It’s on brand. I pity the fool that doesn’t know hertz is a fucked up rental agency
Isn’t this the same company that called the police on legitimate customers after they messed up the paperwork?
And the company that charges “gas refueling fees” for a fully charged EV.
Holy shit. The contract that dude signed had a maximum fee of $35 for EV recharge, yet they charged him $277 and claimed the contract allowed that. Thankfully, the worst I’ve had from Hertz is they just told me to fuck off and didn’t give me my reserved vehicle.
I’ve had from Hertz is they just told me to fuck off and didn’t give me my reserved vehicle.
And here I thought they just didn’t like me… WTF kind of business is this lol
I’m not unconvinced that it isn’t just an elaborate money laundering company
Seinfeld even covered this decades ago, so it’s nothing new. Somehow the business model works? I don’t get it either; Captive audience I guess.
Business travel presumably and they don’t fuck them over?
They charged me for a broken windshield, which I paid and then wouldn’t provide me a receipt for my insurance company. Then to top it off, they turned me into a collections agency because they said I didn’t pay for the windshield. I will never rent from them again.
And I will take this as my cue to mention that Hertz, Dollar and Thrifty are all the same company and they will each of them take every opportunity possible to fuck you.
They’re all rather shitty tbh, with some regional variation
I will bring this up again like I did my last post concerning Hertz.
While I was in Albuquerque, NM getting off the Amtrak train, I reserved our rental car from their website and went to the nonexistent address with no phone number or anything. After half an hour we called another Hertz and they basically told us to piss off and call the location we booked the car. I have few brands that I boycott and now they will be Nestle products (and sub companies) and Hertz.
Nestle products (and sub companies)
That’s a tall order. And just to be clear, not saying we should just give up against those numbers. It’s not an all-or-nothing situation.
Just buy store brands and you’re 80% of the way there.
very often, the storebrand is usually a namebrand product with a different wrapper.
Sometimes it’s made with lower quality ingredients at the same factory, sometimes it’s equivalent.
Some might be lower but some would be the same.
Yea, it’s usually the nicer packaged, higher priced products that make dumb consumers feel like they’re buying something better.
But sometimes the nicer packaged product is better, it depends on the product.
And often times it isn’t. In fact, name-brand can ofter be worse for a multitude of reasons.
I’m interested in examples of when name-brand is worse quality, but yes, name-brand isn’t always objectively better, and is often produced in the same facility.
As usual, it depends, so don’t knee-jerk to all one or the other, if it matters to you, compare the packaging (it’ll say where it was produced, so you can guess when it’s the same product).
Sometimes is doing a lot of work here though
Sure, I’m just not sure if it’s more or less often than when it’s equivalent. It’s frequent enough that you should be careful if quality is what you’re after.
Then you can buy nestle products and feel good about it because it’s got the Kroger label instead of nestle, because store brands are generally name brand products in the stores wrapping.
Careful! Some of us are capable of flipping the package over and reading.
The term AI itself is a shifting of goalposts. What was AI 50 years ago* is now AGI, so we can call this shit AI though it’s nothing of the sort. And everybody’s falling for the hype: governments, militaries, police forces, care providers, hospitals… not to speak of the insane amounts of energy & resources this wastes, and other highly problematic, erm, problems. What a fucking disaster.
If it wasn’t for those huge caveats I’d be all for it. Use it for what it can do (which isn’t all that much), research it. But don’t fall for the shit some tech bro envisions for us.
* tbf fucking around with that term probably isn’t a new thing either, and science itself is divided on how to define it.
It’s also the other way around. What was called AI in the past is now called bots. Simple algorithms that approximate the appearance of intelligence like even the earliest chess engines, for instance, were also called AI.
And all those uses are correct, because AI is a broad field. We should just use the more specific terms these days though: machine learning, LLM, Bayesian networks, etc.
Agreed. But most people have neither the time nor capacity to track all of these specifics, so popular discussions of AI-related technologies inevitably break down into a mud pit of people talking past each other about various different topics.
Which, if you think about it, is true of most public discussions about any complex topic. It almost invariably devolves into a miscommunication or a discussion about semantics.
People have the capacity to track genres and whatnot, what’s so different about this?
I think people could understand if explained probably, but unfortunately journalists rarely dive deeply enough to do that. It really doesn’t need to get too involved:
- machine learning - tell an algorithm what it’s allowed to change and what a “good” output is and it’ll handle the rest to find the best solution
- Bayesian networks - probability of an event given a previous event; this is the underpinnings of LLMs
- LLM - similar to Bayesian networks, but with a lot more data
And so on. If people can associate a technology with common applications, it’ll work a lot more like genres and people will start to intuit limitations of various technologies.
What’s different is that most people will see it as “tech stuff” and mentally file it in a drawer with spare extension cords and adapters. They don’t care to deeply study or catalog things. Nerds care about that, and most people here, including me, are nerds, but most people are not nerds and consider learning to be a form of torture.
People writ-large don’t care about proper genre labels either, they just kinda pick a vibe and guess off of it. Look at all the -core suffixed aesthetic names that cropped up in the last decade.
Yeah, I think it’s unfortunate that tech is something people refuse to learn about. I’ve been able to explain technical topics to less technical people, they just need to care.
For example, I’m into finance, and have been able to explain pretty complex topics (compounding, Social Security benefits, derivatives, etc) to people with no background in a way that they know how things work at a high level. They may not be able to trade options or predict portfolio performance, but they can at least tell if their “financial advisor” knows their stuff.
Learning a bit about key technologies can help cut through the BS from marketing departments. But as soon as I mention something remotely technical, people shut down. If people understood that LLMs basically do keyword association to generate text from a prompt, they wouldn’t believe the lies that claim they “think.” Just a little bit of high level knowledge would change it from “magic” to a sometimes useful everyday tool.
True! I was refering to some stricltly scientific definitions but of course there’s always been popular/broader ones.
What was AI 50 years ago is now AGI,
You’re not wrong, but that’s also a bit misleading. “AI” is all-encompassing while terms like AGI and ASI are subsets. From the 1950s onward AI was expected to evolve quickly as computing evolved, that never happened. Instead, AI mostly topped out with decision trees, like those used for AI in videogames. ML pried the field back open, but not in the ways we expected.
AGI and ASI were coined in the early 2000s to set apart the goal of human-level intelligence from other kinds of AI like videogame AI. This is a natural result of the field advancing in unexpected, divergent directions. It’s not meant to move the goal post, but to clarify future goals against past progress.
It is entirely possible that we develop multiple approaches to AGI that necessitate new terminology to differentiate them. It’s the nature of all evolution, including technology and language.
The current situation is a bubble based on an over hyped extension of the cloud compute boom. Nearly a trillion dollars of capital expenditure over the past 5 years from major tech companies chasing down this white whale and filling up new data centers with Nvidia GPUs. With revenue caping out at maybe 45 billion annually across all of them for “AI” products and services, and that’s before even talking about ongoing operation costs such as power for the data centers, wages for people working on them, or the wages of people working to develop services to run on them.
None of this is making any fucking profit, and every attempt to find new revenue ether increases their costs even more or falls flat on its face the moment it is actually shipped. No one wants to call it out at higher levels because NVIDIA is holding up the whole fucking stock market right now, and them crashing out because everyone stoped buying new GPUs will hurt everyone else’s growth narrative.
We called the basic movement of the grabbers in Defender AI to distinguish it from the fixed movement of Space Invaders. We still call that AI in modern videogames.
It’s pretty clear your understanding of the history of computer science comes from Star Wars.
I am 0% surprised that Hertz would be the first in the US to roll this out. Expecting a Steve Lehto YouTube video about it within the next three days …
He’s already done 3 that I know of
Oh, so Hertz has gotten wise to… every online platform that exists: Outsourcing all responsibility for their user-hostile bullshit to some vague “system” that cannot be held accountable.
I’m so sorry but the advertised cost has doubled because… Computer says so! No, sir, there’s nothing I can do, sir, you see it’s the system.
And you can’t go anywhere else, because everyone else is doing it (or soon will be) too!
just wait till they start denying health insurance with it
I’m sorry ma’am I know you’re upset, but the AI said it’s not covered. The AI is numbers, and numbers don’t lie.
United Health is way ahead of you. 1000 use cases, they tout. it’s one of the things that lead to the luigi-ing.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/unitedhealth-now-has-1-000-ai-use-cases-including-in-claims-f3387ca3
Do they already not do that? They just call it “the computer”.
I mean, it’ll mostly be accelerating a trend that was already there. Also, the initial scramble to use the legal grey area to cover as much shady shit as possible in a: Well shucks, how were we supposed to know the neural net would make illegal denials? After all, the guys who trained it don’t even know exactly why it does what it does kinda way
Oh, this is a thing. It’s called an accountability sink.
There is a really interesting book called the unaccountability machine by Rory Sutherland (if my memory is working). Worth a read
Rory “expert in all things” Sutherland?
He keeps cropping up in my youtube feed talking about a huge range of topics in his confident posh twat voice.
His background is in marketing… never trust a salesman
Oh, he has some strange views, sure, but he is like that magician that tells everyone how the magic tricks are done, except this is marketing not magic, so both sides don’t like him.
Thanks! I knew there was a term, but just couldn’t conjure it.
I once tried to book on their site, and the website froze and it wouldn’t go through every time I tried to pay. I checked my email multiple times and checked my credit card statement. Nothing went through. I went and booked elsewhere. 12 hours later, I get a confirmation email from them. I tried to cancel and it wanted to charge me $100 cancelation fee. I had to call to get it resolved. 45 minute wait time. Thankfully they took care of it, but it was a huge headache caused by their shitty system.
Next time just charge back.
I’d ask for the stupid AI scanning system to scan my car before I agree to renting it. Once they sign off on the ‘all clear’ notification from their AI scanner before rental, then I’d consider renting it … but after reading this headline, I’d probably just tell them, I’m spending a few hundred dollars more on renting a car from someone else.
You should also ask for a copy of the pictures or videos it takes while scanning so you can reference when returning.
And they will totally provide those to you, no problem.
Just spit balling here, but they probably tune the AI for different thresholds between return and rent out so that they can rake in the damage fees for things that “weren’t there” during the first AI scan.
Sounds like that shit with dodgy smoking detection in a hotel from last week…
Yup intentionally using dogy tools to extract more money from people under false pretenses, at this point I’m boycotting any company that claims to use AI, fuck em all
Good luck trying to boycott a car rental company, as far as I can tell they are all actually the same company with 5 different “brands”. You rent from one but when you show up they send you to another one who has the car. It’s crazy.
Use Turo. You can rent basic or fun/interesting cars directly from the owners.
Oh yay another bullshit thing. No thanks.
It’s been around for quite awhile. I use Turo more than I use regular car rental services because you actually get to choose what car you’re getting and the prices are better.
Those do exactly what they’re supposed to do. They’re even explicitly advertised as providing new revenue streams.
I get why they’d use something like this to save money and time but, is suspect that correct use would include a human check before charging people.
We need to start pushing for laws on this kind of thing. Automated checks are fine if you, as the company, trust they won’t have too many false negatives. If you aren’t checking for false positives, though, you should be heavily fined for each false report. $25,000 per false report sounds like a good place to start. Hopefully that would be large enough to not just be the cost of doing business.
Never rent a car from Hertz, check.
Hertz has also called the cops on their customers for a variety of asinine reasons.
I steer clear of them and Enterprise (Enterprise has been working the whole shaft for ICE).
Okay so…in the rare event I need to rent a car, any suggestions on who to use that isn’t Hertz and sister companies?
I’ve had a lot of good recent experiences with Enterprise (in the US). There’s some interesting services like Turo, but I can’t bring myself to try it yet. Weirdly too personal being other people’s cars.
Enterprise and Alamo is owned by the same family which means they aren’t beholden to public shareholders. Usually this means the company is ran better and not as haphazardly as public ones tend to be.
Well, then I guess that explains a lot.
I imagine Turo is now very similar to AirBnB in most areas, as in these are dedicated rentals, just owned by individuals instead of chains.
I recently used Avis, they were totally cromulent.
Plus they are worshipped as a god in some sectors of the universe.
Katniss everdeen
I used Avis in a different state for a short car rental and they sent me a hefty bill for some kind of damage below the vehicle a couple months after returning it.
I refused to pay and will refuse to use them ever again. Your mileage may vary.
Avis is terrible.
I rent through Costco and try to pick Alamo when possible. Avis is decent but they often share a line with Budget which can take forever.
I’m not a loyalty member of any brand for reference.
SIXT and TURO. Maybe price out renting the big truck from Lowe’s/home depot. Or a haul. Both might be cheaper than hertz/enterprise depending on your area.
Sixt is specifically called out as AI lying about damages in Germany.
Enterprise has been good.
I wonder what a credit card dispute would result in here. Underutilized feature when businesses pull shady shit. Think I’ve had 6 or so disputes over the years, never failed.
Too many people these days don’t use or have access to credit cards for services like this. Many people I know only use bank debit cards, or worse, use the debit preloaded cash cards issued by their employers’ payroll service provider.
Credit cards motivate banks to help you, because if you won’t pay, and the business doesn’t pay, the bank has to take the hit.
Debit cards will work as well if your bank values it’s reputation - but not all banks do.
And I would not trust a preloaded card provider to assist. You are neither their business partner nor their customer and that puts your interests at the bottom of a very long list. You have to hope some law is on your side or that your issue is so trivial that resolving it is more cost effective then dealing with you.
Huh? I don’t think I’ve ever used a rental car service that didn’t require a credit card. Exactly so they can charge for this sort of thing.
Virtually any place that accepts a credit card will accept debit cards, too. Actually, most debit cards can be processed as credit cards. The comment you responded to simply highlighted that this trick is much easier to pull with credit card than a debit card, as the creditor hasn’t yet been repaid for the credit issued.
it’s because with credit cards they can check the credit limit, then be sure that the card can pay the insurance deductible in case of crash
instead with debit i can rent a car, close or deativate the card, crash/total the rental car and then avoid paying any extra fee
most rentals don’t rent with debit cards because they want to be sure, and who accepts debit:
- they preauthorize thousands of dollars instead of hundreds
- they only rent the lowest end of the available cars
in this case, hertz doesn’t rent to who doesn’t have a credit card
debit = no rent
I should have remembered that. I had to lend my card out to my friend who was in a credit lock at the time they needed a rental. Still, I don’t think my advice is invalid, just irrelevant here.
debit = no rent
Funny, I rented from Hertz about two weeks ago and there was a big sign at the counter explaining their terms of business for renting with a debit card. And it didn’t say “We don’t do it.”
It’s more a case by case situation, not universal. In a place where car thefts are rampant they wouldn’t offer that, for example
And the initial deposit is massive
You CAN dispute debit card charges, but the process is typically done through the vendor of the card, CPI or Fiserv. Contact your bank.
Yes. I agree - on paper all three have a chargeback process that appear similar enough. However, assuming you aren’t a financial expert who never needs help, I’m discussing the behind the front politics at play and each group’s motivations to go above and beyond.
I don’t understand how this works out badly for the person using a debit card. You pay for the vehicle and if they try to make you pay more you ask for proof and if you don’t get it you walk away.
Or do they require a collateral fee when renting?
It’s about who’s lawyers you can rally to your defense in a dispute.
With a credit card you’re spending the bank’s money. If you can convince the bank you’re in the right, it’s you and the bank’s lawyers recovering the bank’s money.
As a debit card user, the banks will support your legal rights, because it’s good business for your clients to prosper. While the bank’s lawyers won’t go to bat for you, many will be willing to give you quasi-legal and quasi-financial tidbits or point you in the right direction.
As the bank’s client’s employee, you’re basically on your own. Good luck.
Or do they require a collateral fee when renting?
Yes
The other thing not being mentioned is that credit cards and debit cards have different legally required protections.
Credit cards are also an instrument of christofascist pedophiles who want to ban all pornography and ‘pornography’ (they consider the existence of queer people to be porn)
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Theoretically. Last time i saw an ‘american ecpress’ card was like 2013.
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You mean an LLM that doesn’t have the ability to understand context fails to make decisions that require context to do properly? Shocking /s
Except they are using computer vision, not an LLM
And what is processing that information?
Computer vision commonly uses convolutional neural networks on the input, which is different from the transformer neural networks used in LLMs. If you have more info indicating LLMs are used here please share
If you have more info indicating LLMs are used here please share
two seconds of research would reveal LLMs are ALL OVER COMPUTER VISION. Are convolutional networks used? Yes. Are LLMs used? Yes. And MLLMs.
Tell you what sparky: you find me a source that says ONLY CNNs are used, then you can act like a subject matter expert.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.16673
https://github.com/OpenGVLab/VisionLLM
https://www.chooch.com/blog/how-to-integrate-large-language-models-with-computer-vision/
I was actually referring to UVEye which was referenced in the article. I looked into UVEye and nowhere did it say it used LLMs with their computer vision. That’s why I asked if anyone had any info on them using it. The comment I replied to assumed LLMs were used but supplied no evidence. None of the links you shared have anything to do with UVEye either.
Computer vision commonly uses convolutional neural networks on the input,
no where do you specify UVEye.
You could admit they’re all over, but instead double down on how I assumed lol
Except they are using computer vision, not an LLM
That’s what I initially said, referring to the article. If you have nothing to say regarding the technology in this article that’s fine, but don’t just assume that since there is research of incorporating LLMs into computer vision means it was used in this specific case.
what do you think is driving the image recognition take that comes from the computer vision hardware?
it’s an LLM.
https://www.chooch.com/blog/how-to-integrate-large-language-models-with-computer-vision/
Hertz is a ripoff and a hassle and little else
“AI is a disaster.” Fixed it for you.
Fair game. Give me a grease pen and let me mark everything I see. By the time I’m done, they’ll owe me money.
