> Why do consumers have no recourse against companies that steal from them? …

> Stuff like this is easy to charge back with your credit card company. That's not actually true. This sort of "oh, you never have to pay for services not rendered" is mostly just a fiction. I've had multiple issues with major credit card issuers who refused to persist chargebacks when vendors screwed me. The other issue is that, even if you successfully chargeback against a vendor, oftentimes that vendor is a monopoly or duopoloy, and they will terminate your account and ban any new accounts using the same name or card number, and you'll be screwed.

"Stuff like this is easy to charge back with your credit card company." That sounds like what someone who's never had to waste hours getting 'stuff like this' charged back, with varying levels of success, would say.

> Stuff like this is easy to charge back with your credit card company. Hah. Your card company will accept the dispute, Hertz will provide them with the rental contract you signed and say "he agreed to pay it!", and your card company will close the dispute without ever even following up with you. > But in this case, the article makes it clear that the people were able to get the charges reversed by talking to Hertz. It wasn't necessarily convenient, but the funds were returned when a human saw the mistake. Actually the article makes it clear that they had to go round and round in circles with bot-like support reps who probably haven't ever seen a Tesla in whatever slum they can afford. > If you entered into an agreement with someone to do business and then accidentally charged them the wrong amount, you would not go to jail. It's not accidental when you keep doing it until the news gets …