Hertz So Bad

Hertz Rental Cars has settled a lawsuit after allegations that it had falsely accused numerous customers of stealing cars, resulting in terrifying police encounters, arrest, and even imprisonment. 

The rental car company Hertz Global Holdings, Inc. announced on Monday that it would pay about $168 million to settle disputes with hundreds of customers who claim they were falsely accused of vehicle theft.

The company, which filed for bankruptcy in 2020, occasionally recorded certain vehicles as stolen, even after customers had extended and paid for their rental periods, sometimes leading to frightening run-ins with the authorities, and even jail time, according to lawsuits filed on behalf of customers across the country.

As many have noted, this is all things considered a pretty light punishment -- a monetary fine that will mostly be covered by insurance, and no tangible consequences for the executives responsible for the policy itself.

I have a general rule of thumb when transacting in a business sector with a somewhat skeezy reputation: Always work with the company that most recently was caught in a high-profile scandal, because they're most likely to be on their best behavior in the near-term (it's why I bank at Wells Fargo!). But even taking that rule into account, I stay away from Hertz. The bespoke Grand Theft Auto expansion pack is just the start of their customer service trainwreck.

AT&T Pulls a Comcast

I had been a happy AT&T customer for this year -- in part on the theory that anything is better than Comcast, but in part because they had been decently reliable for the year we had used them. So when Jill called to tell them we were moving and ask if they had service in Champaign, we were happy to find out that they did. And even better -- they said that the service would not be DSL but fiber-optic, at the same price for what we're paying now. Hurray! They just had to ship us some equipment (which would arrive at our current apartment), and then we had an installation appointment on Tuesday at the new place.

Today, Jill calls AT&T back to check on the status of the equipment that was being shipped. Turns out, it's not coming. In fact, everything in the entire last paragraph was apparently a complete fabrication. They have no service in Champaign. There is no equipment being sent. There is no installation appointment. It was all a lie. I have no idea what motivated them to create such an elaborate concoction (I mean, it was pretty intricate), but alas.

So thanks, AT&T. If you had just told us originally you didn't provide internet in our new building, then we'd have been unhappy because we'd have been satisfied customers who happened to be moving out of your service area. Instead, in the space of 15 minutes you've turned us into angry customers who have learned not to trust your customer service representatives. An excellent day's work, in my book.

This also means we apparently have to go back to Comcast. It's just one nightmare to another here....

It's No Better in the Private Sector, Kid

I empathize with Radley Balko's travails to get his refund back from the IRS. But that's because I'm locked in more or less the same battle with Comcast, which has been hanging onto my security deposit and refund for nearly three months now. Same utter incompetence by everyone I've every interacted with. Same shunting from bureaucracy to bureaucracy. Same inability to explain what went wrong, how it went wrong, or how they're planning to fix it. I don't think even the IRS' opening gambit was to allege that Balko owed them additional money, which is how Comcast tried to play me.

Radio Free Hyde Park

It's me again, still blogging from the "liberated" signal of the neighbors (it's even called "patriots". How fabulous). Why, you ask? Wasn't Comcast scheduled to come today and hook me up to the grid? Surely, there is no way Comcast would let me down like this, right?

Ahaha. Puny mortal that I am, I did not comprehend the powers I was dealing with here. You see, Comcast technicians are divided into two orders. The first, who you've probably met, are the installers -- the guys who bring your cable box and/or modem, screw a few things into a wall, attach a few wires, and voila! Now you have television. Those guys have now come to my townhouse twice, and were on time and unfailingly polite both times. Unfortunately, they couldn't actually install my cable or internet, because my house doesn't signal that it's connected to the Comcast network. Which brings us to the other half of the Comcast Cult.

The second order, is apparently a shadowy, paranormal sect called "line technicians", who are responsible for actually hooking up houses to the Comcast grid at the source box level. These ghost-like beings are apparently so powerful that Comcast technical support and installation cannot summon them, or indeed, even contact them. As best I can tell, the Comcast process is to intuit a request in their general direction and then pray. There were traces in the system that they were supposed to come today between 1 and 5 (itself incorrect -- they were supposed to come between 10 and 1), but needless to say they never did. And the hapless mortals manning dispatch told me no, there was no way to reach them and ask sweetly if they ever planned on doing the work they were paid for. Line technicians are powerful and capricious beasts.

Now, here's where things get fun (it wasn't already?). Twice now, the installers have come only to find that no, my house still isn't on the grid because the line techs haven't arrived. The lady I talked to on the phone scheduled another installer date for tomorrow between 1 and 5. But of course, this is as useless as the other two installation dates if the line techs continue to hide in fairy-land. So, I asked, how do we know if the line techs will have arrived by then? She promised she'll call me in the morning (earlier today I received a promise I'd get a call back in 15 minutes which never happened -- the odds that they can manage to remember something over the course of a whole 18 hours requires the sort of heart-warming, inspirational turnabout in competency that one normally only finds in a Disney movie). Will they arrive in the morning? She doesn't know. Will they arrive sometime tomorrow, preferably before the installer so he isn't made redundant (again)? She doesn't know. Hell, they may even come tonight, she told me -- but she has no way of knowing.

This whole proceeding has been a farce from start to finish. Moving always involves hassles -- I know this. My desk arrived (two days late, natch) from Sears today, and we clearly have different interpretations of "easy assembly". But I've never come to face to face with such persistent rank incompetence and byzantine bureaucratic nonsense as I have over the past week with Comcast. It is crazy that I am now on my fourth appointment to get a simple cable and internet installation, even more ridiculous that they don't actually know if the appointment is solid or not, and simply unfathomable that they can't figure out how to contact a division of their own corporation to find out.

If I wasn't convinced that I'd go through the same nonsense with AT&T, I'd have bolted by now.

Civil Rights Roundup: 08/21/08

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news

Americans of all stripes mourn the death of Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH). After graduating from Case Western University (thanks to a scholarship she attributed to affirmative action efforts), Jones went on to become the first Black woman to represent Ohio in Congress.

Supporters and opponents of an initiative to ban affirmative action in Nebraska are squabbling over the ballot language.

Meanwhile, the University of Nebraska is reporting great strides in hiring a diverse faculty.

Texas is set to execute a man who didn't kill anybody -- only the 8th time since the death penalty was reinstated that a man will be put to death as an accomplice to murder.

The Justice Department is looking into whether Princeton discriminates against Asian-American applicants through its affirmative action program.

The Hampton Roads, Virginia, city council is examining switching from a at-large to a ward-based system as a way to increase social, economic, and racial diversity on the board.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) will not renew an anti-discrimination order put out by his predecessor, Gov. Kathleen Blanco (D). It's expiration leaves gay and lsbian state workers and contractors unprotected from discrimination.

Illinois civil rights activists are suing, alleging that the state's funding mechanism grossly short-changes minority school districts and gives their children an unequal education.

George E. Curry writes in the Chicago Defender about the continuing need for HBCU's. These institutions generate a disproportionate tally of Black college graduates and -- perhaps more importantly -- are willing to take chances on low to mid-range students and get them on the path to success.

Ann Friedman tries to calm the panic about how this generation of women are not sufficiently feminist.

Shenandoah Valley schools are hosting events to highlight the benefits of diversity after the racially charged murder of a Latino resident.

Corporations celebrate supplier diversity in Battle Creek, Michigan.

A federal appeals court ruled that a Tennessee school district did not violate the constitution when it banned students from wearing the Confederate flag, citing the possibility of enflaming racial tensions.

The Oklahoman: "For Oklahoma college students, diversity is a daily lesson".

Yay Competence!

Phone companies drop FBI wiretaps due to unpaid bills. That's our national security apparatus at work!

And let's also hear it for the phone companies: they'll work with the federal government on spying programs of dubious legality without batting an eyelash, but deprive them of their thirty pieces of silver, and they're out the door faster than you can say "retroactive immunity."

Note: I have no idea whether the wiretaps at issue here overlap with the one's which are the subject of controversy. It's entirely possible all the wiretaps in question are perfectly warranted and legal.

Fire at Will

While I'm sure there are good reasons to support the At Will employment doctrine, reading about cases like this, where a female employee was hired, then immediately fired because she was "overweight and had large breasts", makes me want to rewrite policy to explicitly prohibit employers from terminating their employees for no (or exceedingly dumb) reasons. Under current law, this woman does not appear to be protected, because her firing was not due to race, sex, disability, or any other protected category. Yet it strikes me as every bit as insane as many of the other ridiculous firings employers try to swing that are covered under these categories.