This year, during my family holiday, I discovered how Hertz – and many other car hire companies – have crafted a process involving dark patterns to trick stressed travellers into paying far more than necessary for their car hire.
I’ve used Hertz several times over the years, particularly in the 2000s, so I expected good service, a decent car, and straightforward business.
Let’s start with the booking process. It was perfectly fine and straightforward online. The price seemed reasonable, and as the holiday approached, I was actually looking forward to seeing what car I would receive. I even found a potential car upgrade at a slightly lower price when I went back to check some details. Happy days, I thought.
Car collection was quick – no big queue – and the chap at the counter was affable. I was juggling kids and feeling the usual airport stress when he said, “You can have your wife as an additional driver for free, and you don’t have to worry about the excess.” I thought, “Oh wow, that’s great! Romana, do you have your licence?”
He handed me the rental slip, I signed, and at no point did I realise what had just happened.
Great, I thought.
The car, however, was a bit of a disappointment – a somewhat battered Jeep Compass plug-in hybrid. Not ideal when staying at a caravan site. But I coped, thinking it wasn’t worth the hassle to switch cars. Then, midway through the holiday, the engine check light came on. I called Hertz, and they said to drop off the car for a replacement. Brilliant. Except the woman at the counter seemed grumpy about it.
No worries. New car acquired, off we went. It was a Mini Countryman Cooper. Worse spec, but a much better car.
But this isn’t a car review. It’s about how Hertz deliberately created a system that, if you’re not paying attention, can significantly boost their profits.
By my estimation, a rental like mine would typically generate about €40 in profit for Hertz. But through clever design, they turned that into about €450 by breaking the usual patterns.
Step one: when the customer is stressed, offer things that sound helpful but are actually upselling excess waivers and other add-ons.
Step two: sneak in a Fuel Purchase option for €73. I brimmed the car right next to the airport when I returned it, but I won’t see that money back either.
Step three: hand the customer a docket with tiny print (which my ageing eyes now struggle to read without glasses), and ask them to sign here, here, and here – all while chatting away – and with no workflow difference when accepting or rejecting. €430 added there also.
My rental slip that caught me out.
So, because I was busy with the kids, wife, and general airport stress, I signed without paying proper attention. I never usually buy these optional extras.
With taxes, it was just a smidge under €600 in total.
But this time, I accepted the charge. I think I was tricked into it, but there’s nothing I can do. I contacted Hertz, complained, but was told, “No, you signed, you pay.”
And it’s a brilliantly designed system. When you decline, you sign. When you accept, you sign. You get used to signing every time. It’s easy to slip in an acceptance instead of a decline, and then you’re stuck.
So a rental agreement that was supposed to be under €500 turned into €1,133.35 once taxes were accounted for. I’m gutted. Money is already tight this year.
Well done, Hertz and your desk chap. You tricked me out of a substantial amount of money. You win. You’ve increase your profit on this rental by a factor of 10, so even if I don’t use you again for a decade, you’re still ahead. I rarely get tricked, but you managed it.
All I can do now is what I usually do when life hands me lemons—make lemonade, vent on my blog, and move on. I’ve paid my “stupid tax” for 2024. It won’t happen again.
It’s a cleverly designed process they’ve created, clearly aimed at getting people to pay extra at the desk. And it’s not just Hertz that does this—I just expected better from them. They’re supposed to be one of the better firms.
If you were designing the process with the customer not making mistakes in mind, you’d make them specifically write accepted.
The ultimate test as to whether this is sneaky is whether people ever find themselves doing the opposite, and not taking out such cover and extras when they do, in fact, want them.
I’m sitting in the emptiest airport I’ve ever experienced. I suspect they only operate a couple of flights a day from Tacna. Consequently my only company appears to be a bored check-in attendant for a different airline and a barman who’s mopping the floor.
And I’ve finished all my books. I have little else to do except get the phone out, take advantage of the free Wi-Fi in Peruvian airports and get blogging.
So, let me tell you about how to get from Arica in Chile to Tacna in Peru.
The two cities are only some 40km apart, but transport between them isn’t what you might expect.
The simplest way is to get your hotel to order a taxi to your destination on the other side. They will deal with the crossing, but from Chile this can be expensive, running at around £35. Similarly, in the opposite direction it’s perfectly possible to get ripped off, as I did last week when I arrived here.
You need two things…your passport and some local currency. In Arica you can take a taxi for £2 to the “Terminal Internacional” where you’ll expect buses but will actually see a huge number of USAnian cars. You find a driver going to the border pay the station fee (200 pesos, 40p) and then go to an office to do some paperwork. You then get shown to your collectivo.
These are always US cars of various vintage. I got a really seventies Crown Victoria driven by a brassy old lady whose hair waved in the wind out of the window. The car contained 5 passengers…a handy one extra than a European or Eastern equivalent, hence more profit. For her troubles you pay just 2000 pesos, about £3.
She took us to the border, made sure we were OK and left. There, waiting, were other collectivos heading to Tacna. They all pass the airport, so no problem. You go through Chilean customs and then get driven the short distance to Peruvian customs, again in a USAnian car, albeit this time I got a more modern but nondescript GM thingy. Cost here was 2500 pesos (they take Chilean money cheerfully.)
That’s it. For less than a tenner you can cross the border. Don’t do like I did the other way last time and get ripped off by a driver taking you to the airport…you should spend more than about £5 to reach the border from the airport even by taxi as it isn’t far. Ask first for the price. Also check whether it’s all the way to Arica, or just to the border (say ‘aduana.’)
I’ve started writing this post in Amsterdam airport…I’m on my way to Arica in Chile where I’ll be (hopefully) burying my father, Chris, who died on the 19th of July. I say hopefully not because this is something I’m looking forward to but because I face a number of legal and monetary issues with the hospital where he died.
So, the backstory….
Chris Coveney in 1986
My father was born in 1944in Liverpool. He had a childhood disrupted by his father’s death while he and his mother were travelling to join him in post-war Frankfurt. At the age of 4 (I believe – this needs checking) it seems that this had a somewhat traumatic effect on his life. Whether it would have worked out any differently if his father hadn’t died so young is hard to know. It seems he never really bonded with his rather quiet and gentle stepfather, John.
John was one of those people that sadly get little praise in life…he didn’t have a rapier wit, good looks or intense charm. His predecessor, it seems, did. But he did do his best to provide a stable and comfortable environment for my father and grandmother (I later lived with them at different times of my life.)
Yet it seems that my father inherited his father’s flaws (a taste for women, good times and risk taking) without some key strengths (a disciplined and intellectually rigorous upgringing in particular) that would have helped my father excel. He was certainly charming, good looking and intelligent.
Family Life
My father, to the best of my knowledge, had three children… myself first, David, in 1969, Miguel two years later, to his first wife Ruth, and Maria in 1981 to his second wife Ann.
It’s fair to say that neither marriage went well. To paraphrase my mother:
He was a drinker with a vicious temper and a long arm. He couldn’t understand the word no.
There are other things I’ve learned recently which I won’t share…but the picture was of a man who couldn’t take his responsibilities seriously and, when confronted, would lash out at anyone around.
The Consequences
I’m going to skip forward now to 1985… by this point my father had been divorced twice and no longer had custody of any of his children. He’d kept me close for years, but even I tired of his temper, his constantly failing relationships and the occassional humiliation of a beating. It’s a curious thing about being smacked around by your father…the physical pain is nothing. It’s the betrayal of trust that hurts and damages you. No parent should resort to violence when faced with the annoyances of raising a child. Nor, of course, should a child ever survey a trashed kitchen following violence between their parents. Ever. I could go into the reasons why violence breaks out in domestic settings, but that subject deserves better than I can give right here.
Since 1971 my father had been working his summers as a tour guide in Oostende, Belgium. This suited him fine…a steady stream of giddy girls on holiday, few responsibilities, and plenty of nights out left him, it seems, relatively contented.
South America
By this point my father, always a keen lover of all things Spanish, had started to spend his winters in South America where he could travel around enjoying himself whilst maximising the money he earned in his Belgian summers.
This was actually a fairly calm period… I lived with my grandmother and rarely saw him. Generally I did enjoy his company, but there was always a nervousness over when he might kick off but, in general, he seemed to have mellowed.
Unfortunately, in 1987, everything changed again. I was living with my grandmother and had done reasonably well in my A levels. I’d gained a job at ICI on a trainee developer program. For me, at least the future looked good. However, like all good things in my life there always seemed to be trouble waiting for me.
Loss
Just a couple of weeks into my new job, my grandmother was diagnosed with lung cancer. Her decline hadn’t been pleasant to experience and before she was diagnosed she’d been struggling with shoulder pain that left her crying until the doctor could come and give her a shot of painkillers. Eventually it became too much for both of us. She was booked into hospital in a few weeks time… but that was too far away. I learned then a painful but valuable lesson.
The doctor could do nothing to have her admitted more quickly. I visited the hospital. No, they could do nothing either…it was a non urgent case of painful arthritis. Yet it was all too much to bear…I was in tears when a male nurse took me to one side and explained something…
They’re letting you look after her. She’s dependent on you. You want to know how to get her into hospital quickly? Refuse. Just tell the doctor you’ve had too much and you’re moving out.
Basically, I was going to have to play poker with my granny. But I went straight from the hospital to the doctor’s surgery and insisted I saw him. Three hours later, an ambulance arrived.
The next day they discovered the pain was caused by secondary metastasis (I think that’s the correct term, I’m writing this on a plane). She had advanced lung cancer that had spread through her body. She had less than a week left.
There was a dull, hollow ache inside me. I wasn’t close to my mother since I’d not lived with her for 14 years and besides, her and her new family had moved to Spain two years earlier – something that at the time had left me less than impressed.
I had my friends, Linda and Peter especially who were wonderfully understanding. And that weekend, my father’s summer job finished and he was able to arrive.
So he signed over everything. It was down to me to deal with the estate. There wasn’t much there, to be honest, and a lot of debt.
My father had his tickets for South America booked a long time earlier…in this time air travel was still relatively expensive and inflexible. I later learned that airlines usually aren’t so bad in cases of bereavement. I think he could have changed flights.
But he didn’t and just a few days later he was gone. Two days after that I buried my grandmother.
What’s crazy is that in all this I even managed to redecorate the lounge in time for the funeral, thanks to my friend Linda. It was important that in death everyone saw the best in my grandmother…
Losing Trust in Everyone
Soon after the vultures were circling…I couldn’t take over the mortgage or I’d have to pay off all debts, and I couldn’t get a new mortgage at such a young age and such little credit history…especially on a shared ownership house like this.
You see, what happens with a debt secured on property is that you hand over all rights to the lender. If you fail to keep up repayments the lender can take possession. The lender will then sell it. If a profit happens to be made then that’s great for the lender. They keep the money.
In fact, some even have a policy of quick repossessions during a buoyant market.
In retrospect I believe I was badly advised. But lacking support just trying to hold down a job and simply live right was enough to occupy me. When I was evicted from the house I lost my faith in society, my parents (sorry Mum…but you later won it back, so that’s ok, trust me) and everyone except my friends.
The council couldn’t help – I was told a single male would be at the bottom of the waiting list for social housing.
I didn’t want my fathers’s help and, by the dubious measure of taking out a loan to pay the deposit on a tiny studio flat, I had a place to live. While this was happening my father was made redundant from his summer job and announced he was going to stay in South America.
Having discovered financial wizardry I even managed to buy myself a niceish car I couldn’t afford on credit. Life had been hard, but now, I felt, it was improving.
Two months later I received a letter from my father asking for help – he said he’d been robbed of all his money and needed the money I owed him (I think he believed there was money in his mother’s estate) and could I send £1500 as soon as possible.
I had about £30 in the bank.
The next six months were hell as I sent over dribs and drabs in response to his increasingly strident letters, but I remember one triumphant moment. I’d been caught at work calling the Chilean embassy. I was in trouble until the reasons were explained to a senior manager. He put me in touch with the right people and before I knew it the Foreign Office offered a loan to help repatriate my father.
I’d done it. He was going to be ok. I’d sent as much as possible to him, borrowing money, trying to sell what I could legitimately sell… but it amounted to no more than around £600 over the months.
I went out and bought a £15 phone card to give the good news.
Son… I thought you had a good job? I need the money why don’t you have any?!
I told him it was no problem… I could get him home! I explained the loan.
What use is that? I’d be in the same situation, but in England…it’s much cheaper to live here
He was angry. And I remembered all those times he’d been angry before. The card ran out cutting him off mid-sentence. It was over. I was never going to speak to him again. I realised he hadn’t been asking me for help…he’d been asking me for money, that’s all.
Since then I stopped responding to his letters. I’d been struggling with the flat so I sold up and moved into a room. We lost contact.
Update 29-08-2010: I was reading through his letters yesterday and realised that I’d found the solution of a loan for repatriation earlier than I thought I had. I’d simply brought it up again during that last phone call and he essentially repeated what I’d said. I also think I’d continued to send him money for a while, but remained mute.
In 2001 I managed to find out that he’d renewed his passport in Quito in 1997, but that was all I had. In 2006 I was invited to a wedding in Lima, Peru, and took that as an opportunity to try and find him. I got close…searching the town of Arica in the far north of Chile. But if he saw the notices he didn’t respond. If he’d even searched Google he’d have found me for years and years. I even put a page up about him which was good enough for my estranged sister to find me with this year. In the end I reached the conclusion that he no longer wanted to find me.
And then the knock on the door in the early morning. I don’t know why the police do it that way. The officer was perfect…knew exactly how to break the news. Quickly, succintly, followed by the detail. He’d died on the 19th of July in a hospital in Arica, Chile.
I’m going to wrap this up now…it’s an awfully long piece to type entirely by phone and my fingers are aching. Hopefully I’ll be able to post it up on arrival to Lima. More soon… my plan is to document this trip, my feelings and my need to find reconciliation wherever possible. Sharing helps.
Liverpool has one of those small airports that’s done rather well over the past decade. A rise in air travel has been good for many airports, yet Liverpool’s Speke airport (now known as Liverpool John Lennon Airport) has done especially well.
Why? Because first of all they worked well with easyJet – with a combination of popular holiday and business routes with low prices the combination proved irresistable. As a frequent traveller myself I was delighted to get away from the obtuse pricing of British Airways (cheap returns were OK, it was the lack of flexibility and cost of singles that grated) and the extra costs of travelling to Manchester Airport.
Anyway, I was travelling through this airport again on Thursday evening and spotted this picture which summed the airport up nicely – named after a famous Beatle, and popular with a wide range of traveller:
