Well, first things first was to get the ride and that proved to be a bit less-than-obvious as to how we were supposed to do that.
The last time I’d hired a car at an airport (which would have been Orlando in 2016 when I went to sell my father’s house and van), the rental agencies actually had a desk in the terminal so that once I’d been through the baggage reclaim, I’d wander over to the hire car desk and sort out the details and then they’d tell me where the car was or have me get on a coach if their car park was remotely located.
Trouble was I had no idea where to go at RDU and all of the communications I’d gotten from Avis said nothing about what I was to do when I arrived at the airport. All of the agencies have their car park between the control tower and I-40 but what was less obvious was whether the paperwork was also done there or in the terminals.
Remember how I mentioned Steve Lehto really having a dislike for Hertz customer service that is well beyond Tom Brady shilling for them in very annoying adverts? I was about to discover what would become a recurring theme that Avis could definitely improve their customer service interactions when I rang up what appeared to be a local number and ended up at a national call centre that I wasn’t at all convinced was located in the United States.
The annoying VRU made it very hard to get to a human being and then once there, she wasn’t much help either. You would think there would be some sort of FAQ available to their call centre agents that if someone is enquiring where to go at a particular airport in order to hire the car they’ve reserved, they could then offer some directions as to where one ought to go.
It turns out I’d have been better served asking Mistletoe and Mocha their opinion. No amount of trying to convince the person that I hadn’t just stepped off the airplane and that I wasn’t at the terminal would get them to tell me how I get to where the rental paperwork would be.
I ended up giving up in disgust and walking all the way from the cell phone lot on a grassy embankment that hadn’t been mowed in quite awhile into the heavily fortified Avis car park compound and found the desk where the paperwork is actually done.
For future reference, it’d have been a darned sight easier to just have Nicholas drop me at Terminal 1 and I’d just catch their coach to the remote car park where all the paperwork is done.
At least the staggeringly long and not particularly quick moving queue allowed me some time to catch my breath and chat up my neighbours in the queue before it was my turn. I must say that whilst most of the Avis employees I would encounter or speak to over the phone were at best indifferent and more often oblivious and clueless…the lady at the terminal was definitely not one of those.
I had hoped to hire a RAV4 but in practise, it’s whatever is next up in a constantly moving inventory of previously checked in vehicles. I’ll give her credit…she did her best trying to lobby for a RAV4 and I’d have happily waited a little longer for one but there were some deaf ears on the other end of that conversation and I ended up in a Ford Escape Platinum instead.
Now, having owned and driven a 2002 Ford Escape and not having particularly fond memories of it particularly when we were at the point of having three car seats/boosters in a second row clearly not at all interested in accommodating them without shoving a booster seat and quickly slamming the door…I was a bit less than thrilled.
Working out the user interface on the steering wheel so I could reset the mileage counters was a bit frustrating until I realised that the two switches on the wheel were rocker switches.
Ah.
That’s when my eyes noticed a control near the climate control panel that seemed to indicate that this Escape might well have a tushy warmer just like my Traverse. And blessings upon high, it most certainly had a very effective tushy warmer which is probably the only reason (along with booking hotels with hot tubs!) that my back would have a chance of surviving this trip.
With the pictures taken of the exterior (in poor light as it was now dark) and the phone paired to the Bluetooth system, it was time to catch up to Nicholas who had left for the house a hour earlier in the Traverse for some sort of dinner.
The Escape is certainly smaller than the Traverse which was a requirement because I’m certain Mom would love for me to put an actual airport jetway on the house so she can board the Traverse easier.
The engine definitely could use the two cylinders that the Traverse has that the Escape doesn’t but overall it is a good ride and pretty reasonably powered. I would have loved an extended test drive of the RAV4 but I think this will end up working out well after all once I work out how to disable that annoying “feature” of the engine shutting off at the stoplight.
Oh, wait a minute…what does *THAT* button do… 😉
