A New Hampshire man on a Caribbean cruise with his girlfriend was forced to cut his vacation short after police boarded the ship in Florida and accused him of stealing a Hertz rental car.
Charles Doucette was arrested on the spot and taken to jail for what he calls false accusations of car theft.
"This is the most horrific experience of my life," Doucette told CBS News from Florida's Brevard County Jail.
Doucette, a top-tier Hertz President's Circle member, said the situation stems from a business rental early last year. He claims he properly extended the rental, but Hertz filed a police report saying the vehicle had been stolen. He was pulled over in Arizona and the car was towed, CBS reported. Afterward, Hertz charged his credit card for the full rental, Doucette said.
Months went by and then in August, Doucette was indicted by a grand jury and ordered to appear in court in Arizona after prosecutors there charged the case based off Hertz's police report, according to CBS.
Doucette said he filed documents so he wouldn't have to appear in person, but he told CBS he's not sure what happened at court. In any event, the situation led to his arrest on February 11.
Hertz did not respond to questions about Doucette's case but issued a statement to CBS saying "situations where vehicles are reported to the authorities are very rare and happen only after exhaustive attempts to reach the customer."
Doucette is expected to spend a minimum of 10 days in jail while awaiting extradition to Arizona. In the meantime, his attorney has reached out to Hertz asking for help getting him out of jail.
"Hertz refuses to correct a police report when they've learned payments [were] made, when they've learned the car's been returned or when they've learned there's inaccuracies," Attorney Francis Alexander Malofiy told CBS.
In December, a lawsuit with around 180 plaintiffs was filed against Hertz, alleging that the company falsely reported its rental cars stolen for years, as part of its regular business practice that burdened customers with "criminal records that impact their livelihoods, and separating them from their family and loved ones." Some customers were arrested, some faced felony charges and others were stopped by police for driving cars they legally rented from the company.
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