Car rental company charging customers for Tesla ‘refills’

US News

By Chris Harris

Customers of one of the nation’s largest rental car companies are feeling the sting after renting Teslas only to pay hundreds in gratuitous fuel fees — and then being denied refunds.

Hertz, which recently announced plans to offload 30,000 used Teslas, was accused of charging one customer a nearly $300 “Skip the Pump” fee for failing to return the electric vehicle with a full tank.

Of course, EVs don’t require gas.

A customer who’d rented a battery-powered Tesla Model 3 recently was billed $277.39 for gas he could not have pumped into the car.

The customer was initially told the charge wasn’t refundable, but Hertz wound up returning the money after a story appeared on The Drive.

A separate report chronicled a $340.97 “Skip the Pump” fee charged to a different customer, Evan Froehlich, who claimed he was unable to even reach Hertz’s customer service to request a refund.

Another Hertz customer, Toan Le, told the car culture outlet he prepaid $329.83 for a week with a Tesla Model 3, and returned it without a full charge.

Instead of a $25 recharge fee, Le was billed an additional $690.32, of which $475.19 was a fuel charge.

Le also was asked to pay a $125.01 “rebill” charge for using Tesla’s Supercharger network.

The excessive and unwarranted fees are nothing new, according to reports.

Hertz was singled out on Facebook last year by a user who paid a nearly $60 refuel fee for his rented Tesla.

Hertz acknowledged a problem for an unknown number of customers and blamed its computer system.

“Some customers who rented EVs from us were inaccurately billed a refueling fee, due to a systems error,” the rental giant said in an emailed statement.

“It should never have happened, and we have fixed the problem that caused it. We also proactively reached out to the customers who were affected and refunded the erroneous charge. To compensate them for their inconvenience, we have offered them a credit toward a future EV rental.”