegally parked on the side of the road. The buyer never went and got a new title and registration. My best friend sold her car and signed over the title. Apparently the buyer didn't get a new title and new registration. A week later The car was stolen and driven into another state and left. The cops contacted my friend and told her she was still listed as the owner. There is no way for you to check to make sure the buyer gets a new title and registration. The secretary of state/DMV isn't going to give you someone else's info. It's $tupid but so are a lot of other things too.
Hertz probably doesn't run a title check every time a missing car is located. However, after finding out the story, you would think Hertz would return the car that day with a public apology and go after the towing company.
That would require Hertz to have competent management. If Hertz had a good PR department, they would present her with a newer car of the same make & model, with the highest trim package, as part of a public apology... If they had competent enough management to hire good PR people, they would also be actively purging Hertz of the kind of screwups who got them in this mess in the first place.
@@chemech As for the "Competent management" line... I disagree. They wouldn't need competent management. They would just need management that doesn't have the competence of a dodo with moderate to severe head trauma. Seriously... Step one of handling the situation of 'when your company is caught doing a crime' is just Stop doing the crime. They're caught stealing her car? Stop stealing her car, and return it. A _child_ could have told them that.
@@chemech Why? She owns that car. What they should do is detail it, fill the tank and return it. With check for a grand a month for the time that they had possession of her car. And pray that she calls that good enough and does not sue them.
@@tygerion4404 On a one-off, sure. The problem appears to me to be that Hertz is in WAY over their heads, and not CAPABLE of doing the paperwork to keep all their ducks in a row. So, they lose stuff, misfile stuff, forget to file stuff because they're just stepping out on their lunch break or it's 5:00pm on a Friday, and customers get hurt. I don't know that it's competent management they need. It sounds like what they need is competent back-end IT crew, and rigid filing procedures, to get their tracking fixed.
So... Hertz doesn't have the title, then what makes that lawful to tow - how is that not a crime of theft committed BY the towing company and/or Hertz?
If the towing company has at least half a brain... some few do, they will have a purchase order on file from Hertz (a binding contract) with language where Hertz has legally declared that they have the lawful right to reclaim the property (car) which practically puts all of the responsibility on Hertz.
@@chemech The towing company should still be on the hook if it's a PO. They gotta get authorization to enter private land before entering private land. Since it's not a loan, there will be no document signed by the homeowner authorizing an agent of Hertz to step foot on her private land to take property from her possession, not without a court order. What would happen if she went onto the towing company's lot and forcibly retrieved her vehicle at a day or time when nobody was at the site? The towing company's agents and Hertz agents should be facing the exact same consequence for an unlawful entry and taking of property.. If Hertz believes to be stolen, then their remedy is call the police - not hire a towing company to conduct an unlawful seizure.
@@Mysdia Self-help repossession includes retrieval of stolen or misplaced property. Check the laws in your state, but in most places that I've heard it discussed, the repossession can be made from a driveway or parking space, so long as it is not behind a locked gate or door. In Southern California, especially in the cities and suburbs, vehicles are routinely parked on the driveway or at the curb in front of the dwelling while the garage is used for storing things that in other places would be in the basement or attic - neither of which feature is common in our houses here. The towing company got a work order from Hertz as part of their contract, and since they retrieve multiple cars with legitimate paperwork, they are not going to scrutinize any particular line item that closely... that's for other people to do.
Hertz really needs to go out of business. It has gotten to the point where they are so infamous for this BS, that whenever i hear about a car legal horror story its always hertz.
One possibility is they (Hertz) had a GPS tracking device in the car. They located it without running the vin, and had a tow company go fetch it using the GPS locator. When a car is stolen from a rental company they need to report it, and not track it down when they realize it's no longer in the inventory. If they tracked it via the new plates, and I doubt they did, they'd have known that they no longer have a legal claim over that car.
I expect that they have a special agreement with automakers that they buy their cars from to have direct access to the 'connected car' data. That includes the GPS location used by the navigation system, or perhaps directly from the cellular modem. For individual owners that access would be terminated when the car is sold, but rental companies obviously aren't in the same category as retail customers.
I ran a police impound service for 15 years ,and now days have been buying cars from police auctions for the last 14 years ..and this same kinda story happens waaaay more then you would expect..it's actually pretty normal
I was provided an insurance rental from Hertz in 2011. The body shop kept my car 8 days, and told the Hertz location the repair would take 8 days when they quoted job to insurance company. At day 5, Hertz began charging my bank card for the rental, even though the insurance was paying. When i protested, Hertz put a $500 hold on my bank card. It took 9 days to fix it and i had to file small claims to get a refund. I will not rent a car from Hertz under any circumstances.
You should have realized the problem, when you rented from a place that rhymes with 'hurts'. ;)
@@Jito463it’s usually done by the insurance company. You don’t get to pick.
@@BusArch42 Lighten up, it was just an excuse to use that particular play on words.
@@Jito463 Don’t worry, I share a similar sense of humor and would have replied the same. LoL
Rented one from them, did a burnout until the tires went bald.
Everyone here is missing the biggest point. She has the proper paperwork showing that she is the rightful owner of the car. Hertz stole the car from her and somehow the authorities (DMV according to the article) claim that this is a civil matter.
Uh, What?
She has papers showing she is the owner. They took it. That's theft. How is that not criminal?
It is not the DMVs call as to whether it is criminal or civil, that would be up to the police and prosecutors office. She should file a stolen car report to the police if for nothing else to protect her rights. Hertz failed to report it stolen originally and they have lost their rights to the car.
Because although we claim corporations are people they are not. You can't handcuff Hertz and book them at the county jail. Because it's a corporate no singular individual is legally responsible.. It's a giant clusterf÷%k.
She needs to hire a service to recover HER car and then sue Hertz to reimburse her.
@@Rickmakes apparently she can just call a tow company and they won't bother to check before they steal it from someone else lol.
Corporations are people that don't have to worry about legal repercussions.
Based on recent history, I was expecting Hertz to have auctioned the car off themselves, then reclaiming it just because.
yep I was to
In the beginning of covid they moved their cars out of rsw Airport to a empty field next to the airport. 2500 cars mysteriously went up in flames at 3am 3 days later. No lightning etc.
Yep
@@CHMichael 3900 cars went up in flames, and investigation determined that it was mostly likely the hot exhaust on the dry grass.
@@jorceshaman they moved them there days before the fire.
Hertz: reports cars they rented stolen, and has their customers arrested.
Also Hertz: doesn't bother to report a car stolen when it's actually missing.
Then they lose the car and it is legally auctioned off, Hertz lost their car through their own inability to track it. Hertz then steals the car from the new legal owner.
The Hertz fiasco is a fascinating story.
And claims they didn't know it was auctioned off, but somehow were still able to find it even after it had completely different plates and was located in a completely different country.
all rentals have gps trackers they are full of shit @@AngelaAmaryllis
Why doesnt hertz brand their cars? It would be signifcantly harder to steal their cars if its branded Black and Yellow with a big fat HERTZ on both sides and the roof. With a HERTZ banded rear seat
This is clear cut theft. They stole her car and should be tried criminally
Absolutely. Unfortunately any time you ask a bureaucrat to do anything they don't do all day every day they will do anything they can do to pawn it off on somebody else. So if it is a civil case then you have to deal with it. That is why everybody hates all bureaucrats.
Exactly. The tow company couldn't produce ownership papers. But she can!
What brought the vehicle into the possession of the entity that sold it? The individual who brought it across the border against the contract they signed I suppose is Hertz's problem. Plot twist, True to their style Hertz Mexico declared it stolen in Mexico before she bought it so it's Hertz's car. Contact the embassy...
This could get very interesting.
Seems like the tow company committed theft. Don't they have to verify ownership? Can I call them and have them steal a car for me based on my word?
Mistakes =/= crime
Lack of intent to commit a crime means it's not a crime.
There should be a penalty for authorities who falsely claim something is a civil matter out of laziness, when actually it isn't.
As I see it, it is both a civil and criminal matter.
@@jamesodell3064 I'm talking about in general, where authorites say something is a civil matter just to make you go away because they don't feel like doing anything about it.
This seems like 100% theft.
Qualified imunity
What I don't understand is stating who has legal title is not a civil matter. It may be one fact in a civil matter but the answer to the question is not a civil matter. It is literally the job of the public servant. I think she might have a lawsuit againist the DMV as well.
I do love how in the U.S. and here in the U.K. it's always a 'civil' matter when it's a business doing wrong, but it's 100% criminal if an individual makes the same kind of mistake.
That's because corporations are "people" for the purpose of civil matters, but not for the purpose of criminal matters. As a rule, courts don't prosecute corporations for their crimes because it's not possible for them to commit crimes. You have to prosecute the individuals involved in the corporation.
In the US the name on the pink slip owns the car. No question, it is the law. Not the same in UK.
It’s a goddammned travesty! I’ve had people steal stuff from me; I could prove they stole it, they were known thieves, and the police said ‘it’s a civil matter’! They should have arrested the bastards, and given me my property back.
it's called corporate fascism
@@AxionSmurf Lmao?
Firstly that's a redundancy, corporatism is an inherant part of fascist doctrine. Secondly, one of the core goals of the fascists was to erase that kind of private soft-power. All power had to be formalised and centralised in the state or eradicated.
People I know in south Texas had a Ford LTD stolen in the 1970’s. The car was taken into Mexico, there was nothing the police could do. About 6 months later they were shopping in Mexico when they saw the car parked. It had Mexican government plates on it. The dad still had the keys so he tried the lock - it opened. He started the car and drove it back to the US. He really got a kick out of a decal on the sun visor “Property of the Federal Judicial Police.” He stole his car back from the Federales. Apparently they really liked the Ford LTD as police cars but they were hard to get in Mexico.
Self help 1, Federales 0.
I love it!
It is amazing that Hertz is still in business.
I still remember Hertz commercials that had OJ in them.
@@stevebabiak6997 I remember when Hertz was a top-tier premium rental company.
@@stevevarholy2011 dam that was ages ago
@@stevevarholy2011 Wait they were? Not in my lifetime I guess. I always remember them a scummy shitbags
What happened to this company. This story should have hit the world news.
Hertz: reports cars stolen that aren't stolen. Also Hertz: Steals cars that aren't reported stolen. Bravo Hertz, bravo.
Right? The whole thing just smacks of overworked and underpaid workers to me. I've been in too many long lines waiting for a rental car, it's not just Hertz, but their name sure makes the headlines a lot...perhaps there's an unusually good reason?
Makes perfect sense. They know how many cars got stolen and simply report that number of cars stolen. Looking up which cars were the ones that got stolen would be too much work.
If hertz is involved, it means they take cars whenever they want. You park your car close to a Hertz rental, they might claim ownership of it too so beware.
They're losing lots of money because why would they even need to steal if they're profitable? That or they're making deals with criminal organizations. I can't think of anything else.
Makes me happy that my hometown does not have a Hertz dealership at all.
We only have Enterprise, and yes i
Enterprise also sucks but I'll take Enterprise over hertz any day of the week.
Throw the CEO in jail for stealing. That'll clean up their policies real quick.
Give them a blanket party.
Corporations are people that don't have to worry about legal repercussions. Thanks SCOTUS.
The tow company needs to experience criminal charges as well.
@@xerothedarkstar Which is a ruling that needs to be overturned.
The CEO didn't steal the car. He might be found responsible in some way for some Hertz employee who did their job badly, but that's not theft.
I worked with a single mother on the run from an abusive ex go to jail for purchasing an enterprise rental car. She had the paperwork, receipts, and everything to prove she purchased it but they took her to jail for auto theft anyways. Last I heard she had skipped bail since her ex had found her from the jail publishing her name, photo, etc on their blotter. She went on the run because the police couldn’t protect her. Sometimes our system just completely fails.
There is no justice system, only a criminal adjudication machine.
The moral of this story is to steal a car with a tow truck to avoid criminal charges.
Exactly. Hook on your truck = license to steal.
unless in texas
Wonder if it was Lizard Lick towing ?
In response to the @christian6911comment above. BAM! You can bet your arse that if well dressed, well spoken people owning an expensive property called the police to prevent a vehicle from being towed, the police would STOP it from taking place, because tow truck drivers only have an order to retrieve the vehicle in question, but usually have no paperwork explaining WHY, they have the authority to do so. If one lives in a low rent apartment, the police WOULD ALLOW your car to be towed and claim it were a civil matter.
I thought the moral of the story is to rent a car from hertz. With insurance. Then enter the car in a demolition "last one standing" derby. Give what's left back to hertz. You're free and clear since you got the insurance.
Knowing Hertz's track record, I'm shocked they didn't file a police report and have her arrested for auto theft.
You're assuming they didn't try that first.
Notice that for her it would be auto theft, but for them it is a "civil matter". That is why they just don't care. Other people face criminal charges, while they just maybe pay some money.
🤣🤣
They knew that they were wrong and were hoping to hustle the car back to Mexico…..
Don't give them any ideas
The towing company has no record of how the car ended up in their yard? That sounds fishy.
Someone should check if they have lots and lots of cars in their yard with no idea how they got there😆😆
That would make them one of the more organized towing companies. They had a record that they ever had it. That's pretty good by tow company standards.
Random Towing Company, proudly towing your cars since 1976.
Records? We don't need no stinkin' records.
@@jeremywilliams5107 you mean 1776...
Once she wins in court she needs to file criminal charges of car theft against hertz and the people at hertz who called this in and filled a false police report. It is so important that this happens because the people who did this need to be held accountable.
the theft charges should be the towing company who could not show how they got it to the lot.
You can't file criminal charges as a citizen, you can request the DA do so but that's it, also there was never a police report they claimed it was unreported stolen vehicle, if there was any form of police report it was also likely done in Mexico since that's where the vehicle is lost
@@RobertMarshall-d2n unfortunately that's towing companies in another country... Cross border criminal charges against companies are kind of hard to do anything with
For real, so many people at Hertz need to go to jail for all the false police reports they've filed. If I was a police officer I wouldn't even be willing to investigate anything called in by Hertz because I'd assume that they're lying and filing yet another false police report.
A clean title is a clean title.
So to summarise:
Hertz Mexico didn't respond to the paperwork from the towing company, and so at that point lost title to the car.
Hertz conveniently forgot this, and claim it's still theirs.
Good luck, lady, you're clearly in the right here.
Doesnt sound like the towing company many any effort to contact the legal owner before selling. The fact the the towing company has no records seems suspicious too
Like Lehto says, that's assuming all those facts are true of course. Which we don't really know, that's what the court case is for.
I had a bank "repossess" my car once. It was a used car that NEVER had a loan on it. The original owner bought it cash at the dealer and 10 years later I bought it cash from them. Not knowing what happened, I reported the car stolen. About 3 weeks later, the police come by and tell me they found the car, but a finance company has it claiming that I never made the payments. So I called the lawyer and gave him all the paperwork...took 6 months, but I got the car back, damages, and they had to reimburse me for the cost of buying another car. The best part--I bought the car in AZ and the finance company that took it was in GA and did not even operate in AZ. The arbitration hearing was a comedy. The arbitrators started with show us the loan documents. Nothing but stupid looks. I never had to "prove" it was my car, they had to prove they did not steal it. Near every military base there are shady car dealers/financers and they will steal anything.
I flip classic cars in Arizona, after 5 years of the police report of it being stolen Arizona considers it an "Abandoned car" so if they had tried to go through the court, even an arbitrator they wouldn't have won anyway because it was past the 5 year mark anyway.
This could happen if the dealer took your cash but submitted a loan agreement with the finance company and took that cash as well without your knowledge.
@@ForburyLion How are they going to do that? you have to sign the payment agreement.
@@TheREALOC1972 any yahoo can sign your name. Of course it's a forgery but you have to prove that.
@@jessestreet2549 Repossing a car that doesn't have a bank agreement on it is illegal also. Noone's going to knowing commit a felony and forge someone's signature on a bank note, what's the pay-off for them?
I’ve never seen a company that can’t keep track of their vehicles but perfectly explains why they keep filing for bankruptcy
@mike thats why theyre bankrupted. They let some Mexican drug dealer drive their rental across the border and steal their car working with the towing company.
I bet the lady being sold the car got a huge discount. But she is also in on the scam or got bamboozled.
Either way crooks skirt the law this way.
It's not a civil matter.
They stole her car, that makes it a criminal matter.
Even if it was in good faith yeah its criminal in my mind, since this really needs criminal courts to get involved, instead of expensive civil courts that are about mix of how strong case you have and how much money you can afford to sue them. If they have millions behind, they will drag the case until you run out of money.
Usually they rent the car to you then tell the cops you stole it, then hit you with late fees while it sits in the impound yard.
...and you're still trying to make bail for car theft. 🙄
Meanwhile, the car in question went to auction
Best way to steal stuff - incorporate and cops will do nothing.
That's happened more that a few times. A person rents a car then returns it. The rental company loses track of it then assumes that it wasn't returned.
Hertz has worked hard to build this new reputation. They have certainly earned it. I used to rent from them, competitively with other companies, but haven’t for years now simply because they have elevated the risk of hassle and legal issues just for doing business with them.
I'm with you. I will NEVER rent from Hertz
I'm with ya
Just a reminder to people that Dollar, Firefly, and Thrifty are all also owned by Hertz, so don't rent from them either.
Ditto.
I don't see how anyone with any sense would rent from them at this point
This whole thing of "it's a civil matter" just baffles me. So someone can drive off with your car or sqat in your house and despite you being the legal owner the entire justice system just shrugs it's shoulders and says " not my problem, you want justice, you better have money". Amazing to me.
ever watch louis rossmann?
I love the idea of he owner suing Hertz for the cost of a rental cars (non Hertz, of course) whilst the case is on.
This is because, as a civil matter, it needs to be taken care of in court. The folks at the DMV are not attorneys nor are they judges. That is why it becomes a matter for the courts.
@@v.sandrone4268 hopefully the punis are large
As to squatting in a house, unfortunately in most jurisdictions it is a civil matter, and the owner needs a court order before being able to legally oust the squatters.
I was under the impression that repossession of a vehicle you don't own is theft?
You should also get the impression we live under duel sets of laws/rules...One for us, and one for them...
Here in Oklahoma, I actually had a brand new Geo Storm illegally repossessed a yr and a 1/2 later because of a bank error. My wife, up at 4:30 AM to feed our baby, woke me up in a panic yelling "Our car has been stolen!" I reported it to the police over the phone and was told that it had been repoed. The terms of the loan allowed for a 3 month grace period. The problem was that I made all the payments on time every month. And even though my payment book, which is always initialed and dated by a bank official, showed this, they claimed that I was over the grace period. It took a month of a knock- down drag-out fight to get it back before the bank finally admitted to a clerical error. It worked out for me, because in order to avoid being sued they cleared the 2yrs remaining on the loan.
Good for you
Well I wasn't expecting to see that car in a story. I owned a geo Strom from 2014 to 2021. I loved that car. I had a 91 gsi in yellow.
The bank was at fault not a suprise
Why are you lying 😂
The bank did not give you 10 grand because of some clerical error.
They paid ten grand because they stole a vehicle.
Boycotts Hertz Companies.
They should move fast to make Her whole.
People have long memories.
I’ll think twice before using them.
😂 Most of their business comes from corporate accounts, not individuals. People have been boycotting those thieves for years to no avail.
I used to be a Hertz customer. I had a car scheduled for me in another city I flew to. when I got there to get it I was told "oh, no car for you, you had a traffic ticket for something somewhere." the ticket happened a year or so before I made the reservation. if Hertz didn't like it, why didn't they look it up when I went to reserve the car? I walked across the airport to National and they handed me keys to a nicer car for less on the spot 🙂 I still wonder how Hertz exists anymore 🤔
It was better than what Enterprise did me. They are trying to charge me even tho the car dealership took care of everything.
From what I've seen here in Europe - corporate contracts. For instance, when buying stuff from IKEA you can rent a van or a trailer. And since IKEA isn't a car rental company, that company is actually Hertz.
@TheMoonEcat enterprise has a local bill collection after me for a new windshield it was heavily scratched upon rental they pushed on my insurance i sent every picture and they claimed sun glare and that I damaged it. I even had the agent note it down on the agreement and I signed on it. They mysteriously 'lost' that but still have documents I rented like um that was the rental agreement... jerks I'm blacklisted and I don't care my local hertz gave me no problems as a franchised location but enterprise will never get a penny from me. Now there's turo and other similar alternatives online so these rental companies are falling by the wayside.
hertz still exists cause they rip ppl off
@@budsodastories why didn't you retain copies of all documents and the damage declaration?
I'd phone the police and demand they arrest the CEO of the company for grand theft auto. She has the paperwork to show legal ownership. If they want compensation, they need to sue the person they rented it to.
Remember when Hertz went around filing fake stolen care reports to where people who rented from them ended up getting arrested, charged with auto theft, and thrown in jail. One guy who never even rented a car from Hertz got his name in their funky database and ended up spending 6 months in jail for a crime he didn't even commit.
Take hertz and the police that arrested you trough court and become a millionaire from the lawsuit
@@j.w.1182 I think hertz takes advantage of a loophole in these cases, so they rarely get penalized
@@arbjful I think Hertz just uses the principle of "we are a huge company with lots of money and lawyers so we think we can get away with these practices". And most of the time they do, because their lawyers can send very aggressively threatening letters and aren't above pointing out that YOU really can't afford to sue Hertz. Even if you can afford it and win, that's just one lost case in a series of probably hundreds or even thouands of cases, so for Hertz it will still be a very profitable practice.
I got a letter years ago that I had a parking ticket in Philly, owed a lot of money and they demanded I pay. I have NEVER been to Philly, ever. I sent a letter back stating that, I never heard from them again.
@@bikerkat01 I got a parking ticket in the post. Our car is registered as a red Renault. Ca in picture was a green citroen. False plates. I pointed this out. By the way, when they do the address search it tells them make and model of car with colour.
I had something like this happen. When I was 19, I got a car impounded, but the impound lot tried to auction it while it was still under impound and moved it to a neighboring town. The sheriff department caught it, found the car, and wrote me a letter advising me to press charges for grand theft auto. I did. Turned out it was my landlord and his junk yard. Then he tried to hold the car from me until I paid him what he illegally paid at auction for it. He went to jail then a few months later died of a heart attack.
You killed that poor man! Lol.
Sometimes karma lets you watch
Awesome story, I read it to my children before bed. What a happy ending 😊
@@TheBigdog868 And it's really hot.
Had a dui when i was 22, got found not guilty, but they towed my vehicle months before i actually got through the court proceedings, then the police or whoever had it sold it, as it was held for a week or so and then fined for those days, which I didn’t have the money. Never was reimbursed
The malicious part is that they had to have done a title search in order to find the new owners name, address, and new tags. They had to have known the car was no longer theirs.
Exactly. But being a corporation with deep pockets, they bank on the people they steal from being unable to afford to take them to court.
they simply didnt care
How do you think the car got repoed? They ran a title search and instructed the repo to pick up the car based on their outdated documentation.
Or, sent the tow company to the address that the tracking device was reporting.
Rental vehicles have GPS devices on them.
That's wild...reminds me of a news story a while back where a bank mistakenly forclosed on a fully paid house and wouldn't relent after losing the cases in court untill finally the owners of the home had to get a forclose served on their local branch of the bank.
ROFL: BOA corporate couldn't cut the check fast enough!!!
I've had this happen to me, or something similar, and I believe it was Hertz.
Hertz reported my car stolen.
I was driving home from work and got pulled over.
Within minutes I was surrounded by cops with guns drawn claiming that I was in possession of a stolen vehicle.
While I did get it worked out, I couldn't believe the headache I had to go through in order to prove it was my vehicle and the danger I was put in during that initial confrontation with police.
Did you buy your vehicle from a dealership? Or from just someone?
@@jenjenny9968 It was a used vehicle from a Ford Dealership. I had the car for just over a year when it happened...again, if I recall correctly. It was a long time ago; I want to say somewhere around 1996-98.
@@chrisgill1302 Did you sue them?
@@largol33t1 I did not. I was young, broke, and non-litigious.
Australia has a very simple solution to this. Cars that are stolen or have money owing on them, owners can list the vehicle on a REVS register. Buyers can get a REV's check certificate and and if it lists neither of those things, then the car can NOT be taken back from them. The onus is on the original owner to list the vehicle on the REVS register or they lose out.
What is amazing to me is they would rather attempt to bankrupt this woman in legal fees rather than give up a car they can easily afford to lose. They have to know they legally don't own the car in America where it resided at the time of repo.
That rental company is such a mess their slogan should be, "We'll make all your rentals Hertz like hell!"
I'm perplexed why the cops didn't order the towing company to give her the car back once it was revealed that her paperwork was correct.
"It's a civil matter, but for now it's hers. If a judge says differently we'll talk then but she's leaving with this car."
Storage fees ...
@@whoyakidding1301 if it's taken unlawfully they're not charging anyone.
The towing company likely does not have the car.
Why store it at the inbound yard?
They likely handed it over to Hertz USA.
Hertz USA entered the car into their system - meaning loosing it - transferred it to Hertz Mexico - meaning mixing it up again somehow.
Have you never dealt with cops before? They ain't gonna do nuttin'.
Because the cops would be siding with a serf over a corporation (who has more money). The system is designed to do the opposite.
DMV should also be held accountable. Once the title was issued and registered to her they negated the 'civil issue'. Hertz should not be allowed to change anything relating to the car until this is settled in court.
They should start charging Hertz employees or the CEO for wrongful police reports and for car theft.
My question would be, how the hell did Hertz even find the car? They weren't looking for it too hard when it went missing.
My question too. It had new plates. Did they have access to the state database to see who owned it in order to find it?
Even better it's for a foreign subsidiary company, Hertz USA shouldn't even be involved
@@Nope_handlesaretrash hmm... it can make sense that Hertz Mexico Legal Team hands over the case to Hertz USA Legal Team and Hertz USA Legal Team represents Hertz Mexico.
Does not make it easier.
@@BanaiFeldstein not really id wager it had a tracker on it its common for rental companies to put them on cars. The issue is why did it take so long be it that maybe due to the battery being dead(they do that after a while and sounds like it was in an impound yard a while then when it was powered again they sat on it for a while to make sure the gps wasnt moving and so on.
My guess would be that they were watching for the VIN to show up in Carfax or similar. Once the new owner got it inspected or the oil changed somewhere, they knew where it was.
I use to work for this corporation that had in house counsel. Part of my job was to email the lawyer abt certain actions to see legality of such. And most times the lawyer would reccomend not to do it or reccomend other steps. When i wrote up a report and sent it to powers that be 99.99 percent of the time they would go against legal advice. Could not figure out why until i found out that majority of the time people could not afford or the price of a lawyer cost more than what it was worth. Even if they could sue for court costs and such it sometimes just wasnt worth the risk or they did not have the money up front. I think hertz is just playing a numbers game. They probably did this a few times and just havent made the news yet. I think its a dirty game personally.
It sounds like another revenue stream to me. And you're right, its a legal system not a justice system and it comes at a price many cannot afford. It sounds like Hertz have it all figured out. If they get called out on lets say 1 in 10 and then have to pay they are well still in front.
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER rent a car from Hertz. I heard about the stories of them claiming cars were stolen and had people arrested WHO HAD OPEN CONTRACTS for the car rental. One guy spent 4 months in jail because of this. Another guy, an ex police investigator was arrested in a 7-11 parking lot because Hertz claimed the car he rented was never returned.
A few weeks later I returned a car to Hertz in Nashville airport and two weeks later Hertz called me and ACCUSED me of not returning the car. It was a 6am and there was no attendant. At 8am they should have barcoded the car in and issued a receipt. That was NEVER done. This when on for weeks. Finally an investigator found the car on the Nashville lot in the maintenance bay. They NEVER checked it in.
I rent from AVIS now.
You live in a land of unicorns. "Oh no, don't rent from hertz". Like Enterprise, Alamo or Budget are hundreds times better. Many times you are lucky to get any car from any company when rental lot is empty. All rental companies has pages of horror stories, just read their reviews. Hertz is better than most of others
They're not all perfect... Look for TH-cam video: Avis Charged Woman for Driving Rental 22K Miles in 3 Days!
@@AK-oz4ew funny cause i hear about this horror story more from Hertz
And the worst part about Hertz is that they even got some people arrested for renting a car that Hertz had already wrongly reported stolen and hadn't bothered to tell the police that they made a mistake or the car was returned. So even if you did everything right Hertz incompetence can STILL get you arrested on false charges.
I’m pretty sure they all engage in illegal practices. They offer “reservations” on their website, take your money, but nothing is ever actually “reserved”. The number of times I’ve reserved a vehicle only to turn up and get a 🤷♂️ when they don’t have anything even remotely close to my “reservation”. This seems like textbook false advertising, potentially fraud in extreme cases (which aren’t exactly rare, even though extreme).
As soon as it was stolen from Hertz, their insurance should have paid them anyway.
Part of me thinks that hertz knows exact what's going on and is hoping to frustrate the victim till they give up, because the other explanation is simply that they are simply too dumb to understand how badly they messed up.
After everything is said and done, it will end up costing hertz far more to fight this than they can hope to recoup from hypothetically get the car back and throw it back into circulation.
This car was rented in Mexico. The tow yard said they had no record of how they got possession of the car
@@niyablake And if Hertz Mexico have taken the vehicle back across the border I would imagine getting Mexican courts to release the vehicle back to the rightful owner in the US is going to be difficult, particularly if there are different laws between the US and Mexico covering the disposal of vehicles by auction.
@@stephengraham1153 Well, it was auctioned in the US. The parent company could be sued for theft and a return of funds if the car can't be returned. In theory
@@goldenhate6649 And punitive damages as well which could be in the Millions of Dollars.
@@niyablake
So that means Hertz and the towing company have a problem they need to settle among themselves, but when a towing company sells a car correctly, that's final.
Or in other words: Towing auction sale transfers the liability of mistakes being made, to the towing company.
But Hertz would lose to the towing company, as Hertz can't even prove the car was missing, so they'll never prove they claimed it before the auction.
The last time I dealt with Hertz, they were VERY quick to use the threat "or else we'll report it stolen immediately". Like, get it here by this time, not a minute later or else we'll report it stolen. Use the original credit card to extend the rental and not a different credit card or a debit card or we'll report it stolen. I'll never do business with them again.
It's been my experience that the people who are most defensive about getting stolen from are thieves.
Spot on comment!
I agreexwith you to an extent. I'm no thief. But, I'll cap a thief stealing my shit.
We Dutch have a saying 'The innkeeper is, the type of person he expects his guests to be'. The people instantly thinking of theft, tend to be thieves.
@@fredpuntdroad8701 That's actually a good saying.
I’ve seen youtube videos mentioning how hertz rented out a car and the renter returned it and hertz claimed their car was stolen. One video had more than one person this happened to. I’m a little surprised hertz can keep doing something like this
My god, Hertz is absolutely never going to recover from all these scandals, thefts, and false police reports. It’s literally gotten to the point people have to consider before rental that they could be putting their own lives at risk simply by renting from such a reckless company like Hertz.
This recession will have the government throwing money at them faster than Ukraine! Everything we deem atrocious, they say is _too big to fail._
But renting anything from them is cheap as borscht. There will always be people willing to risk it to save money?
@@downhomesunset
The reason I stopped renting from Hertz is because they had gotten more and more expensive over the decades along with increasingly subpar service. Enterprise may not always be the cheapest but is the most consistent in customer service.
The next time I rent a vehicle, it won't be from Hertz simply because they just don't have their management feces together enough to safeguard me as a customer.
I was for 7 months in prison because of Hertz Germany !
After 7 months ... NOT GUILTY !
If, as they claim, they didn’t know the car was sold off at an auction…
How did they trace it back to someone’s house and identified the car if it had been registered with a new license plate?
They would have had to do some research to trace it through various owners, seen the records of transactions and simply opted to ignore all of that.
Thats actually a very good point, its not like they went around checking VINs.
So its just entirely theft! They did know it wasn't theirs.
Car will have had a tracker, someone will have realised it was missing and checked the tracker without looking to see what had actually happened to the car.
When you change title to a car, you put the VIN on the paperwork. The license plate is married to the VIN.
false, court case shows no tracker equipped as it was removed by auctioneer.
Weirdly how towing companies are always blameless. "We don't know how we ended up with this car" is a valid explanation. Great business model.
The shenanigans that towing companies get up to behind the glass at recepton. So the car had a value of 21k how much of that did the towing company pocket
@@gerardmccarthy2432 Yes everyone is screaming Hertz is wrong in this scenario…. the tow company never explained throughout how and where they became in possession of this vehicle and why they took it auction so quickly. Supposedly they sent Hertz notice they were taking it to auction which might be BS in itself . I think this tow company instigated this to make some 💰
Go read the reviews of Cortes Towing in San Diego, LOL. It reeks like they knew what they were doing.
Lol especially because they are the only ones capable of moving the car without the keys.
as someone that was a tow operator, I can tell you they are NOT blameless and they should sue the tow company. It was wrongfully repod.
Recently used Hertz, they took my reservation for Christmas Eve but the rental place was actually closed that day. Left me in a terrible situation and then they hit me with a $150 "no show" fee. Funny how I only got a refund, but not paid $150 for my troubles. No show only goes one way
If it was worth my time I'd take them to small claims for breech of contract to recoup the difference in having to get a last minute Christmas Eve rental from another company
I'm surprised anyone still uses hertz. You're lucky they didn't have you arrested.
@@CHMichael it was purely out of convenience. Use the place next door or go on a 40 minute train ride to get to another rental company. I'll definitely take the train ride next time
Pay a lawyer to file a lawsuit for $1,500,000 so that it makes the tv news.
@@MISTER-G-2u That sounds like a surefire way for me to get anti-slapp lawed and lose a bunch of money
I’d have disputed that $150 “fee” with my bank. And showed up the next time they opened. Made sure to document that they were closed. Allowed you to make a reservation and got a lawyer and reached out to the news
It was stolen. Stolen by Hertz.
Nope. The car was abandoned , then towed . the tow yard never told hertz about and then auctioned it off violating the law/ Just imagine having your car towed and never told who took it
Late to the show, but how come Hertz, who doesn't legally own the car anymore, is not sued for theft? You can't legally "repossess" something you don't legally own.
You'd think Hertz would either consult with their legal department before doing this, or fire them for the terrible advice they keep getting.
No need to consult with legal because they did not expect any gov entity to stand up to them and they were right.
If their legal counsel told them this was OK, Hertz has a pretty good case against them to sue them for legal malpractice.
DMV says Hertz can do it, no problem.
Hertz has more expensive lawyers and deeper pockets than most individuals, so are likely to win. Individuals know this so are unlikely to sue them.
@@jwenting I agree
So Hertz not only obstructs justice and puts innocent men behind bars out of sheer laziness, and gets people arrested for using their services normally... but also STEALS CARS.
Hertz is GTA protagonist.
That's what I'm thinking here... What a big company like Hertz is going to do with a STOLEN car in their inventory?
Towing company just shows up at her home, and confiscates a vehicle because "someone told them it was theirs".
Hertz being scumbags aside, how long are these towing companies not going to be held accountable for that BS?
This is my question as well. Can't she go after this tow company too? Especially if they took it from her driveway or something. I would think that tow companies aren't allowed to just tow any vehicle at any time because someone told them to, but especially if the person they took it from had the legal and valid title at the time.
@@midnightgamerdad5963 This one is complex. They were contracted by Hertz who said it was their car. They had no way of knowing if Hertz was right or not, and if asked, Hertz could have faxed a copy of the title. So, the tow company may have technically stolen the car, but they were acting in good faith. Yes, they may be on the hook, but their insurance company would probably get involved to defend them as they honestly did not think they were doing anything wrong. If the case went against them, and Hertz was not on the lawsuit, they would then turn around and sue Hertz for their expenses in dealing with Hertz's mistakes.
shady/crook can use tow companies to do their dirty work.steal cars, and the tow driver is sticking their neck out, and being used a lot of times to help others comit a crime, and they don't necessarily are aware of anything......in some cases
I used to rent from Hertz back when I traveled quite a bit. But they turned sleazy many years ago and I will never do that again.
The one that really got my craw was, a month after returning from an international trip, suddenly finding an unexpected $200 (a lot back in the 80's) charge, with no explanation. I challenged the charge and after two months Amex closed it out - Hertz never responded to their query.
They just wanted a $200 bonus and hoped the customer wouldn't notice
I spent many years as an insurance adjuster for a large insurance company. I was forced to deal with Hertz due to our corporate agreement. I had some epic run-ins with Hertz forcing them to honor agreements.
They MUST Hate u haha
Bottom line America... Hertz can not be trusted to do the right thing... stupidity or laziness or greed or whatever. Do business with another rental company... Check your BBB re rental companies in your region...
@@yankeepapa304 No company can be. They will always do what is _expedient;_ if they do the right thing, it's completely by accident.
@@xheralt Not all companies are like Hertz. That's a false equivalence.
@@j_taylor they are all like Hertz , you are starting from the wrong attitude
I rented a car at Hertz in Dearborn, Michigan. Went to the gas station to fill it up & it had no gas cap. I returned the car with the exact fuel level it was rented at and the clerk DID NOT open the gas cover at all, but charged me $35 for a missing gas cap, then added $170 for missing fuel because she said it went out full, not with the less than 1/4 tank. Only when I started to call the Dearborn police did she drop the charges (I still have both of the receipts)
You are lucky that she did not try to push the issue as the police would be powerless in that civil matter.
always take pictures when renting
@@bighands69 I had a receipt going out that said the car had 5/16 tank of gas - not full. The police would have had cause to arrest her for theft, and her manager as it was planned since they knew the cars going out didn't have gas caps so they didn't bother to look. Plus if they checked the cars ready to go out and found them missing caps they would have that as more evidence to conspiracy to commit theft.
😯
Before leaving with a rental have the fuel level noted on the rental agreement, among the other deficiencies.
Hertz...the only company whose name tells you exactly what it feels like to do business with them.
ROFLMAO. i bought my car from them 12 years ago and it didnt really hertz to bad.
The tow company needs to be charged with Grand Theift Auto .
My brother used to own a towing company. One day an apartment complex called him to tow away an abandoned car. It was a 2 year old Nissan Maxima with a flat tire and a bent rim. He went through the whole process of notifying the lienholder through registered mail as required by the state. After the required wait time for a response, it was sold with a new title. Three months after it was sold, the bank that was the lienholder called and said that they were sending a tow truck to pick up the car. When he told them that the car wasn't theirs anymore, they threatened with a lawsuit. My brothers lawyer put a swift stop to the proposed lawsuit.
We already know tow drivers steal our cars. Thanks for sharing. 🙄🙄🙄
So he gets the benefit of an expensive 2 yr old car with just a flat & bent rim? Yeah, that's very honest of you😢😢😢😢😢. Tow drivers are thieves too. I'm surprised they aren't sniped at.
@mawi1172 Apparently reading comprehension is not one of your strong attributes. The tow truck was requested by the apartment complex management to remove the abandoned vehicle from their property. The only 'people' who were affected by this was the bank that financed the vehicle. It had been abandoned for about a month before being picked up and when the bank was notified by registered mail of the fact that the towing company had the vehicle, the bank totally ignored the fact until they realized that payments hadn't been made for over 6 months.
OJ Simpson 2008
@@mawi1172 The bank could have taken prompt action to recover their vehicle once they were legally notified. They FAILED. Not the tow operator's problem, he's got expenses to have towed away the vehicle and then stored it. At a certain point, the vehicle is considered "abandoned" and the tow operator may sell it.
Car gets stolen by a towing company
Police say its a civil matter
and the police wonder why they are hated.
Blame the the higher courts
The police don't make those calls. That's the court system. Police don't make the laws or the rules, they enforce them.
@WayneBraack I'm pretty sure theft has been illegal for a few hundred years. The police just didn't know how to deal with a company stealing instead of an individual.
@@WayneBraack Car is stolen. It is not the police job to say no it isn't. It is the courts job. Arrest the thief and let the court decide. Plaintiff filed the complaint. Cops job is to act on it.
@@WayneBraack Police and court are parts of the same system.
I have had a few situations like this as an auto theft investigator for a police dept. If the person that had the vehicle towed from them can produce a lien free title I had the owner meet me at the tow lot and instruct the tow /repo company release it. They would complain and I told them it is a civil situation. Period. In Arizona the title denotes ownership, no lien no legal repossession, end of story.
Same in Washington state. Title is like cash. If it's in your hand it's yours period.
Any thoughts regarding the investigators in this case telling the owner of the car that it's a civil matter?
@@Melanie16040 Cop playing judge and jury? Remember police do not need to know the law.
I’m from UK and a colleague bought an ex military vehicle from auction (with all relevant paperwork). Several weeks later police turned up and recovered vehicle as reported stolen. Colleague waited several weeks then reported vehicle stolen by police to police. They said “not to be ridiculous” but owner persisted and vehicle was returned a couple days later…no apology/explanation.
I purchased a car from hertz, better keep it in my garage.
I bought a car at a impound auction here in Michigan.
About a week later I had the bank calling me and threatening me that the vehicle is theirs.
I argued with them, the lady said she is going to talk to her manager and get back to me.
I never heard from them again
I’m going through a situation kinda like this with the city of Mobile Alabama. I was the lien holder on a vehicle. I never got any payments and the customer disappeared. About a year later the vehicle some how made its way into a Mobile city impound lot, and was sold off at a police impound. We were actively looking for the vehicle and buy chance found it on a car lot in Theodore, AL by searching the VIN number. I called the dealer to find out how they came in possession of it and they told be the Mobile police auction. So I called the police department and after quite the run around, I spoke to the lone employee in that department. It was her responsibility to take the proper steps to be able to sell this vehicle. Over the phone, the attitude I got about my inquiry was that of a young lady who “snakes” her head back and fourth when speaking about things she would not like to be a part of. In a nut shell she said she contacted to owner, the fees weren’t paid, so they moved forward with selling it. Generally speaking, if the owner of a vehicle is a year and a half behind on payments, they don’t go pay the impound fee. When I asked why I wasn’t contacted considering I’m the lien holder, she said there wasn’t a lien listed. When I told her I had the title in my hand clearly showing me as the lien holder, she told me that she was busy and didn’t have time to talk to me and that I could “get a lawyer” if I didn’t like it. Well by God that’s what I did. It’s on going at this time, but currently a third party consultant that contracts to the city says that the city doesn’t feel like they are at fault and is denying my claim. Big surprise huh! What the city of Mobile has failed to realize is that I am the #1 fan of fuck around and find out. Come he’ll or high water, the city will pay me for my vehicle and the headache I’ve had to deal with since this all began. Remember folks, the more you fuck around, the more you will find out.
The problem is the city has the funds to drag this out forever.
Your best hope is to get a judgment against the city you can use as a lien and then use it to take city property (a vehicle perhaps) of equivalent value.
@@CR7659 I would start by seizing anything not bolted down in the Mayor's office.
@@DaddyBeanDaddyBean Nah, get a judgement, seize a new fire truck. See how fast they cough up the money.
Diesel Kings, what court are you using? i imagine city court will be useless in a case like this
I suspect you will soon learn the phrase sovereign immunity. However, I wish to be updated on how this proceeds!
Saw this thing happened to a man in Michigan as well. He got a default judgement since Hertz didn't show up or respond
Loved the chuckle when you read “Hertz brand standard” in their statement.
LMAO🤣
As a former Para Legal in Sacramento I can tell you that you are spot on as the law goes. It is the same in Ca as in your state. The only thing I did not hear you talk about is Grand Theft Auto charges on Hertz
And the towing company. The tow truck drivers might not be liable because of the employer trust. The towing company has the responsibility to verify the information given before "reposition" of a vehicle.
@@PhiloSage Agreed he is just told where they are and to hook them
She should also look into an insurance claim. I'm an insurance agent in AZ and I had a client buy a vehicle from a private party. Turns out it was stolen from the manufactures production lot in MI. When the vehicle was taken to a dealership for a recall it was noticed and Dodge took the vehicle back. In AZ there is a provision that allows a client to file an insurance claim if they legally own a vehicle that was previously stolen.
Good to know. thank you.
As an AZ resident, thank you for the heads-up.
The insurance company would argue that it was not previously stolen since legally repo from tow company.
Does the DMV not already have all this information?
If someone steals my car, it then gets towed, i no longer own the car?
Legally auctioned, Hertz lost that vehicle when they didn't respond to the tow company.
Yup ur right!!!
Basically it was considered abandoned.
That's nonsensical - if I steal your car, abandon it, and it gets towed, that doesn't magically deprive you of your ownership rights.
I really hope there is a follow up to this story. I want to see this lady either get her car back or compensated properly for all the stress and mental suffering.
If this goes to court - which is doubtful - it will take over a year for her to be made whole.
I say that going to court in California is doubtful, because we have pretty decent consumer protection laws, the facts of the case appear straightforward, and there is media attention. Only a really stupid lawyer would take this to trial, or even botch the settlement by lowballing the initial offer. And, while there are too many dumb lawyers out there - even with California's notoriously difficult bar exam - you would need to be extremely stupid to not tell Hertz to settle, the sooner, the better... open up that checkbook.
She needs to report the car stolen herself.
At one point in December 2022 our car was repossessed shortly after we had made our final payment in October that year, it turns out after we had paid they "lost" our payment. I had to ride through freezing snow and ice for two weeks until they mysteriously found our payment after I threatened to sue. Then I got stuck with storage and towing fees that if mclarty had done their job wouldn't have existed.
At least they did not have the people arrested . . . THIS time.
Decades ago I recall towing companies loving to tow out of state vehicles on the side of the road. Essentially, they would file a notice with the state that the vehicle was registered in and by the time the owner was notified the impound fees were more than the car was worth. The tow company would then sell the vehicle at auction.
It's amazing how tow companies are allowed to operate.
impound fees are a scam. there is no way the fee per day is justified.
@@kinguin7 Folks who can't pass a drug test drive a tow truck for a living. Same for the storage yard= it's legalized extortion.
'Budville' NM. A notorious Rt 66 speed trap' back in the day'.
There were countless many cars in back auto fuel/repair facility yard 'storage.. When Bud (also convenient, 'Budville Justice of the Peace') finally faced his maker,... earlier than anticipated... ' ;/..
@@captinbeyond tow truck drivers have to have a cdl. That means they have to pass regular drug tests. The tow company is required to test employees at random. The impound lot, not so much.
I find it appalling that a corporation can get away with anything they want! And no one gets punished.
This needs to change!
The corporation or the seller can be ordered to pay compensatory, consequential and punitive damages including attorneys' fees when she wins in court.
@@UpnorthHere yeah, but any amount that a jury would award the victim as reasonable damages to an individual is going to be a rounding error in Hertz's operational budget. Until CEOs start seeing jail time for corporate malfeasance, this problem will only get worse.
@@UpnorthHere And to make up the difference of the loss, the corporation will then (eventually) increase the price distributing the "punishment" across all the people using their service.
And that's why PastelChloe is correct to call it appalling. The corporation does get away with what they want, and they make the population pay the punishment.
It's called Capitalism.
@@deadby15 It's called the NWO. I'm old enough to remember that it didn't used to be like this at all.
there was already a class action lawsuit they agreed to settle for falsely reporting cars stolen, which resulted in some people spending months in jail. They just agreed to the settlement maybe a month before this incident.
One thing that sticks out to me in this case. The tow yard that auctioned the vehicle has "no records" as to how the car ended up in their yard. That is going to be a problem. Without a tow record of how and why the car was impounded, the auction may be nullified. Definitely not the woman that bought the cars fault. My theory is that the car was sold to a "friend" of the tow yard at a decent discount, noticed the valuation (between $501-$4000 for a 2022 Camry, LMAO) on the auction paperwork from a TV report, then flipped on facebook. Knowing the shadier side of the towing business, not an unreasonable assumption.
That may relate to questions and issues I raised in a new comment...
*Something else needs explaining:* How did Hertz find the car in order to have it towed, when the car had a new and different license plate? Did they use some kind of electronic tracking like LoJack? If so, that raises additional questions: Is LoJack also liable for damages, as an accessory to fraud/crime? Is there anything a new OWNER can do to make sure such things are turned off or removed? If the electronic tracking is a factory original system, does the car manufacturer now become liable for damages as an accessory to fraud/crime? If the towing company was not part of Hertz, is the towing company also liable for damages, as an accessory to fraud/crime?
Next set of extra questions: If ANY kind of _remote tracking_ was involved, why was the vehicle not reclaimed by Hertz at a much earlier date, before the unfortunate woman ever bought it? This being a cross-border case initially, why was the vehicle not flagged at the border, or immediately after crossing, and hunted down for reclamation at that early date, before some random towing company could ever get involved?
Finally: Or was the car identified visually by some other means, perhaps a window sticker, using either human sight or something related to machine vision? In that and some of the other scenarios I've explored, it seems like folks should be made aware that they can and should take actions to prevent their vehicle becoming the target of this kind of _corporate "self help."_
So, @user-ms1jf2pv2r - Could there be some kind of shady system which tow truck drivers have, that allows them to just drive around and get some kind of alert when they are near a vehicle somebody has been 'playing games' with and so tow it away, even though it may have been honestly bought by some unlucky person at the end of a chain of games?
How the hell this isnt a criminal case?
Laziness, and an overloaded bureaucracy that will barely prosecute crimes against people (violent crimes) but won't take on crimes against property unless the amounts are huge.
And, a court system that has trouble coping with the load with the few crimes that do make it to the courtroom, vs. plea deals and DAs dropping charges for political reasons.
Why yes, I do live in Southern California, how'd you guess???
I sold new and used cars in California for over thirty years. Here is a scenario that a dealer has to be very careful with. Let's say a new car is stolen from the lot and then gets towed a few days later because of parking or whatever. The tow yard immediately files paperwork for a lien sale to occur about 30 days later. They will also send a certified letter to the owner on record, which in this case will go to the manufacturer as no title exists. The manufacturer will then hopefully notify the dealer in a reasonable time period. If the dealer does not notice the car is missing before the thirty days is up they could potentially lose the car even though the have the MCO (Manufacturer's Certificate of Origin) Kinda like the birth certificate for the vehicle. In any case the dealer has to pay all of the storage fees, impound fees, etc. to get their car back. It gets even trickier if a used car is stolen as title is often left open until vehicle is re-sold to the end customer. The company I worked for installed inexpensive GPS units on all inventory then geo fenced and reconciled daily. Hertz should have reported the vehicle missing/stolen immediately. Bottom line is Hertz has no valid claim to this vehicle and it legally belongs to this Woman.
I've read several stories where people rented cars from Hertz. They did not record the rental properly. When the cars were noticed not being on the lot, they reported them as stolen. So here they were on vacation and got pulled over for a stolen car.
The fact that my car spends 95% of its time in my garage or on an Air Force Base is really comforting.
A friend of mine had the rims of his car stolen, while it was parked in the police station parking lot.
You say that like the commander won't happily sell your car to a tow company for headpats.
This is a PR nightmare that Hertz can't afford. Their best move would be to have that car towed back where they found it, appologize, ask for forgiveness, and take them to a VERY nice resaurant for dinner. But of coarse, they won't. They seem to hell-bent on doing the wrong thing lately.
They already owe her for time and money spent thus far, plus the loss of wages to deal with this nightmare and we don't even know if she kept her job as it may depend on her having a vehicle. Dinner aint gonna cut it.
They like many large corporations aren't actually interested in doing any of the stuff that "being a business" normally entails. Why do any of that hard stuff when just bringing in enough cash flow to keep the lights on let's them game the system by skimping another 0.1% off costs to get a bonus. Or just be "too big to fail" or take that 0.1% saved and buy back stock inflating it's price.
Lol you're under the impression this was all some kind of horrible accident? This was intentional. Rental companies selling cars under the table and then reporting them stolen is a firmly established revenue stream at this point. There is a reason that tow company has no record of how that car even ended up in their lot and hertz has no record of who supposedly rented it and never returned it.
🤣🤣What do you in the 1950's? The world doesn't work like that.
@@Kewrock
That's precisely the problem. Too many people are only concerned about what's going to benefit them/their company/their organization rather than what the moral and proper thing to do is.
If this was in the 1950s, or even the 1980s for that matter, this company absolutely would have profusely apologized publicly and done everything possible to make them whole.
That was something that was believed to be necessary in order to avoid severe damage to their reputation and severe damage to the continued financial prospects of the business. The fact that they no longer feel the need to do the proper thing, even if only for PR purposes, is an indication of the moral decline of the population in general.
It's the reason crime is so rampant. It's the reason corporations are so comfortable with taking advantage of the consumer. It's the reason government are so comfortable passing ridiculous and often times unconstitutional laws. And it's the reason cops are so comfortable abusing their power.
This has been an ongoing issue with Hertz for a few years now. It's been on various news channels with basically identical story lines to the point where Hertz has been accused of doing these things ON PURPOSE, KNOWING THAT WHAT THEY ARE DOING IS WRONG AND LIKELY UNLAWFUL. Yet, they apparently continue doing it. The pandemic has had a weird affect on all aspects of our lives.
Hertz went bankrupt and basically cannot recover their original business model, so they are basically doing a sort of exit scam, burning the company to the ground in the process of collecting as much money as possible in any slimy, scummy way they can.
Hertz had a vehicles stolen and yet everybody is acting like they are the bad guys in this. Everyone of you know that if the same happened to you what you would like to do. This is one of the problems with stolen property. There can be two victims including the buyer and the original victim of the theft.
I know most want to pick on the corporation but if they do not recover what is theirs they will not stay in business.
@@bighands69 As Steve Lehto noted, self help is not a good (nor legal) idea especially when there was likely 40 things Hertz decided NOT to do or IGNORED which caused the sale to go through.
@@bighands69 It is not about picking on a corporation. If the same thing happened to me. First of all I would have reported it stolen fairly quickly, not waiting until a long period later when it ends up at a tow yard or at an auction. Or in this case even well after those instances and another whole month later. Second of all I *most* definitely would have responded and made a lot of noise that hey this is my car _when_ I got notified by auction company or towing company that they had a car they were thinking about putting up in an auction to have the title changed to someone else. This is completely the fault of the party that specifically ignored all of this, in this case Hertz. It would be the exact same thing in reverse that IF I get a traffic ticket, was notified, and chose to ignore it and not respond. No matter how innocent I was of that charge, it would be my issue that I chose not to act accordingly and be liable for any court decisions and fines. The court and government certainly would not care or feel sorry for me either. I do not feel sorry for anyone that puts themselves in that situation. Whether a private person or a company. They have specifically made laws and policies and proper procedures so as to greatly limit two victims of theft. When one party does not follow those proper procedures, that is their issue and their problem. Especially with such a major corporation that has gone through this exact issue multiple times. Not learning from your prior mistakes is what really makes them the bad guys. Purposely doing this repeatedly with this 'self help' nonsense hoping that private person will not even attempt to uphold their rights against a big corporation, makes them the bad guys.
@@bighands69 then they should have reported it stolen…
A used car dealer in Seattle refused to transfer title after I had paid it off, then tried to repossess the vehicle. I had to go toe to toe with the slimeball owner before they finally relented. Scumbags.
The cynic in me thinks that Hertz knew where the car was the whole time, and waited until it entered the possession of someone who may not have the legal means to fight back.
Seems obvious. Hertz was notified, but didn't want to pay the fees owed. So they chose to wait until it was purchased by someone else, then used their (now out of date) documentation to have the car towed/stolen, and returned to Hertz, avoiding the fees. Clear-cut theft.
If dmv says she is the rightful owner why can she not go and reposes that car.
That's the second "un-reported car theft" issue I have seen this week. In the other video, cops used that term to go onto private property and detain the owner while they investigated the non-theft. No documented complaint existed. This is a bad sign.
Imo if it's unreported then it's just you donating it to whoever has it now
@@Z64sports or if it's "unreported/non-reported" who's to say that it's even stolen at all.
Seem like one could make the claim that ANY car on the road today is "non-reported"
Back in the Navy days, hubby bought a bike from a guy on base who was mustering out.
In CA all you need is to sign the back of the pink slip (title)
This particular bike had changed hands more than a dozen times without ever being re-titled at the DMV.
It took me nearly a year and probably hundreds of trips over to the DMV before we were finally able to title it on our name.
That was back in 1978. We still have her. She's a 69 Shovel. And worth every minute of that clusterfvck! ❤️
Was it a Honda 400 4 Super Sport? In 78 I loaned a bike to a deadbeat squid while I was on cruise, and he claimed hi lost it.
@@tolson57 🤣🤣🤣 no.
What you should have done was request a duplicate title in the original owners name but your address. You then sign his name and be done with it.
Guy in what is now Zimbabwe... Total cad and bounder... Rented car, swapped plates, drove it to airport and "sold" it to incoming tourists...then he flew out of the country... 1975 BTW...Hertz operated in that country then... Don't know if car from their fleet...
She has the title in her name, it's her vehicle doesn't matter what hertz has to say they just stole a vehicle from her.
She was probably the ONLY person with clean hands in that car's life cycle.
I had the opposite happen to me. Twelve years after I traded in a "high theft vehicle" to a dealer for a new car, I received a summons to court for "Attaching a Number Plate" illegally to that vehicle. After some research I learned: The dealer only keeps records for sales of trade-ins for 5 years. My state, Massachusetts, does not track bulk sales across state lines. My vehicle was bulk sold to Maine. The car was bought, stolen, driven back to Mass. and illegally parked. The officer ran the VIN which still showed me as owner (because Mass doesn't track bulk sales across state lines.) The officer, when doing follow-up paperwork should have checked the cross-state clearing house to see that I no longer owned the vehicle, but did not. As an individual, I got access to that information for $10 and showed the Maine ownership. I showed up to the court date. The officer did not. The case was dismissed. The RMV said they dared not touch the title information because it would conflict with the expected auction from the towing company that currently had posession of the car. I haven't heard anything further about the car since, but I haven't bothered to pay another $10 to see where the car ended up.
One night my doorbell is ringing and it's the police. He asks for me and then says we have your car. I say nope my car is parked right there. He says you don't own xyz car? I say no I traded it in NH 6 months ago. He said oh well it was involved in a few felonies and abandoned. I'm like well I mean good luck. Then he tells me I have to sort it out with 4 separate police departments in MA because they want to discuss these crimes with me. Apparently, Mercedes and VW were fighting, and Mercedes refused to release the title so it couldn't be sold. Even though I had the paperwork showing I traded it I had to explain that I didn't own it and don't know where it went 4 times. In the end I needed to hire an attorney to help sort this out even though I had nothing to do with it. Massachusetts doesn't seem to track much when it comes to cross state car sales.
@@youcancallmemaurice Wow!
@@youcancallmemaurice Holy... crap. O_O
That's your fault. Anytime you sell a vehicle it's your responsibility to make sure a proper title transfer is done and that it's no longer registered in your name. That's why when you buy a car from a dealership they complete and submit all the title and registration paperwork and fees. They aren't going to just give you the car and trust that you're going to do it yourself.
@@Rowgue51 wrong dude. If you sell a car privately to someone you sign the title over. Then you're done. There's nothing else that you can do. If the buying person doesn't go and have the title put in their name and get proper registration and plates then you can and will be screwed if something happens. Eventually after fighting it out you can be cleared but not before you jump through a bunch of hoops. This has happened twice to people that I know. Years ago My grandparents sold their car. Signed over the title and then about a month later the cops come knocking on their door saying their car had been abandoned and illegally parked on the side of the road. The buyer never went and got a new title and registration. My best friend sold her car and signed over the title. Apparently the buyer didn't get a new title and new registration. A week later The car was stolen and driven into another state and left. The cops contacted my friend and told her she was still listed as the owner. There is no way for you to check to make sure the buyer gets a new title and registration. The secretary of state/DMV isn't going to give you someone else's info. It's $tupid but so are a lot of other things too.
Hertz probably doesn't run a title check every time a missing car is located. However, after finding out the story, you would think Hertz would return the car that day with a public apology and go after the towing company.
That would require Hertz to have competent management.
If Hertz had a good PR department, they would present her with a newer car of the same make & model, with the highest trim package, as part of a public apology...
If they had competent enough management to hire good PR people, they would also be actively purging Hertz of the kind of screwups who got them in this mess in the first place.
@@chemech As for the "Competent management" line... I disagree.
They wouldn't need competent management. They would just need management that doesn't have the competence of a dodo with moderate to severe head trauma.
Seriously... Step one of handling the situation of 'when your company is caught doing a crime' is just Stop doing the crime. They're caught stealing her car? Stop stealing her car, and return it. A _child_ could have told them that.
@@chemech Why? She owns that car. What they should do is detail it, fill the tank and return it. With check for a grand a month for the time that they had possession of her car. And pray that she calls that good enough and does not sue them.
@@bobmazzi7435 either option is far better than what is happening!
@@tygerion4404 On a one-off, sure. The problem appears to me to be that Hertz is in WAY over their heads, and not CAPABLE of doing the paperwork to keep all their ducks in a row. So, they lose stuff, misfile stuff, forget to file stuff because they're just stepping out on their lunch break or it's 5:00pm on a Friday, and customers get hurt.
I don't know that it's competent management they need. It sounds like what they need is competent back-end IT crew, and rigid filing procedures, to get their tracking fixed.
So... Hertz doesn't have the title, then what makes that lawful to tow - how is that not a crime of theft committed BY the towing company and/or Hertz?
If the towing company has at least half a brain... some few do, they will have a purchase order on file from Hertz (a binding contract) with language where Hertz has legally declared that they have the lawful right to reclaim the property (car) which practically puts all of the responsibility on Hertz.
There are no titles, per se, in Mexico.
@@chemech The towing company should still be on the hook if it's a PO. They gotta get authorization to enter private land before entering private land. Since it's not a loan, there will be no document signed by the homeowner authorizing an agent of Hertz to step foot on her private land to take property from her possession, not without a court order.
What would happen if she went onto the towing company's lot and forcibly retrieved her vehicle at a day or time when nobody was at the site? The towing company's agents and Hertz agents should be facing the exact same consequence for an unlawful entry and taking of property..
If Hertz believes to be stolen, then their remedy is call the police - not hire a towing company to conduct an unlawful seizure.
@@Mysdia Self-help repossession includes retrieval of stolen or misplaced property.
Check the laws in your state, but in most places that I've heard it discussed, the repossession can be made from a driveway or parking space, so long as it is not behind a locked gate or door.
In Southern California, especially in the cities and suburbs, vehicles are routinely parked on the driveway or at the curb in front of the dwelling while the garage is used for storing things that in other places would be in the basement or attic - neither of which feature is common in our houses here.
The towing company got a work order from Hertz as part of their contract, and since they retrieve multiple cars with legitimate paperwork, they are not going to scrutinize any particular line item that closely... that's for other people to do.
Hertz really needs to go out of business. It has gotten to the point where they are so infamous for this BS, that whenever i hear about a car legal horror story its always hertz.
Avis: "We try harder." Hertz: "We quit trying."
All hail AVIS! (Avis was the violent and supreme deity in Krill religion.) The Orville.
One possibility is they (Hertz) had a GPS tracking device in the car. They located it without running the vin, and had a tow company go fetch it using the GPS locator. When a car is stolen from a rental company they need to report it, and not track it down when they realize it's no longer in the inventory. If they tracked it via the new plates, and I doubt they did, they'd have known that they no longer have a legal claim over that car.
They dont care.
@Cernunnos 2024 Jesus will return first.........
@@samrapheal1828 Jesus got deported.
I expect that they have a special agreement with automakers that they buy their cars from to have direct access to the 'connected car' data. That includes the GPS location used by the navigation system, or perhaps directly from the cellular modem.
For individual owners that access would be terminated when the car is sold, but rental companies obviously aren't in the same category as retail customers.
@@skaldlouiscyphre2453 no he didn't. It was like going from Georgia to North Carolina.
I ran a police impound service for 15 years ,and now days have been buying cars from police auctions for the last 14 years ..and this same kinda story happens waaaay more then you would expect..it's actually pretty normal