Hertz paid $32M in 2018 for a website it ended up throwing away. The sum is smaller than the other cases here, but the pattern is familiar: a long digital project judged only at the end.
What happened
Hertz spent $32M on a new website that it ultimately discarded rather than launch.
A build that big is rarely a single failure. It is months of work in which early warning signs were either missed or were not acted on.
Where an independent check was missing
In long projects the supplier reports progress and the client mostly sees status reports. Without someone independent looking at the actual product, the gap between what is reported and what exists can grow unseen.
Regular working demonstrations, reviewed by someone who is not paid on delivery, show quickly whether the work is heading somewhere useful.
What to do differently
Break a large build into releases that real users can try within weeks. If the first release does not work, the cost is small and the lesson is early.
Tie payments to working software that has passed agreed checks, not to documents or time spent.
Decide what good looks like
Write down at the start what the new site must do and how that will be measured, such as booking completion or page speed. Without agreed measures, every status report can be read as success.
Review the plan at fixed points and be willing to stop early. Stopping at month three costs far less than stopping after $32M.
- Hertz paid $32M for a website it threw away.
- Ask for working demonstrations, not status reports.
- Release small and let real users test early.
- Pay against working software and agreed measures.
