News and HeadlinesNational News

Actions

'It is not acceptable': CEO of rental giant Hertz vows to fix false theft reports

Hertz-Tesla
Posted
and last updated

The new CEO of Hertz says the company is fixing problems that led to false car-theft charges against some customers.

Stephen Scherr says Hertz didn't properly record transactions when cars thought to be missing were located. Scherr told CNBC that this is one of the first things he's trying to fix since taking over the company.

It's not clear how many people have been affected. Hertz says it's several hundred customers out of Hertz's 15 million annual transactions, but lawyers for customers say the number is more like 8,000.

“This is among the first things that I have started to look to take care of and deal with in the first 30 days I’ve been at the company,” Scherr told CNBC. “It is not acceptable for Hertz to have any customer ... caught up in some of what has happened.”

Some Hertz customers reported that they were arrested and jailed because the company wrongly accused them of stealing cars that they had rented. In some of the reported cases customers alleged they had returned the cars long before they were arrested, the Associated Press reported.