Hertz rental upgrade at airport: bring cash

[PeterNBiddle]

I see. So if you forgot to lock your front door and someone walked in and stole your TV set, according to you, you would not want to be able to have that person arrested or convicted of burglary because it was up to you to police your homes security by locking the door, you didn't do it, so it's your fault he stole from you, you deserved it and he did nothing wrong.

If you're going to insist on using bivalent logic you need to use truly analogous metaphors. For this scenario to work as analogous to this thread, it would have to look something like the following:

You own a house.
You have a renter who rents the house from you fully furnished with your furniture.
Your renter decides he can make some extra cash by selling your stuff.
He throws a yard-sale out front selling your furniture and will only take cash.
I see the yard-sale sign and a nice wardrobe so I stop to look and perhaps buy.

Should I insist on seeing the title for the house from the renter as well as original receipts for everything he's selling?

 

[cvchief]

For some it doesn't make a difference what the answer to your question is. Some people their ethics are their ethics and 'opportunity', another culture, a situation...etc.. has no bearing on them. Momma taught a lot of little boys when they were growing up, the lesson of "if everybody was jumping of a bridge would you have to do it to?" Some little boys took the lesson to heart, some didn't. Some learned to do what's right regardless of what others are doing.

Fin,

You are making the difficult simple. Can I suggest a couple examples and give me your moral compass reading:

1. Real MX example. A friend wanted to get the power company to hook some stuff up for him. Knowing the system, stopped a guy on the street and cut a deal to have them come over the next day for a 'tip.' Power company didn't loose money. He just paid the workers extra to actually come and do the work as opposed to waiting who knows how long. Do you do business their way or just put up with a really long wait for service?

2. Mexico Dive Op offers a discount for cash. You can guess it has to do with keeping income off of their books. Do you insist on paying more on your credit card? I mean they are probably stealing from the government right? Call them in to hacienda and file a report?

3. In your regular restaurant in CZM, you tip generously. You notice that your drinks are in a bigger glass and a little stronger. Demand to see the owner and report this theft of alcohol?

I pay my rental guy in cash for the deal I get. Several rentals in I actually found out he was really just an employee when I had to deal with the owner. Guess what, same cash deal no questions. So had I chosen to accuse my guy of shady dealing, I would have been wrong and insulted him. Of course maybe he is not reporting the income. Maybe I should get his tax returns and have them translated? I am just saying I don't believe there is a bright line between the two.

For the record, I don't jump off bridges. I have jumped the gun occasionally though....

---------- Post added at 03:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:11 PM ----------

Can I do that at the airport rental counter?

Spoiler

You know, the idea that old saying is based on is now called rape?

100 people survey, top 10 answers on the board:

"How many drinks would it take to leave the bar with Dandy Don?"

View attachment 119798

 

[grantwiscour]

Always. I'm painfully honest. It's a real PITA. If I find cash on the ground I ask people in the immediate area if it's theirs. I over-tip too.



I had my first real job the summer after 8th grade. God bless that employer for LYING and saying that I was a family farm-hand, it was the only way they could pay me. I needed that job - it was the only way I'd have any cash to spend and it paid for things like new eye-glasses. But I suppose that was ethically and morally wrong too? Should I have corrected them for lying about me and thus not gotten the job? Or reported them to the feds so that not only would I not get the job, several other people - folks who needed it way more than I did - lost their jobs too?



You haven't actually called me a thief. Yet. Can we just get that out of the way now? Can you just say it clearly one way or the other?

That helps shape the conversation and then I don't have to go to the bother of feeling like you are calling me names when you aren't - or vice versa for that matter.

Hold on just a just a second Peter. Can everybody take a deep breath please?

I have followed this thread and considered what I would do in the situation. The story became more clear after the OP added some info.
IMHO I don't think Mike or anyone was calling you a thief or trying to bait you into further argument. I'm not gonna speak for them but I think the added clarity in your later posts helped us all understand your situation and actions better. If in the OP you had stated the issue with CC at the desk and that you asked and received a receipt there wouldn't have been such backlash.

I don't have a dog in this fight but the initial post sounds a bit "shady". My first thought was that the rental agent put the money in their pocket and it came off like you were bragging that you bribed the agent. We can chalk that up to the conversational disabilities of the internet if that was not your intent.

 

[Mike]

Fin,

You are making the difficult simple. Can I suggest a couple examples and give me your moral compass reading:

1. Real MX example. A friend wanted to get the power company to hook some stuff up for him. Knowing the system, stopped a guy on the street and cut a deal to have them come over the next day for a 'tip.' Power company didn't loose money. He just paid the workers extra to actually come and do the work as opposed to waiting who knows how long. Do you do business their way or just put up with a really long wait for service?

2. Mexico Dive Op offers a discount for cash. You can guess it has to do with keeping income off of their books. Do you insist on paying more on your credit card? I mean they are probably stealing from the government right? Call them in to hacienda and file a report?

3. In your regular restaurant in CZM, you tip generously. You notice that your drinks are in a bigger glass and a little stronger. Demand to see the owner and report this theft of alcohol?

I pay my rental guy in cash for the deal I get. Several rentals in I actually found out he was really just an employee when I had to deal with the owner. Guess what, same cash deal no questions. So had I chosen to accuse my guy of shady dealing, I would have been wrong and insulted him. Of course maybe he is not reporting the income. Maybe I should get his tax returns and have them translated? I am just saying I don't believe there is a bright line between the two.

For the record, I don't jump off bridges. I have jumped the gun occasionally though....

---------- Post added at 03:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:11 PM ----------




100 people survey, top 10 answers on the board:

"How many drinks would it take to leave the bar with Dandy Don?"

View attachment 119798

I understand where you're going.

All I'm saying is that until Hertz makes it pretty clear to me that they have given approval to their employees to make side deals, I'm not in. Until they approve this, I'm not inclined to be party to stealing from them. They have pretty well known policies in place that I know they associate different rental rates for different class cars. An employee taking cash with a wink-wink to me to take a car that Hertz clearly would have charged me more for means I'm taking part in something that is dishonest. I'm not in.


Quote for today -"Honesty pays, but it doesn’t seem to pay enough to suit some people."

Quote for tomorrow-"Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught"


​

 

[cvchief]

I understand where you're going.

All I'm saying is that until Hertz makes it pretty clear to me that they have given approval to their employees to make side deals, I'm not in. Until they approve this, I'm not inclined to be party to stealing from them. They have pretty well known policies in place that I know they associate different rental rates for different class cars. An employee taking cash with a wink-wink to me to take a car that Hertz clearly would have charged me more for means I'm taking part in something that is dishonest. I'm not in.


Quote for today -"Honesty pays, but it doesn’t seem to pay enough to suit some people."

Quote for tomorrow-"Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught"


​

Well, sure if you spin it that way. I didn't take it that way. Hence your interpretation seems to push it into the darker shade of grey. (lil shout other there to Gun with the GD reference.)

 

[PeterNBiddle]

We've established that the cash-for-upgrade scenario could be fraudulent. However it might also not be. I have no insider knowledge either way. None of us on this thread actually KNOW what's really going on.

Here's how it could actually be true that it's supposed to work this way.

When they showed me the contract at the counter - which happened to be before we talked about an upgrade - it didn't have my Hertz gold number on it. I asked them to add it and the guy said all they can do is type in our confirmation number and hit print. He said it most likely was in the record, it just wasn't one of the fields that gets printed when they hit print and it wasn't a field they can see on the screen either. He said they can't see full records nor modify anything - its one-way. All they can do is print records.

Let's say you are Hertz. It's entirely possible (the more I think about it the more likely, based on the possibility of fraud in Mexico, it becomes) that Hertz doesn't allow ANY bi-directional access to the main system. In fact, I'm thinking that they really must not.


From a risk management perspective this actually makes a lot of sense. Unsecured privileged direct access to to many millions of dollars worth of records, including direct billing against those records, is an Extremely Dangerous Thing. Compound this risk by physically surrounding your unsecured terminal with potentially corrupt employees and officials with the world's best funded and most ruthless gangs a short boat ride away and the only reasonable answer becomes "no access at all".


But at the same time you want to run a business in Mexico renting cars to your gringo Yankee customers because you have very clear data that says that if your let your great customers rent from another company in Mexico instead of you then you might lose them forever, either to another intl brand willing to take the risks that you are too afraid to take or to small local shops around the world. Frankly the latter is worse because once people start to love local, they change not just brands but how they think about brands and then they might never come back to you or your multi-billion dollar competitors. Game over man! Game over!

BASIC ROOL OF BIDNESS ARE: ALWAZE MAKE PAYING CUZDOMER JOYFUL

In more formal economic terms, you decide that it is significantly better to assume slight downside risks of small amounts of temporally-bound unregulated liquidity in your local revenue-generating resources in exchange for allowing your local assets (aka "boots on the ground") to engage in cash-based solutions to keeping your loyal customers happy while protecting yourself from a cartel-sponsored gun-point invasion of your office at midnight (complete with the kidnapping of the franchise owners teenage daughter) providing unfettered access to literally hundreds or even billions of dollars worth of assets.

Oh and then there's the news articles you'd have to deal with.


So you decide to run the business in country, but to manage your risk you remove access to the main system.

Unfortunately you've just taken away the ability of your legitimate and enterprising locals to do in-system modifications to the rentals. Things that make customers happy. Like adding a GPS or car-seat. That's bad because of the basic rool. So now you decide to let your employees do those things out-of-system, which means "off the books".

You can't explicitly tell your people to do something that may look and smell fraudulent (that's dumb) but you also can't tell the difference, programmatically from way up high in your ivory tower, between fraudulent bribes and "making loyal customers happy" because both will require that things happen outside the rental system. Upgrades, baby seats and GPS. And asking your people on the ground to always gives those away is just dumb because then there's no incentive to limit access and car-seats, GPS and upgrades are non-infinite resources.


You might even be pretty open, down there, that not only do your people not have the combination to the safe, the safe isn't even in the country, and a couple hundred dollars of upgrade money isn't really worth anyone's time. Meanwhile, up in your ivory tower, you protect your corporate people by saying that you have local solutions in place and tell your auditors to focus on something else.


So, could things work this way? Absolutely. Do they? I think they might, but I don't really know.

 

[DandyDon]

When they showed me the contract at the counter - which happened to be before we talked about an upgrade - it didn't have my Hertz gold number on it.

Now that sucks. You should have received the upgrade for free then. So he stole from you, not Hertz.

 

[Mossman]

For some it doesn't make a difference what the answer to your question is. Some people their ethics are their ethics and 'opportunity', another culture, a situation...etc.. has no bearing on them. Momma taught a lot of little boys when they were growing up, the lesson of "if everybody was jumping of a bridge would you have to do it to?" Some little boys took the lesson to heart, some didn't. Some learned to do what's right regardless of what others are doing.

But what if it's fun to jump off the bridge and you're missing out by listening to Mom?

Take another example. If your children were starving, literally, and you were absolutely penniless with no chance of getting food stamps, help from a friend or relative, etc. You don't get food to your kids, they will die. Would you steal a loaf of bread to save your children?

If the answer is no, that's kind of heartless to let the kids die. If the answer is yes, then you're a potential thief. It's just a matter of how far you'll be pushed before your sense of morality breaks down.

 

[PeterNBiddle]

All I'm saying is that until Hertz makes it pretty clear to me that they have given approval to their employees to make side deals, I'm not in. Until they approve this, I'm not inclined to be party to stealing from them. They have pretty well known policies in place that I know they associate different rental rates for different class cars. An employee taking cash with a wink-wink to me to take a car that Hertz clearly would have charged me more for means I'm taking part in something that is dishonest. I'm not in.

That is a fine position to take. You go! As a loyal Hertz 5-star Gold Member I applaud you!

---------- Post added at 04:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:47 PM ----------

Now that sucks. You should have received the upgrade for free then. So he stole from you, not Hertz.

HOLY CRAP I never thought of it that way! Gosh this sure is complicated!

 

[Mossman]

In either case it's really unethical, and, I expect, really illegal as well.

Perhaps. As they say, don't do the crime if you can't risk the time.

Taking another example from Indonesia where morality gets a bit quirky: On my first trip to Bali, we did an island tour. As is custom, the driver took us to a woodcarving shop among others, where it's standard practice for the driver to get a cut of the merchant's sales for bringing in the customer. While driver is waiting in the car, we're settling up our purchases. Shop owner explains to me that he'll give us a great discount (say 25%) if we sign off on an invoice that only shows 50% of what we bought. It's that invoice amount that will be used to figure the driver's cut. Shop owner is screwing the driver. For all we knew, driver was screwing us by bringing us to a shop where the driver would be sure to get a cut. So is it bad to agree with shop owner on the reduced price in order to get our discount? Morally, maybe. But is it stealing?

We just went with the flow and let the shop owner manipulate the numbers. After our drive, we tipped the driver as much as it cost for the island tour in the first place, so he hopefully recouped at least more than what he would have made from an honest bad-tipping customer.