Accenture sued for $32 million over Hertz website redesign

An April 19 lawsuit filed by car rental agency Hertz claims leading management and IT consultancy Accenture “failed to deliver the website and apps for which it was so generously paid.” The lawsuit demands a jury trial.

The suit alleges Hertz hired Accenture to redesign its website and create related mobile apps for its company. This redesign became mired in delays from its scheduled live date of December 2017. Hertz dealt with the mounting frustrations until May 2018, when it pulled the plug on the Accenture deal. 

“By that point, Hertz no longer had any confidence that Accenture was capable of completing the project, and Hertz terminated Accenture,” the lawsuit states. The company hopes to reclaim the $32 million it paid Accenture, plus damages to fix the state of the Hertz website. Hertz replaced the firm’s team, but precious knowledge was lost in the transition, and the replacements did not have the experience or expertise possessed by the firm’s employees, resulting in further delays on the project.

According to the lawsuit, Accenture focused on Hertz’s website and mobile applications, but neglected “medium” displays for tablets such as iPads, meaning the site would not automatically resize for the devices. The firm then “demanded hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional fees to deliver the promised medium-sized layout.”

The lawsuit also alleges that code written for the website was poorly written and a security risk. It also could not be used as a “common core of libraries that could be extended for each of Hertz’s brands. Without Hertz’s knowledge or approval, Accenture deliberately disregarded the extensibility requirement and wrote the code so that it was specific to the Hertz brand in North America and could not be used for the Hertz global brand or for the Dollar and Thrifty brands [which Hertz owns and operates].” The suit claims Accenture “deliberately disregarded” the contract.

In a statement, Accenture denied fault. “We believe the allegations in this lawsuit are without merit, and we intend to vigorously defend our position,” an Accenture spokesperson said. “Because this is an ongoing legal matter, we decline any further comment.”