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The Hertz car rental company began to use AI scanners to check the back vehicles for damage and in the case of at least one tenant, the technology may have gone too far.
A tenant who returned his economical rental vehicle, which is part of the Hertz Corporation, at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport was billed $ 440 for a 1 inch discovery screech on a tire by the AI scanner, according to a Report by the reader.
The tenant received a message on the Hertz application a few minutes after the return of his vehicle, but could not speak to a human accusations.
How does hetz use AI?
In April, Hertz said that he “would transform the maintenance process of his vehicles” by associating with Uveye, to introduce the advanced IA inspection to its American operations.
In a press release at the time, Hertz said by implementing advanced IA inspection technology, “Hertz can considerably improve the frequency, precision and efficiency of the maintenance processes of its vehicles, ensuring reliable service, improved availability and transparency for vehicles for its customers.”
Camera systems and automatic learning algorithms powered by AI allow automated inspections in real time of the body of a vehicle, glass, tires and sailboats, said the company.
Hertz said he was starting to deploy at Atlanta airport and was relaxing at the main American airports by the end of the year.
What happened with $ 440 to the tenant?
The tenant contacted the reader to relay his experience with the new AI scanner. It was alerted to damage to 1 inch scratch on the driver’s rear wheel. The bill? $ 250 for repair, $ 125 for treatment and administrative costs of $ 65, totaling $ 440. The tenant could pay immediately, or obtain a discount of $ 52 if it is paid within two days or $ 32.50 discount if it is paid in a week.
But since he could not exceed the chatbot system and did not know that he could report the claim to ask a human agent to examine it, he contacted the link “contact us” and had to wait 10 days for a response. He told Adam Ismail of Drive that he had not planned to pay the bill within seven days to obtain the delivery.
In a follow-up email, Ismail told USA Today that he had heard no update of the tenant.
In a statement to USA TODAY, a spokesperson for Hertz said that “more than 97% of digital cars with this technology show no billable damage, proving that the vast majority of rentals are without incident. Vehicle damage has long been a common point of pain through the car rental industry for customers and businesses. In Hertz, we use this technology to approach this head.”
The objective, said the company spokesperson, is to ensure that customers are not billed for the damage they have not suffered, “while providing greater transparency, precision and speed to the process when new damage is detected. While we continue to deploy this technology, we remain attached to innovation and continuous improvement.”
When a customer reports a problem in the dedicated cat, live agents examine the issues of reported damage and its determination is communicated via the AI agent, the spokesman said. The company also works to integrate live agents in the application.
“With regard to this specific incident, a live agent examined the climbing of this client and manually examined the photos when collecting and returning and confirmed that the damage was new,” said the spokesperson. “Although we understand that some customers can hope for a different result, we want to make sure that each case is treated fairly and objectively, using the best available information.”
Professor: The technological parameters of Hertz AI may need to be reconfigured
There can be and should be advantages to a company using AI, such as not engaging humans and human time to assess a problem, said Ramnath Chellapp, professor of information and operations management systems at Goizueta Business School in Emory University. Among the areas of expertise of Chellappa is the AI.
But in this case with Hertz, Chellapp said that he had found it quite strange and beating the goal if that increased the cost for a consumer.
Given that often rental companies will have a basic rule for the moment when damage or scratch are considered to be significant enough for a load, Chellapp said that it seems that the parameters of the AI used by Hertz should be adjusted.
“I don’t think the problem here is the technology … I think the problem lies in the policy they are implementing,” Chellapp told USA Today.
“Sometimes we tend to use technologies and blame all the necessary results,” said Chellapp. “But it is clearly a question of knowing if the company in question has the right policy in terms of what it will do with the results of AI rather than AI itself.”
Betty Lin-Fisher is a consumer journalist for USA Today. Touch it [email protected] Or follow it on X, Facebook or Instagram @blinfisher and @ blinfisher.bsky.social on Bluesky. Register for our Newsletter Free The Daily Money, which will understand the news of consumers on Friday, here.
