The next time you rent a car, that ding on the door might not slip under the radar. Powerful new A.I.-driven tools are helping Hertz and other companies catch every little scratch, and puzzled renters are being asked to pay up.
Hertz, one of the world’s largest car rental companies, debuted the technology last fall at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and it’s now in use at five other U.S. airports, said Emily Spencer, a Hertz spokeswoman. Developed by a company called UVeye, the scanning system works by capturing thousands of high-resolution images from all angles as a vehicle passes through a rental lot’s gates at pickup and return. A.I. then compares those images and flags any discrepancies.
The system automatically creates and sends damage reports, Ms. Spencer said. An employee reviews the report only if a customer flags an issue after receiving the bill. She added that fewer than 3 percent of vehicles scanned by the A.I. system show any billable damage.
Still, unexpected charges for damage that’s barely visible to the naked eye are leaving renters wondering what’s going on.
‘It Could Have Been a Shadow’
Kelly Rogers and her husband rented a car from Hertz at the Atlanta airport over the July 4 weekend to travel to a family wedding in Birmingham, Ala. The couple, who live in Scarsdale, N.Y., booked a minivan to shuttle family around, and the drive in both directions was uneventful, they said.
When they returned the car in Atlanta, they inspected it and saw no damage. A Hertz employee inspected the vehicle upon its return as well, they said, and did not flag any damage.
But once the couple had passed through airport security, they received a notification via the Hertz app that its automated system had detected a dent in the passenger-side front door. They were charged $195: $80 for the damage and $115 in fees, including those incurred “as a result of processing” the damage claim and the “cost to detect and estimate the damage” that occurred during the rental. Hertz offered to reduce the charge to $130 if they paid within one day.
Ms. Rogers said the charge was inexplicable. “It could have been a shadow,” she said in a phone interview. “We were pulling it up on the app, and we’re like, ‘This is so bananas.’”
The couple has been in touch with customer service and is seeking to have the fee dismissed. Ms. Spencer said the incident was reviewed and confirmed as a new dent.
What the Eye Doesn’t See
UVeye, which makes Hertz’s scanners, says on its website that its technology can “detect 5X more damage than manual checks” and generate “6X higher total value of damage captured.”
Yaron Saghiv, the company’s chief marketing officer, said in an email that its technology “removes the need for manual walkarounds, increases vehicle safety, and ensures a reliable, objective record of vehicle condition.”
As for the fees tacked on to the Rogers family’s bill, Ms. Spencer, the Hertz spokeswoman, said that damage fees “are all incident-specific” and that they are calculated using multiple variables including “the costs that are incurred, identifying and quantifying the damage, and administering the claim.”
Hertz and its subsidiaries, Dollar and Thrifty, are using the technology at Newark Liberty International Airport, Charlotte Douglas International Airport, Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, Tampa International Airport and George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, as well as in Atlanta, Ms. Spencer said.
Hertz plans to expand the technology to other “major airport locations” this year, Ms. Spencer said, but did not specify how many or where.
Sixt, another major rental car company, uses a different A.I.-supported tool called Car Gate, a scanner that relies on “built-in sensors, cameras and a lighting system” to check for damage, according to the company’s website. “As part of the quality assurance, the photos are checked and verified,” the website says. Sixt did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
A spokesman for Enterprise Mobility, which owns Enterprise, National and Alamo, said the company does not use A.I. in its damage review process.
Avis Budget Group, which includes the brands Avis, Budget and Payless, as well as the car-sharing company Zipcar, was reportedly testing A.I. damage scanning technology as early as 2019, but the company said via email that its damage assessment process “remains human-led.” It added, “While certain technologies, including A.I., may be used to support internal efficiencies, they do not replace the judgment or involvement of our employees.”
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Gabe Castro-Root is a travel reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for journalists early in their careers.
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