The Tale of the Unattainable Rental Car

"Don't let people drive you crazy when you know it's in walking distance." -- Author Unknown

I apologize for my brief hiatus from blog-world. Working with insurance companies, car dealers and chiropractors has proven to be a full-time job (in addition to that other full-time job that I have). For the past two weeks, this has been a day in the life of Stephanie:

Drive my rental car to work.

Work until my lunch break.

Return phone calls from insurance company people named Melvin and Dodd.

Go back to work until 5pm.

Drive my rental car to the chiropractor.

Get aligned and cracked.

Drive my rental car home.

Eat dinner.

Talk to my dad about insurance people and learn how to haggle with them.

Go to sleep.

Repeat.

The main things worth writing about are what happen in the time between dinner and sleep. Here is one of several anecdotes, for your reading pleasure.

The day after I was almost flattened by an SUV, I realized that I had no car and would probably need one in order to successively drive places. Seems like a simple idea, yet I had overlooked it. My dad wisely noted that the other guy’s insurance should be expected to pay for a rental car. In an ideal world, that would also seem like a simple idea.

We quickly learned that due to my lack of being alive for 25 years, I could only rent from Enterprise (where you only need to be 21… 4 years makes a big difference? Slash do they know that it was the 70 year old man that was the incapable driver and not the 22 year old? Ageists.). So naturally, we called them… only to discover that every car in the city was currently in use. Really? I did not know that was even possible! How can a reasonably sized city like Charlotte be completely void of rental cars? Needless to say, I was not a happy camper. But my dad was even less happy than that because he had the pleasure of driving me to work on Monday morning prior to the crack of dawn. I made some smart comment about how he should wear a chauffeur hat, which did not amuse him. But not much does amuse him at 7:30am.

I was finally able to get a rental car four whole days after the incident. Good thing 37 friendly lawyers sent me some light reading material about how they would love to help me sue the other guy. So I didn’t get bored.

For most people, the Tale of the Unattainable Rental Car would have ended here. But not for me. First of all, I was given the ugliest car in the world. It was some modern looking version of a station wagon with excessive amounts of blind-spots and immediately branded Loser across my forehead. Also, it reeked of smoke. Most people could handle this if it was their only option. But my body revolts in the presence of smoke and what can only be called its “after remnants.” So it was giving me headaches and not helping my neck and back to heal appropriately.

My father, being the loving and protective parent that he is, politely phoned Enterprise to tell them about the entire saga. And when I say politely, I mean that I’m pretty sure he threatened to shoot up the place. The very next day, I got a call from Enterprise telling me that they had a 2010 Hyundai Sonata (the exact type of car that the SUV man totaled) waiting for me. As I pulled up in the smoky monstrosity, they were polishing the Sonata and smiling widely. They also noted that they had gone out and smelled it themselves to make sure it was to my liking.

Moral of the story: it pays to complain, especially to the Regional Vice President of Enterprise. Go big or go home.