It used to be easy in Seattle. Get off the plane, get your luggage, walk across the street to the parking garage, pick up the rental car. Since we’ve been here last they’ve created a rental car center which means standing in line waiting for a bus to drive to the rental car center. Dragging their luggage behind them...
The woman at the Hertz rent-a-car place informed us that the larger vehicle we reserved wasn’t available. (Cue Seinfeld. What part of the word reservation don’t you understand?) she offered us a more expensive car that seated fewer people and we would have to pay the difference in our "upgrade." To be fair, she was a new employee. When she called her manager to find out what to do it was established that it could be somewhat remedied, she just didn’t know how to do it.
She asked if we wanted GPS. I love the cars with GPS. It takes out me as the navigator/traffic negotiator. It prevents bad feelings. As we left the counter with our less than ideal ride she said, "don’t forget to tell the guy you want the GPS.” Wait, what? That’s usually installed in the car. "No, we have a different fancier system." Hmmm.
We used credit card points to pay for the rental, taken care of several weeks ago. As we left she said, "and look, you got an upgrade for free.” Yes, if by upgrade you mean a smaller vehicle that we had a guaranteed price for that we almost didn’t get, yes we did.
To be truthful, at this point I was more incredulous than annoyed. She was a really sweet girl learning on the job.
We head to parking spot #568 with greathusbandbob pointing to every Hertz spot that had a vehicle bigger than the one we were getting. The Nissan Pathfinder is a tight fit for the big guy and will definitely not hold the number of people we'll have, but we'll make do.
A pre-packed CPAP machine and a three mile hike to the car left us both hot and winded. With the air on, we drive up to the final paperwork gate and say with all of the best intentions, she told us to remind you we got GPS. “Oh great” says the sarcastic guy in the booth. As we wait for him to prepare what we were told would be this new advanced system that we were paying an additional $8/day for we noticed that the air conditioning is not working. When we share this with the Hertz guy in the booth he says, and I quote, “what do you want me to do about it? I don’t know anything about the cars, do you want me to try to turn it on?”
Well that’s a forward step so crankyman sits in the driver seat and I show him how it works and then show him that it doesn’t. He asked questions like "what’s this button that says rear climate? Did you try it?” Ummm. No. That determines the air in the back seats. (Which by the way there should be more of). Just before he gets out of the car he says “that should be colder than that.” (Breathe in, breathe out.). He hands me a zippered bag with a cell phone that has GPS on it, then says “I’ll call Franco, he knows the cars. He’ll know how to turn it on.”
Apparently our good cop/bad cop routine is netting gains. For the record, I am never the good cop.
Franco slips into the driver’s seat and I show him how it is supposed to work. After helping him turn up the fan, he put his hands in front of the vents and said, there now it works. No Franco, it does not.
Meanwhile back at the ranch the good cop is sharing his story, the story at the Hertz checkout, and likely a multitude of other stories. When you’re playing bad cop, you’re too pissed to hear anything. Also at this point I realize the scam of the $8 a day fancy new GPS system and I’m even more pissed. Crankyman has turned himself around (and I later find out that he’s certain greathusbandbob must have retired as a cop or a fireman) and will do anything to help.
He retells the car too small had to fight for the right price to Franco. Franco turns to greathusbandbob and says “do you want a bigger car? I can do that.” GPS is returned and removed from the bill, Kia Sedona is offered up and willingly taken. We go forth on our merry way.
Knowing my inability to calmly deal with situations such as these, at one point greathusbandbob tells the guy he’s going to take me to the hotel and bring the car back to get it straightened out. That’s true love right there.
2 comments:
Didn't I say something like, try to have fun???
Greathusbandbob is aptly named :-)
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