It’s been a while since I’ve had to hire a car (in fact, two years ago was when the Traverse spilled her guts on the I-87 flyover bridge) which is long enough for me to forget just how much fun the process…isn’t.
And having to hire one having just experienced a catastrophic breakdown in downtown Raleigh in a very short time-frame in order to retrieve kids from school is never going to be ideal.
Then there’s trying to figure out a pick-up time from the garage when I have no idea when the tow truck driver is going to arrive.
So I ended up ringing Enterprise Rent-A-Car as they’re the only one I know that will send someone to collect you from where you were stranded. The reservation for a Malibu-class car seems to go smoothly enough other than I ended up with the Capital Blvd location rather than the Knightdale one I was hoping for.
One could dare to dream that the actual transaction would go as smoothly.
That dream died relatively quickly when I rang up the Capital Blvd office to let them know I’d arrived at garage and was ready for the pick-up. The pick-up wasn’t the problem…the bait-and-switch from the Malibu I was quoted a hour ago to a SUV that costs twice as much royally sucks.
I get it that the system that the call centre uses is probably not updated in real time from the various locations. And in fairness, they did call the phone but didn’t make it through the telespam-blocking feature of iOS to try to warn me the bait-and-switch was coming.
But why in the world couldn’t the reservation agent have verified availability with Capital Blvd whilst I was still on the phone and was waiting for the tow truck to arrive? It might have taken another two minutes of her time but it would have at least alleviated my suspicion that the sudden non-availability of what I was quoted was intentional.
Car hire shoppes aren’t the only ones known for this sort of shady dealing. The airline industry’s profit margins depend largely on fuel hedges and how well they can manage the damage and chaos caused to passengers that intentionally overselling capacity on their aircraft causes every day.
So I get to the rental desk already knowing I’m in for an even bigger screwing than what I was already anticipating and now I’m being put through the contract process by an individual whose empathy seems to be nonexistent for someone whose brand-new and breathtakingly expensive transmission seems to have failed just three days after rolling away from the garage where it was mended.
The process doesn’t start well when he demands that I give him two phone numbers.
The problem with that is that I only have one phone number and it’s that phone I’m holding in my hand. I haven’t had a land-line in forever.
Then he suggests betraying the trust of co-workers (that I don’t have as I’m self-employed doing tax and accountancy gigs right now) or friends and family (who I will not divulge their phone numbers without so much as a by-your-leave even if I know they really wouldn’t care if I did).
But he’s not going to be dissuaded…he’s got to have that second phone number because the tablet tells him so.
At this point, I look out at the rear of the Ford Edge I’m about to hire and see something rather interesting. Then I looked down at my phone which was open to the “favourites” panel of the contacts in the phone app and my eye lands upon one particular name in the list.
I’m sure that any one who has seen Christmas movies (and the Chuck Jones animated “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”, in particular!) would remember the scene when the Grinch gets a very awful idea.
The smile that comes to my face probably looked quite similar!
I rattle off that number from the contact list and my obsequious functionary plugs it into his tablet without another thought.
You would have thought that the phone number starting with the 386 area code might have at least had him ask the most obvious question but he didn’t.
That rather begs the observation that the second phone number is completely meaningless to them at the end of the day but never let common sense and intelligence get in the way of pointless bureaucracy.
But I think it’s a safe bet that Dad’s entry in the contact list is there to stay whenever future malicious compliance may be needed! 😉
Fortunately, the rest of the process goes fairly quickly and I’m off to collect Katie and Alex on time which is what I really cared about at that moment.
Alex’s look of surprise when I rolled up in that Edge rather than the Traverse was quite amusing. Slightly less so was finding that the right front tyre had been incredibly overinflated but fortunately I had the compressor and could fix that once with Alex monitoring the pressure on the cockpit displays once I got the car to get rid of the modal nag screens that obscured the pressures (I had to have him put the seat belt on and shut the driver’s side door…yeah, overdoing the safety thing just a tad).
Katie was also quite surprised to find herself climbing into a very different vehicle than the one that had dropped her off and had undergone such a joy of a misadventure downtown.
After doing a run out to Clayton and enjoying the fact that the Edge does have a very nicely functional tushy warmer which does wonders for an aching back, I make my way back home just in time to be caught by Miguel who is wondering why I’m driving what I’m driving and gently giving me a bit of stick for not ringing him up when everything was going to hell (and the reason I hadn’t was that I knew he was off at a customer site in Durham).
Fortunately, he only calls me a stooge a couple of times and then we pass the time to do a bit of the jigsaw puzzle and some of his accountancy and corporate affairs until it was time to have Nicholas show up and wonder why there’s no Traverse in the garage!
Driving a hire car…the gift that just keeps on giving! 🙂