Do not rent a vehicle from Hertz.

Do not rent a vehicle from Hertz. Their staff CANNOT BE TRUSTED with your CREDIT CARD DETAILS.

Having rented a small car for 4 days from the GENEVA TRAIN STATION branch of Hertz (through Autoeurope and Dollar as brokers) I returned the car at the arranged time during normal open hours (this happened to be Sunday 13:00) - no one was there to receive the car - they were taking an extended lunch break and left a note on the branch door saying to leave keys in box. Having inspected the car thoroughly, satisfied it was in perfect condition, I left the keys in the box as instructed.

MY FIRST MISTAKE - NEVER TRUST CAR HIRE COMPANIES LIKE THIS

I've rented cars many times, usually privately or with ZipCar and have never had an issue. I work in London and do a lot of traveling so I would consider myself a seasoned car renter and have never, ever had any issues before. So, this is where I made my first mistake, I trusted Hertz, hence did not take any photographs of the car. I left it in an underground parking lot adjacent to the key drop box and in an allocated Hertz parking space - what on earth could go wrong?

The following day, back in the UK at around lunch time Swiss time - I received a barrage of phone calls and a voice mail (when I was still on the plane) from the girl at the branch claiming she could not find the car, demanding to know where I parked it. This was bizarre. Hertz at Geneva train station have an allocated section of a small underground multi-story car park. I'd parked it right next to the key box, she'd already picked up the key, how she couldn't find the car straight away seemed very strange.

1 voicemail, 3 phone calls and a couple of hours later she called again to say she'd found it but there was a nasty scratch on it. She had clearly done this herself. I demanded to see the CCTV footage of the parking lot but she laughed and told me I can try and get it if I wanted. I waited for the evidence, it never came. I called them to be told that apparently their email system doesn't work very well so they tried to send again. It never came. We tried different email addresses but for whatever reason it was not sending. I finally received it and saw the photographs and the sign-in sheet.

Strangely the sign-in sheet claimed the car had been checked in at 7:30am, I was unaware that Hertz also had time traveling vehicles within their fleet as I was still receiving phone calls from the girl at midday Geneva time, claiming she couldn't find the car. The check-in sheet had been falsified - I still have no idea why. The photographs which were included in the same email as the falsified checkin sheet had a picture of the dashboard, the clock read 14:30 - 7 hours after it had been checked in?

The scratch itself is obvious vandalism and obviously done moments before the photograph had been taken. It was also calculated vandalism as the resulting cost for which I received the bill, was £700 for a single scratch. They obviously, simply replaced the entire panel, this was something I know for certain whoever did it new what they were doing, someone who's day-to-day job is evaluating damage on vehicles and charging them for it, perhaps?

This happened at the beginning of September. It is now January and having spent hours on the phone and writing emails the book has been passed over and over again, no-one has accepted responsibility for this. I keep on getting sent the photographs and the falsified checkin sheet as if they prove something.

I still want to know WHY this person has done this.