You seem to know all the facts of the matter. Did The Drive and Jalopnik tell us who the customer was? And the location of this incident?
Or did they just regurgitate other fake blogs by repeating the same lies over and over. BTW. One Mile at a Time (another blog) had this “story” first.
https://onemileatatime.com/news/hertz-unlimited-miles-rental/
Hertz said that it was a mistake, the customer would not be charged and the owner and employees of the franchise would be retrained. So Hertz admits it happened.
They, as far as I can tell, did not contact the customer.
Now you are, as I said, perfectly free to believe that everyone, even Hertz, is lying for some weird reason but the evidence does seem to be against it.