Rented a Hertz and got charged $90 a day for easy pass service whether I drove the car or not (I was camping for a week) and had no way of fighting the charges, some fine print tricked me. For such scams I vowed to never give my business to Hertz again. Ever.
IIRC this is a fee they charge you in order to have access to the vehicle's EZ pass, not for making actual trips across EZ pass bridges or the like. So if you're going to rent a car for a week and need to cross a bridge on one day, you have to enable the charge for the entire trip, or somehow prepay the charge via some website for the bridge. This is basically impossible for a tourist to figure out, of course, so they just profit from the complexity with an all-or-nothing system.
I'd love to see a campaign to coordinate small claims court claims against abusive companies.
It could really fuck a company's day up if several hundred to thousand people across the world decides to seek redress from a small claims court on the same day.
Now the company has to pay one of their lawyers ($$$) to show up, or the claim is a default judgement, which they have to pay.
So the lawyer shows up and says blah blah mandatory binding arbitration. The judge can interrupt and say "don't care, judgement against, pay the man". Or the opposite, in which case at least you cost them more than they cost you.
Which is why they probably take the default judgement and pay you.
At least in some courts, I would think filing a motion to dismiss would be enough, without swnding a lawyer to court... but I have never been theough that process before so I can't say for sure?
Still takes time, and arbitration isn't all that scary, ao forcing them to arbitrate can also be a costly endeavor for them.
I would think this is possible. I've often agreed with the other party's lawyer that oral arguments on MtDs are unnecessary and then we just let the judge rule "on the papers" without anyone having to be there in person. The judge can then just file a written order with his ruling.
Bear in mind that motions and discovery are highly frowned upon in Small Claims courts that I've litigated in. And 95% of the time the court will rule in favor of the bigger party if they bring a lawyer, just out of general hatred of courts for unrepresented litigants.
In most situations small claims court is generally self-represented, with claims for legal costs capped at a certain level dependent on the amount being claimed. For example, in NSW, Australia, there is a different cap for costs under $1000 vs $1000-$5k, and $5k-$20k. One might expect a judge to look poorly upon a large multinational sending a $2k/hr lawyer to a $500 hire car dispute.
If the arbitrator is specified as the American Arbitration Association, usually yes. See section R-9 of the AAA Consumer Rules.[1]
JAMS just updated their "minimum standards" for consumer arbitration as of May 1, 2024, and they now seem to allow for transfer to small claims court.[2]
The Supreme Court has repeatedly and willfully ignored the plain meaning of the statutes, congressional intent in writing the FAA, as well the standard rules of statutory interpretation effectively rewriting Title 9 into something it was never intended.
At this point fixing it requires congressional action.
It’s not overriding the legal system, it willfully sidestepping it. But obligating the contracted party to agree. The issue of course is that Hertz (in this case) can put whatever random requirements into the contract, and you can’t arbitrarily strike them. You still need/want their service.
That said, just because there’s an arbitration clause in the contract doesn’t mean you’re absolutely stuck. You can hire a lawyer and try to get out of it. They’re trying to keep you from doing something like that.
It still costs them to do this because they have to do the paperwork to handle it, the meetings to decide what to do, the confusion that will come from this, and the opportunity cost of these courses, as well as the bad publicity that will come from this announcement that the group doing this will of course release to social media.
Reminds me of the time I made the mistake of booking a Hertz rental through Expedia. My rental started on a daylight savings time changeover.
_Hertz_ messed up the rental dates on their end of the transaction (by multiple days, even) and would not allow me to modify or cancel the rental. I ended up disputing the charge with Expedia via an AmEx chargeback and lost.
This is a huge feature of CCs that most people don't recognize. You're paying an extra ~3% to credit card companies in exchange for the ability to dispute a charge. If a merchant (in this case Hertz) accepted cash, you would get an invoice in your hand that you could dispute on the spot and just simply not pay. The reverse would be true for Hertz who could try to sue you for not complying.
> But then don't you get that back as cashback and such?
Huh? You mean in the example scenario if I charge $500 for a car rental and get 2% cashback from my CC. I find out the car rental is charging me an extra $100 for gas that I never used. I'd complain because I'd lose out on the 2% * $100 difference for the $100 that my CC company gave me back as a result of the dispute charge?
> You're paying an extra ~3% to credit card companies in exchange for the ability to dispute a charge.
I was responding to this.
I also don't understand after re-reading where the "extra ~3%" comes from. If I go to the store and spend $100 on my CC, I'll get $2 cashback. I can pay the $100 off immediately with no interest for a savings of 2%. How are they getting 3% extra from me?
I know I get at least 2% back on all purchases and sometimes more depending on the card and category.
This is also why I brought up that usually I hear people who pay in cash get overcharged - they pay the full $100.
(leaving out how credit card fees require merchants to increase prices leading to even more expenses for cash buyers)
The "~" is important. Most merchants are incurring anywhere from 3~6% on charges made via CC. Likewise, your actual cashback varies (for example the highest I'm aware of is BoA's 2.65% cashback) and the average consumer is likely only getting about 1.5% cashback. So there is your delta.
FYI - For people who work in payments, they know it's not as simple as this, but the point is that there is a delta between the two, and it does help pay for both of the convenience AND the ability to dispute.
I thought your original post made it seem like only CC users get the extra 3~6% for the ability to dispute. My point in the thread was everyone pays it and it ends up being cheaper for the CC holder due to cashback.
"pays it" is relative. The merchant is generally charging 3~6% more than they would otherwise if they didn't use a CC. Said differently, assuming all other things equal, buying the same good for the same price from two identical stores, one who only accepts CCs and one who accepts cash, the one who accepts cash will profit more. Therefore they can, in theory, charge less for their good.
> being cheaper for the CC holder due to cashback
"cheaper" how? The spread is effectively paid for by the merchant (their processing fee is 99% of the time higher than the cashback bonus a consumer earns) which in turn goes to vendors (like credit card providers, payment processors, etc) who then allocate costs against things like customer service for charge disputes.
EDIT: The spread is the original ~3% I'm referring to, which would be an average 1.5% cashback against a 4.5% payment processing charge for a delta of 3%. In many cases this is lower (or null) but you get the point.
If both customers are shopping at the same store, and one pays in card and one pays in cash, the card holder pays less due to cashback. I agree the prices will be higher than at a store that does not accept credit cards due to not having to pay the fees.
The only way I see the extra 3% for cardholders is because they are "forced" to shop in card-accepting establishments which will have higher costs to cover fees while the cash user can choose the cheaper cash vendor.
> The only way I see the extra 3% for cardholders is because they are "forced" to shop in card-accepting establishments which will have higher costs to cover fees while the cash user can choose the cheaper cash vendor.
Correct. And my point is that this 3% tax gives you the feature to dispute the charge.
They'd end up doing something like you pay $2000 in cash upfront and then you get the unused portion back at the end, and GDP would lower significantly because most people can't afford to give businesses a line of credit like this.
Sure, but collections for something they have no justifiable reason to collect on? To be clear, what I'm suggesting is (a) hypothetical to understand the business rationale and (b) is under the premise that what is on the bill matches the service you retained. In my theoretical scenario, the onus is on the merchant to prove they've provided the service you've paid for.
The reason car rentals provide the convenience of charging your credit card without the immediate authority of you reviewing the charges is a feature of credit cards over cash, and a benefit to consumers. The other feature is that you can dispute those said charges if the merchant is also charging you for services/goods you never received (e.g., gas for an EV).
My understanding is you can get sent to collections for basically any reason and debt collectors will hound you without regard to whether it is something you should be obligated to pay or not
Yeah, this is mostly a fiction, much like the idea that if someone steals from you, your tax dollars fund the police, and you can call them and they'll do anything meaningful.
It's a belief held by people who don't actually try to use these systems. Major credit card companies aren't in the business of consumer protection.
Many times I've tried to do chargebacks, only to be denied by the card issuer with some unsubstantiated claim by the vendor that they held up their end of the transaction. No recourse short of spending four or five figures on a lawyer and a lawsuit. As a result, if they cheat you out of less than $5k, they win.
avis does the same thing: they ask you if you want the ez pass to be activated and if you say yes, they put abbreviations in the fine print that indicate you agreed to their ridiculously priced "unlimited tolls" package, even though there are other cheaper ez pass related services, and because you sign the rental agreement in order to get the keys, you don't have a leg to stand on if you dispute it later. because the charge is abbreviated, it took 20 minutes between the invoice and their website to even decipher what the charges were for. if hertz and enterprise are doing it, must be an industry-wide scam.
I went to the US last year on business, and rented a car out of the airport.
Not only they could not tell me in advance how much it was going to cost, but also everything in the final invoice was abbreviated and laid out in a nonsensical way. I tried summing the values in every possible way, and it never got to the total they charged.
I'd be absolutely pissed if it was my money.
Funnily enough, rented from the same company in Germany, and the experience was completely different. Clear value, fees, easy to understand invoice.
