Rental car company Hertz’s recent use of AI-powered scanners to inspect cars before and after rentals has been getting plenty of attention lately. A reader wrote into The Drive to tell us about their experience renting from Hertz’s Atlanta airport location, and other similar stories have been making the rounds as well. They all seem to share a few things in common: A customer rents a vehicle from Hertz, and upon return, the scanner finds an insignificant blemish on the vehicle, leading to unexpectedly high charges that are often doubled through tacked-on administrative fees.
Given how these stories have proliferated, we thought it’d be helpful to offer a guide about what you can do to protect yourself from such situations. Some of the suggestions are more obvious than others, but the important thing to remember is that this technology is still new, and isn’t commonplace yet. Hertz and other rental car companies that use it may also adjust how they incorporate AI scanning going forward in light of these recent stories, so this topic is certainly evolving in real time. At the moment, here are some tactics we’d recommend.
1. Don’t Rent From a Lot That Uses a Scanner!
This one is obvious, but it is truly the best way to avoid the cases we’ve covered: If you can, simply avoid lots that use these scanners. This will certainly become more difficult over time in Hertz’s case, as the company is currently rolling out UVeye equipment to more of its airport locations. Hertz has about 1,600 stores in airports all around the U.S., and it’s shooting for 100 of those to adopt AI inspection before the end of 2025. Currently, the locations that have it are Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson, Charlotte Douglas, Houston George Bush, Newark Liberty, Phoenix Sky Harbor, and Tampa International.
In an ideal world, you could call up a Hertz airport location and get an answer from an employee on the ground as to whether their lot uses AI. This is exactly what I tried to do with five of the above stores. One took my message; two hung up the second that I pressed “2” to speak to a local rep; and the remaining two also encouraged me to leave a message, but I couldn’t because their mailboxes were full. Such is the experience of customer service in 2025.
If you’re struggling to get confirmation, as I was, you could try to avoid renting from Hertz or their brands Dollar and Thrifty at airports, and go with a different agency. The only other rental car company in the U.S. that has publicly adopted scanning is Sixt, though their “Car Gate” system works a little differently. Hertz’s scanners immediately charge customers for damages that they detect without human review; an agent only gets involved if a customer flags alleged damage using the company’s chatbot system. Sixt, however, says its employees review all AI-detected damage, and renters aren’t charged anything until they’ve had a look. Here’s a quote from the company’s help center:
“If new damage is detected, it is carefully reviewed by our trained staff to ensure fair and customer-focused outcomes. Only if the damage is clearly identified by a staff member as new can a damage claim be initiated by SIXT.”
That seems like a more prudent approach than what Hertz has chosen, though we have not had any Sixt customers write in about their experiences with Car Gate yet. If you have, send an email to the tips address at the bottom of this article, or drop a comment.
2. Use Insurance
Many people buy rental vehicle protection at the desk, but plenty of credit cards and auto insurance policies offer it as a benefit. People typically think of this insurance as only coming into play when you get into a crash, but these policies actually do cover expenses for minor damages; our reader who was charged $440 for a scratch on a rim could’ve filed a claim through their credit card company to cover the cost, provided that benefit was available to them. I spoke to a representative for a card that I carry, and they said that such incidents—like a cracked windshield, for example—are still termed as collisions with objects, and thus covered.
That said, not all forms of vehicle protection are equal. Hertz offers its own, of course, but it can be expensive on a per-day basis. (Plus, paying a company ahead of time to cover the cost of insignificant damages it might nickel-and-dime you for later seems like a net-zero gain for you as the consumer.) As Consumer Reports explains, many credit card coverage policies tend to be “secondary,” which means that they only apply after your personal auto policy is tapped; they also may lack liability coverage, though such incidents are outside the scope of a little scuff or dent, like we’re talking about here.
Ultimately, check with the company providing coverage before you rent, so that you’re fully aware of how they might (or might not) be able to help. A couple of things are generally universally true of credit card policies, though: To use them, you must deny the rental company’s coverage; you must pay for the full amount of the rental with that card; and you must rent a fairly normal vehicle. In the case of my card, a limo, cargo van or truck, “recreational” vehicle like a motorcycle, or “antiques” (defined as “cars over 20 years old or that have not been manufactured for 10 years or more”) aren’t eligible. Good to know the next time I try to track down a Honda S2000 on Turo.
3. Arm Yourself With AI (or at Least Record a Video)
In many of the cases we’ve seen, Hertz is identifying and charging for actual damage—it’s just really minor damage, the kind the company wouldn’t need to fix, and a human inspector might ignore. But there have been some scenarios where the damage is so minor that it may not actually be damage at all. One Hertz renter who recently spoke to The New York Times said they had an incident-free rental, and a Hertz employee in Atlanta confirmed their vehicle had no damage. During the scan, however, the AI system flagged a dent. It’s so tiny, it could have been anything—or nothing! Nevertheless, Hertz’s live agent review still determined they needed to pay $195 for the tiny speck.
In such a situation, it’d be advantageous if you had your own record of the vehicle. You could take a video (and, at minimum, you probably should, no matter who you’re renting from), but today, developers have actually built scanning apps that leverage machine learning of their own to identify and validate differences in before-and-after photos. One such startup is Proofr, whose app is currently live on Apple’s App Store. We have not used Proofr in such a capacity, but it’s worth trying. Of course, it still all depends on whether the AI-assisted rental agency is willing to give your evidence the time of day. As Proofr’s developer points out, it does seem viable for other situations in life when you’re trying to prove that you did or didn’t damage something, like home renting, or handing your vehicle over for service.
If you plan to rent a car soon, these are the steps we’d take to hopefully have an incident-free and inexpensive experience. We’d also recommend brushing up on the company’s own criteria for chargeable damage, in case you have to fight back. Hertz actually lists “example thresholds” on its website for the kinds of blemishes that the company penalizes renters for. These include “a single dent that has a diameter greater than 1 inch,” or “a scratch or scuff that exceeds 1 inch” on wheels, even though we’ve seen Hertz’s scanners ring up customers for damage below both limits. It’s worth noting that Hertz sort of gives itself an out here and adds that “these [thresholds] are illustrative only and not intended to be all inclusive of all damage for which you will be held responsible.”
If you do face an AI scanner during your next rental and have a story to tell—good or bad—reach out to us at [email protected]
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