CONSUMER STORIES |
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Seeking stories of consumer citizen warriors who have crossed swords with commercial and governmental behemoths. |
HERZOPOLY September 1974 to January, 1975 THE HERTZ CORPORATION/ AMERICAN EXPRESS/ DINERS CLUB It was back in the nineteen seventies when I first began to collect and catalogue my own records of battles with behemoths. I had had earlier run ins with large corporations and with various branches of government, but it was an experience in 1974 that started me down the road that ultimately led to the collection in this book, a collection of stories and correspondence that I believe can be considered as a new and serious literary genre. This next BATTLE was actually more fun than a battle and because of that I decided to incorporate the back and forth correspondence with the involved company into what I thought was a pretty humorous article in which I attributed all of the problems to a mythical disease. I actually made one attempt to get the piece published but it was rejected and I gave up. After all, back then the purpose of the battle wasn't to create something for publication and I was in no mood to get a series of rejection letters after enjoying the triumph of beating the Hertz corporation to its knees - or would that be tires?? But I guess I have the last laugh. This is my book and I can publish anything I like So there!!! All of the correspondence from this particular behemoth is reproduced exactly as received, so if you notice strange syntax and spelling, strange punctuation and dates with the DAY before the MONTH, that's the way the letters came. I call this adventure....... CONFESSIONS OF A HERTZOPHOBIAC I don't usually pay a great deal of attention to the business section of my newspaper, but back in the early seventies, there was a period of time when it got more of my attention than almost any other section. That was because I was looking for news about Allegis Corporation - the old United Airlines. Allegis had a new management team and there had been a lot of talk about breaking up the company and selling off some of its divisions. One of those divisions was HERTZ and I figured if Hertz could get some new owners, maybe they could find a cure for HERTZOPHOBIA. (HZP) For those of you not up on the medical literature, HERTZOPHOBIA is a rare allergic disorder that afflicts a handful of people - maybe one thousandth of one percent of the world's population. Because so few people catch it, it's one of those orphan diseases. The drug companies couldn't care less about finding a miracle pill - not when the world market is probably less than a thousand pills a year. Likewise, you'll never see Jerry Lewis doing a telethon for HERTZOPHOBIA - which may be the only GOOD thing you can say about the disease. Not much is known about the etiology of HZP, but it's believed to be caused by the hiccup of the Japanese Microchip (CHIPUS SAYONARUS) and exposure comes through the use of any credit card to rent a Hertz car anywhere in the world. The symptoms vary from patient to patient and can include such things as whispers in the back of the head, itchy fingers and raised neck hackles. Some victims have one or more of these particular symptoms. Some have none. But all victims suffer from two major symptoms. One is the receipt of strange letters from the Hertz corporation following the rental of a Hertz car. A lot of healthy people also get this symptom but are protected by their natural immunity to CHIPUS SAYONARUS). (If they weren't, we'd be in the throes of a world wide epidemic . Jerry Lewis would be conducting telethons and Nancy Reagan would be appearing in "just say no to Hertz" commercials). But it's the second major symptom that truly marks a victim of HERTZOPHOBIA - the irresistible compulsion to SEND letters TO Hertz. Once this symptom is first experienced, the disease is confirmed. It can be controlled by avoiding CHIPUS SAYONARUS and this can be accomplished merely by staying away from Hertz offices. But true victims CAN'T stay away indefinitely, and for them, HERTZOPHOBIA is a lifetime disease. From everything I know about the subject, I have a classic case. A few years ago, I was on vacation in England. I'd had a check up just before I left, so I knew I was susceptible to something called CHIPUS SAYONARUS, but I really didn't understand it and by the time my plane landed at Heathrow airport, I'd completely forgotten about it. My brother was living in the lovely old city of Bristol at that time and I was visiting with him when I hit upon the idea of doing some solo touring. After all, Bristol is just a few miles from southern Wales, and no more than a stone's throw from the ancient Roman town of Bath, a MUST for any visit to the west of England. Without giving as much as a second thought to the potential dangers of driving on the wrong side of the road or trying to figure out the PURPOSE of roundabouts, I wandered into the local Hertz office and picked up what they had available - a little stick shift with five or six on the floor. To this day I can't remember how many gears that monster had. I DO remember, in horrifying detail, the nightmare of driving the little beast from the Hertz office to my brother's house - a distance of maybe three miles. I don't think I ever got it out of second gear - but it's hard to tell because I was never able to figure out which gear was which. I know I spent about half the time on the wrong (right) side of the road and was responsible for at least a dozen near crashes and probably one or two mini strokes. At any rate, about thirty seconds after arriving at my brother's house, I was on the 'phone to Hertz, telling them they could pick up their blankety blank car and dump it in the English channel as far as I was concerned. I must say it gladdened my heart when a female Hertz operative arrived with an automatic shift replacement, shaking all over and pale as an English ghost. (The operative, not the car). Apparently, her only driving experience has been with a stick shift and even though she was accustomed to driving on the wrong side of the road, the experience of hitting the brake and flipping on the turn signal every time she felt the need to change gear, had totally unnerved her. At the time, I thought that her consternation was no more than an appropriate quid pro quo for what Hertz had inflicted upon me and I was smiling by the time she pulled away in the multiple geared monster. The rest of my vacation was uneventful. With the unfathomable gears out of the way, it took only a couple of hours to get used to driving on the wrong side of the road and after a couple of days I even began to enjoy it. Little did I know that somewhere, CHIPUS SAYONARUS had already hiccuped. About a week after I got back home, I received an invoice from Hertz of Bristol, England in the amount of 46 pounds and 55 pence. Since I'd charged the car rental to Diners Club, I assumed it was some sort of confirmation of the charge amount - a friendly, typically English gesture - so I threw it away. Looking back, I know my doctor had told me about the onset of HZP, but at the time, I didn't recognize the invoice as anything but an invoice. If I'd known it was an early symptom, I would have sought immediate therapy. I was none the wiser a month or so later when I received more mail from Hertz of England. This time, it was from Hertz Customer Accounts and read as follows:,
Still not recognizing the onset of a serious disease, I immediately penned a reply:
By the end of the month, Hertz wrote again:
Naturally, I thought that was the end of it. My reading habits were more inclined to Esquire than to the Journal of Hertzophobic Diseases, so I really didn't know what was happening. I was still relatively unconcerned when the next letter arrived, although a small voice was beginning to whisper somewhere in the back of my head. (In early research on HZP, this was often cited as the earliest known symptom of the disease). This one was from Hertz Central Billing and had a certain note of familiarity to it. It puzzled me for a while, but then I realized what it was. All of the letters were coming from different departments at the same floor of the same building - a place called Lyon Tower in London. This letter read as follows:
I had to see my doctor around the time the CENTRAL BILLING letter arrived, so I told him what had been going on. He ran a couple of quick tests and then broke the news that I had a definite case of HZP, but it was still in an early stage. He told me to try to stay away from typewriters. (This was years before I had a personal computer). Anyway, I tried hard, but it didn't work. I was able to exercise SOME measure of control though. I started several letters to CENTRAL BILLING but was able to stop before the end of the second paragraph. My wife has great instincts and she kept insisting that this was a very good sign....that if I worked at it, I could beat this thing. She urged me to take it one day at a time...to try stopping in the MIDDLE of the second paragraph... then at the end of paragraph one and so on. By the end of the month, I had gone four days without much more than Dear Central Billing and I was beginning to feel pretty confident. Then NOTICE OF INTENTcame from LEGAL MANAGER. Experts in the HZP syndrome believe that there is a stage in the disease where the patient is, so to speak, on the cusp. Basically, it is at the point I had already reached - a four day period with no more than a salutation in response to a provocative stimulus. It is possible, they say, to BEAT the disease at this point, even in the face of additional stimuli... unless.. and this was my downfall, the stimuli are written in RED. (As I said, my wife has great instincts but she's no medical expert). If the stimuli are written in RED, you are, to use the technical term, a goner. NOTICE OF INTENT was not just in RED. It was in BLOOD RED, and read (no pun intended) as follows:
It was only in later years that I was able to understand the nature of my reaction to this particular stimulus. The letter was not only written in RED but was totally without commas and dotted with random capitalization. Stronger men than I have been broken by such an onslaught. In the annals of HZP literature, there is a case history of a near presidential candidate who became involved in a Visa/Master Card/Hertz of Washington DC triangle. Just days before he planned to announce, he received, in a single mail delivery, THREE RED letters. Within a week he had resigned from the Senate, rather than face impeachment charges for improper use of a government word processor. In three months, he had divorced his wife, sold his home, and moved from Georgetown to a beach hut in San Diego. When his funds finally ran out, he took to mugging old age pensioners to feed his three ream and two ribbon a day habit, and at last report was serving ninety days for assaulting a Xerox machine in a Post Office lobby. I was luckier, but my wife tells me she had to use a twelve inch screwdriver and a pint of paint thinner to remove my fingers from the keys of my IBM Selectric. By that time, I had already written the following in quadruplicate:
Two months passed. The Maple trees outside my house laid a carpet of golden leaves on the front lawn and flecks of snow heralded the coming of winter and another year... and of course, more mail from Hertz.
I have an accountant who tells me that it is best to save copies of Federal tax returns for at least three years. I had been thinking of reducing my collection of credit cards and Diners Club was scheduled to go. But I used the Federal standards as a guide line and hung onto it for MORE than three years, hoping against hope that Hertz U.K. and 46.55 (pounds) would show up. It never did. And the letters from Hertz stopped coming I stayed away from Hertz offices after that. My doctor said that until a vaccine for HZP is found, abstinence is the only thing that will work. But you know how it is. You abstain long enough and you get disgustingly healthy - so much so that you forget what it is you're abstaining for. And you get careless..... About a month ago, I had to spend a few days in a small Kansas town. To get there, I flew to Kansas City, unthinkingly rented a car from Hertz and drove 250 miles. It was a pleasant trip, but a few days after I got home, I noticed the unmistakable symptoms of increased anxiety, raised hackles on the back of my neck, whispers in the back of my head and itchy fingers. I readily attributed it to the fact that I had recently rented a Hertz car and had charged it to my American Express card, but I could recall neither a hitch nor a glitch in the transaction and told myself that the uneasy feeling would pass. When it didn't, I bit the bullet and dug out my copy of the rental contract. I think I knew I would find something, but I needed absolute confirmation. And there it was. A charge of some $36 had NOT been added to the total. Now I owed Hertz $36 by way of American Express and 46.55 English pounds by way of Diners Club and/or American Express. I've been sitting at the typewriter trying to fight this thing. My wife keeps telling me that there may be an announcement from Allegis any day now. She's pleading with me to at least wait for the American Express bill to arrive before writing to Kansas City. Poor woman. She's forgotten LEGAL MANAGER'S RED LETTER. There is no cure. To heck with Allegis. To heck with Kansas City
My brother thought a better name for this experience was HERTZOPOLY.. a non registered trade name that can only be played by Jeff Smith, his older brother, the Hertz Corporation and either Diners Club or American Express. (Since neither Smith brother currently use the game's original credit card companies, Visa and Master Card may be substituted). The game has only two rules. 1. A credit card foul up must be instigated by a Hertz office somewhere in the U.K. or somewhere in Kansas 2. The foul up must remain forever unresolved. Any method of play is allowed. It is strictly up to the players. In the above example, the method chosen is the exchange of meaningless correspondence |
